French Connectionby Eleanor Sprawson
Courier Mail (Australia), March 21, 2002
MICHAEL Vartan is an unusually well-credentialled heart-throb. He's even French.
But as the love interest opposite Jennifer Garner in the new US spy drama Alias, the Paris-born actor is driven by just one thing. "I'm just trying not to vomit on myself. That has been the main motivation," he says.
"I've always had this feeling of 'Oh my gosh, what am I doing here? I can't act!'."
But there is no stopping the 33-year-old, who plays the CIA agent Michael Vaughn in the Golden Globe-winning drama, from his relentlessly dry self-analysis.
Vartan says he only ventured to California to see some of the world and never intended to launch an acting career.
But Vartan is actually from something of a French showbusiness dynasty -- his aunt is the popular singer Sylvie Vartan, his uncle is rocker Johnny Hallyday and his father was a songwriter.
Despite this, he insists that his acting career, which took off during a brief return to his country of birth, was an accident. "This is a horrible thing to say, but I only did those French films because people were paying me more money than I'd ever thought of in my life," says Vartan, who was nominated for a prestigious Cesar award -- the French equivalent of an Oscar -- for this early work.
Since making his way back to Hollywood in the mid-1990s, he's guest-starred in series including Ally McBeal and Friends and has appeared in several movies, most notably opposite Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed.
"My mum constantly reminds me, and I quote, that I am 'the luckiest bastard in showbusiness'," Vartan laughs.
"It really wasn't until Alias that I've kind of felt like I belong or deserve to be on a TV show or in a movie."
© Nationwide News Pty Limited 2002
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