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"   Wes Bentley &amp;amp;amp; Amanda Seyfried at the premiere of Gone. Photo: Getty Images  Before swooning for Jake Gyllenhaal in Donnie Darko, we obsessed over Wes Bentley in American Beauty: same good looks, same dark, but sweet, rebellious teen with a cause. Yet, Bentley\u2014who gave life to Beauty`s Ricky Fitts\u2014left much to be desired post-fame. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t think [American Beauty] would give me the attention it did,&amp;quot; the actor told ELLE recently. &amp;quot;I wasn&amp;#039;t prepared for that at all, and that&amp;#039;s part of why I didn&amp;#039;t react so well.&amp;quot; Bentley&amp;#039;s hinting at a decade&amp;#039;s worth of drug addiction, divorce, loss, and apathy toward his career that led to a run of low-profile roles making little to no splash. But Gone, the new film in which he stars with Amanda Seyfried, commences a trifecta of high-profile, hotly anticipated films in which he acts this year. After Gone, in which he plays a detective helping Seyfried find her sister, Bentley will be seen in Lovelace (also starring Seyfried) and The Hunger Games (as Seneca Crane). &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s what attracted me to acting to begin with, not really being locked into one experience in life,&amp;quot; Bentley said of his diverse choices. &amp;quot;And it is kind of special, not just experiencing yourself switching characters and intentions and backgrounds, but also seeing someone else do the same thing, at the same time.&amp;quot; The actor&amp;#039;s talking, of course, about Seyfried, who goes from distressed heroine in Gone to porn icon Linda Lovelace in the movie of the same name. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t recognize Amanda when she walked into the room as Linda,&amp;quot; Bentley added. &amp;quot;It took me a minute because I know her and I&amp;#039;d look at her and think `Who is this person?&amp;#039; She loved that because she felt like she had made the transition physically.&amp;quot; Bentley plays the photographer who snaps the photograph of Lovelace for The Deep Throat poster. He continues, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a really interesting moment for Linda, in the script. It&amp;#039;s a moment of reprieve from predators. The character I play, he&amp;#039;s not trying to prey on her sexually. He wants to get out of her something from the shoot that&amp;#039;s deeper, much more to do with how she feels.&amp;quot; Bentley&amp;#039;s getting that same reprieve from the media that&amp;#039;s spent the last few years focusing on his addiction and friendship with Heath Ledger, but now tout his comeback. He explains his temporary allowance for such public introspection: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve felt the need to talk a bit about all that stuff, because I wanted to help anyone who might have been in the same boat as far as the addiction and such. I used to see interviews like this or I saw interviews with other actors who had recovered and turned things around from addiction. It gave me hope, even just a little bit. It at least gave me something. So, I wanted to do that for anyone else who might be dug in deep. I just felt like I needed to turn the favor. To help someone else, if they needed it.&amp;quot; That sensitivity\u2014part of what made the teen Bentley so crushworthy\u2014is clearly flourishing, especially in relation to his wife and their fifteen-month-old son. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m so proud of my family... I didn&amp;#039;t really see myself as a dad even just four or five years ago. Then all of a sudden, it just felt completely right. Having a child feels like the one certain thing we were built to do. There&amp;#039;s those other things that we were meant to do and we are skilled at doing and we enjoy doing, but there&amp;#039;s one thing that we were built to do and that&amp;#039;s, if we really tap into it, being a parent.&amp;quot; Perhaps, but it will be nice to be reminded of Bentley&amp;#039;s other great skill\u2014acting\u2014in the coming year. Gone hits theaters Friday. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/news/a8467/wes-bentley-dont-call-it-a-comeback-38234/>