Wes Bentley looks back on his one-of-a-kind career in Hollywood from 'American Beauty' to 'Knight of Cups'

Most of us first met Bentley on the screen in his breakout role in the best picture Oscar-winning 1999 film “American Beauty,” playing Ricky, the loner-next-door neighbor who loves to record plastic bags floating in the wind.

Then in his early ‘20s, the actor admits it was hard to take in the exposure of the movie.

“It was a blessing as an actor,” he said. “Personally, it was tough. It was tough to follow up on that. I feel I have a skewed vision of it. It was so weird and felt extreme. I was young and had a lot of big lessons learned, and a lot of that had to do with the attention that came from the movie. At the end of the day, I just didn’t know what to do at that moment, as far as dealing with the attention.”

A few years after the success of “American Beauty,” Bentley starred in one of the most anticipated movies of 2002, “The Four Feathers,” the latest adaptation of the A.E.W. Mason novel that follows the British Army’s Gordon Relief Expedition in the Sudan in the late 1800s.

Putting him alongside Heath Ledger (Bentley plays his best friend in the role) and Kate Hudson, the movie was touted as a modern-day “Lawrence of Arabia,” with its lush desert cinematography. The movie turned out to be a bomb, only taking in $30 million worldwide (the film cost $35 million to make).

Looking back, Bentley speaks very highly of the experience.

“I’ve seen it a few times since its release, and I’m proud of it,” he said. “There’s no CGI in that movie. Spending three months in Morocco and three months in London, it was an incredible life experience. Heath [Ledger] really did become one of my best friends.”

Bentley believes it was bad timing that led to the film’s disappointing release.

“We shot it before 9/11, and they had no choice to release it after, and the subject matter was close [to the events]. That’s all I could ever reason with,” he said.

After a string of more modest films, Bentley was cast as head Gamemaker Seneca Crane in the first “Hunger Games” movie in 2012.

Bentley admits he was happy that leading up to filming, his character was beefed up with more scenes, saying at first the “character didn’t have much to do at all,” but he’s also happy that he didn’t have to play a character that was attached for multiple films.

“There was something attractive about that,” Bentley said. “I live to experience different things. Part of what I love about acting is to live the lives of others. Growing up I could never decide what I wanted to be because I wanted to be so many things.”

Recently, Bentley starred in the Christopher Nolan sci-fi epic “Interstellar,” playing scientist Doyle.

The actor’s biggest memory from the set was the constant discussion of science between takes.

“We had a physicist on set and everyone had something interesting to add to the conversation,” he said. “Especially when we were on the Miller planet (the all-water planet), the hot topic was discussing how much time had passed while we were on the planet.”