Celebrity focus: Jason Priestley looks back with ‘Love’

Jason Priestley was 26 years old and in the thick of his pop Hollywood stardom as part of the “Beverly Hills, 90210” cast when an unmissable opportunity to stretch his acting muscles came along: “Love and Death on Long Island,” an indie drama about love and obsession in which he’d star opposite Academy Award-nominated actor John Hurt.

Priestley was craftily cast as a young American actor who becomes aging British author Giles De’Ath’s (Hurt) object of obsession after the older man inadvertently catches a matinee of a teen B-movie one rainy day. He found he could relate to his on-screen alter ego, an actor struggling to break out of the teenybopper mold. “He was this guy who was trying very earnestly to get taken seriously as an actor, and I was too. I thought for me it was a great opportunity to not only embrace my situation, but also poke fun at it a little bit.”

Before filming began in picturesque Nova Scotia (standing in for Long Island, N.Y.), the film’s two stars spent time getting to know each other by exploring Halifax.

“There was a lot of food, there was a lot of coffee, and there was just spending time together,” Priestley said.

The quality time helped Priestley and Hurt develop the intimacy on display in the film’s diner scene, a proposition turned confessional turned heartrending breakup.

“It’s a monstrous scene. It’s so beautiful, powerful, emotional and tragic – and, of course, filmmaking being what it is, that was the very first scene that John and I ever did together,” Priestley remembered with a laugh. “I always felt, and John felt this way too, that (the movie) was absolutely a love story – an unrequited love story, but a love story all the same. It was about a man who fell in love with another man but didn’t really know what that meant.”

Twenty years after making “Love and Death on Long Island,” globetrotting to do press interviews and taking the film to the Cannes Film Festival together, Priestley reminisced about the late Hurt, who died earlier this year.

“John was an incredible friend, he was an incredible teacher, he was an incredible example to me of what an artist could be, and how a man should comport himself in the world,” Priestley said. “Having that kind of opportunity with a man like John Hurt is a gift that I feel very lucky to have received.”