Yes, He’s Black; No, He Doesn’t Play Basketball

Sean Patrick Thomas won’t do the Hollywood shuffle. You won’t catch this rising star driving Miss Daisy or schlepping Matt Damon’s golf bag.

“The roles I feel more comfortable with were written for white guys. Writers attribute characteristics to African American men that really don’t have anything to do with being black,” says Thomas, who encountered special challenges in his first major movie role as the hip-hopping hero of the new teen romance “Save the Last Dance.”

Thomas, in town to promote the genial love story--which earned the top spot at the movie box office in its debut weekend--has brought his adoring mother along. It’s obvious where he got his good looks. He flushes when complimented, which makes his mom giggle.

Though he’s just breaking into the movies, he has a featured role on the locally controversial CBS drama “The District,” playing a zealous Christian detective he describes as the right-hand man and conscience of police chief Craig T. Nelson. The show has been criticized for casting a white actor in the role of Washington’s crime-fighting salvation, but Thomas doesn’t see the problem. “I was talking to Craig, and he did research and found that there was at least one white police chief in the last 20 years,” he says.

Well, take that, you bleeding hearts!

Thomas, who describes himself as the old man in the “Dance” cast, is as coy as any middle-aged actress when it comes to his age. Every guess--28, 29, 30?--strikes him as hysterically funny. He looks younger but was told he wasn’t right for the part when he initially auditioned. “You’re too old, you can’t dance and you’re not ghetto enough. Get lost,” he recollects. But after auditioning lots of dancers, the filmmakers realized it would be easier to teach an actor to dance than a dancer to act.

He figures they were thinking, “We’ll get him to be a little more street, teach him to dance and play basketball. If you’re a young black guy, they assume you go out to a club every weekend, that you play basketball and that you have potential for murder in your eye. None of which I have. I’m pretty harmless, I don’t play basketball, I dance now, but I didn’t before,” says the plain-spoken actor.

Thomas, a graduate of the University of Virginia, admits he feels more comfortable playing a preppie--though the black-cashmere-clad hunk insists he isn’t one--than a hip-hop superhero. Born in Washington, he grew up in Wilmington, Del., where his parents, both South American, still live. After the University of Virginia, he studied acting at NYU, where he obtained his master’s in fine arts.

Although he’s had minor roles in half a dozen movies--most notably “Courage Under Fire”--”Save the Last Dance” marks his first leading role and his first on-screen romance. Thomas plays Derek, a charismatic heartthrob who falls for a Midwestern transfer student (Julia Stiles) named Sara, one of a handful of whites at his high school. A promising ballerina, Stiles’ character has abandoned her dream of attending Juilliard because her mother died in a car crash on her way to her daughter’s audition.

The other students disapprove of the match. His female classmates are particularly offended. Here comes another white girl, making off with a fine-looking eligible brother. When their resentment boils over, Sara bends to pressure and breaks off the relationship. Can this be the end of a beautiful romance?

Thomas realizes African American women are sensitive about this issue. “I have some black female friends who have said if they didn’t know me, they wouldn’t go to the movie, just based on the poster,” he says. “But it’s weird because I don’t remember seeing black men having love affairs with anybody, black or white. So to think of it that way is shortsighted.” At least the movie confronts the issue.

Thomas and Stiles clearly connect on many levels, and their tenderness ripens naturally over the course of the picture. After sparring with Stiles’ character in the classroom, he decides to take her under his wing, teaching her the slang, the attitude and the moves that will help her fit in. The irony, he says, was that he was kind of like Sara before he prepped for the role.

He and Stiles didn’t have a chance to get comfortable with each other before filming. “There was a lot of pressure on us to have chemistry,” he says, “which both of us bristled about. Plus there was a lot of rumbling around the set: She didn’t have the body of a ballerina, she didn’t look like Ally McBeal. And I’m not like the dashing leading man. I was told to smile more, exude more charm and to act taller.” The shortish actor shrugs. “Like, right.”

Meanwhile, his four-year, off-screen relationship fell apart. “It came down to her accusing me of putting the job before the relationship. Also I had love scenes with Julia and I had to dance with beautiful girls every day. She couldn’t deal with it. She’s an actor. I shouldn’t have to constantly reassure her.”

Told that his ex-girlfriend’s reaction isn’t all that outlandish, he’s incredulous. “But I’m a trustworthy guy,” he says, looking to his mother for affirmation. Thomas’ biggest fan nods vigorously.

Thomas is also featured opposite Christopher Plummer in “Dracula 2000.” “I was in awe of him because I grew up watching ‘The Sound of Music,’ thinking Captain von Trapp was the man.”

He could see himself yodeling in the Alps someday; he wants to play roles “that defy what I’m supposed to do because of my exterior. If you look like me, you’re asked to be either menacing or to play the buffoon. I want to be James Bond, Indiana Jones. I also want to be Oskar Schindler. I just want to do the great, great roles; I want to star in ‘The Piano Lesson,’ to play Hamlet.”