Years he's been at it: Three.

When he's not shooting:
The Vancouver native, who made his film debut as Private Roy Jackson, the religious sharpshooter in Saving Private Ryan (ahem, why did they not include Firestorm or Urban Safari¿¿ Whoops! - Jayne), appears next month in The Knockaround Guys, with John Malkovich, and in April as Yankee slugger Roger Maris in HBO's 61*.

When was the first time you fired a shotgun¿
"I was 12, and I was with my uncle and two cousins at a sporting-clays range in the interior of British Columbia. I think I busted four out of five clays on my first try, and I was just so juiced and excited about it. But mostly I remember the impact of the gun on my shoulder; you really feel it. It just about knocked my little female cousin over. I think that was the last time she ever tried it."

Got any sporting-clay pointers for beginners¿
"It's like throwing a football to someone who's running -- you have to throw it in front of him. If you just aim at the clay disk, by the time your shot reaches it, the disk has already sailed on. Also, I once had an old-timer tell me to hold my gun like I was dancing with Catherine Zeta-Jones. Real gentle."

Do you hunt¿
"Yeah, but for me, the sport of hunting ends on the sporting-clay range. If you don't need the food, there's no point in being out there. I prefer to eat organic meat, to know where my food is coming from. That's the way I was raised, and that's the way I want to raise my daughter."

Ever speak to Charlton Heston¿
"Uh, no. I can respect where he's coming from on certain issues, but he also tends to have some pretty radical ideas on how to quell the fear of gun control. I don't know that he is the calmest voice of reason."

Won any competitions¿
"At the range near me, there's what we call a turkey shoot. If you win, you get a locally raised frozen turkey. I've won two beautiful organic smoked hams and two frozen turkeys."

What would your grandparents think about all this shooting¿
"Well, it's in my blood. We're definitely rural people. My grandmother is 75, and she still scares raccoons away with her .22; she still climbs her fir tree to collect grapes off vines. To be honest, I'd be a big disappointment to my ancestors if they knew I shot clay disks for frozen turkeys."

He may have played the smolderingly hot sniper soldier in Saving Private Ryan and a buttoned-up prison guard in The Green Mile, but that doesnât mean Barry Pepper needs a uniform to look good. Today, heâs in the market for civilian clothes÷heâs come to Manhattan to attend the Hugo Boss spring fashion show. So will the handsome and intense actor be working the runway¿ ãHell no,ä laughs Pepper, who lives in Vancouver with his wife, Cindy, a part-time furniture designer. ãI wear a lot of their clothes, and they invited me to come. But Iâm pretty basic: jeans, boots, and tee shirts.ä The 30-year old actor had better get used to the glamorous, film-star life. Besides having two Tom Hanks movies and Will Smithâs Enemy of the State (he was one of the bad guys) under his belt, heâs just landed his first big Hollywood lead, in the sci-fi epic Battlefield Earth opposite John Travolta. But before he goes galactic, he sat down to dish about the romantic thing he did for his wife, his wild youth, and the best part about working with Travolta.

Tell me about Battlefield Earth.
Itâs like Planet of the Apes meets Star Wars. It takes place in 3000 A.D. Aliens have seized Earth and man is fighting back. My character is a young hunter.

I hear Travolta films have great food.
He didnât start shooting until two weeks after the rest of us, so at first the catering was so-so. But when John arrived, he flew in his own personal caterers from L.A. The first diner we had was chateaubriand with lobster. He would bring in sushi chefs too.

Have you ever been star struck¿
I saw Harrison Ford and I grabbed my wifeâs arm in panic. I said, ãHoney, thatâs Han Solo!ä I freaked out. She was like, ãGo talk to him.ä I said, ãWhat am I going to say÷Iâm an actor, too¿ä So, I didnât.

How did you get into acting¿
College was a miserable failure so I answered an ad for acting classes. I slowly built up a resume of guest-star parts on a few Vancouver series.

How did you make it to L.A.¿
When I felt like I was ready, I drove there on a hope and a prayer in my â71 Dodge Dart with vinyl seats and no air-conditioning. Three months later, Spielberg hired me.

How exactly did you manage to get the meeting with Spielberg¿
I read at a cattle call for Ryan and he liked my tape, so we ended up talking on the deck of the Amistad, which he was shooting at the time. As I left, he turned to his producer and said, ãHire Barry Pepper.ä It was the greatest moment of my life since I proposed to my wife.

Speaking of which, where did you meet her¿
We went to high school together. We knew each other, but we both had different puppy-love relationships going on at the time.

So you were slow dancing with your prom date, looking over her shoulder at your future wife¿
Probably. That was my style back then [laughs]. I actually met up with her about seven years later in Vancouver. I didnât even recognize her. She was so beautiful.

Where did you propose¿
On a beach where she used to play as a child. It was really special to the two of us.

Are you a super romantic¿
Well, I gave my wife a gift recently. Sheâs four months pregnant, and maternity clothes are really terrible. So I went out and bought a pair of her favorite Leviâs 501s. My mom showed me how to use the sewing machine, and I cut out the tummy of the pants, sewed in a fleece pouch, and then sewed back in the button fly. She loves them.

You had an interesting childhood . . .
Yeah, when I was five, my family and I left home and sailed around the South Pacific and Mexico for five years. My dad used celestial navigation÷no electronics.

How did that experience shape who you are as a person¿
I actually think thatâs why I became an actor. We had no television, so we entertained ourselves through our imaginations÷lots of reading, plays, and drawing.

Do you get recognized much¿
Yeah. But itâs really mellow. I mean, itâs not like Will Smith, with screaming fans or anything. For me, itâs really subtle, like at the airport counter, the guy will upgrade me and just say, ãKeep up the good work.ä

It came up again a year ago when he was talking to director Spike Lee about playing a fast-talking Wall Street commodities trader in the movie 25th Hour , which opens Friday.

"Spike was telling me, 'How do I know you can pull this off, Barry¿ I've only ever seen you play white-bread, apple-pie-eating southern boys,' " Pepper tells The Province . "It's funny- when I met Spielberg he thought I was from the South. Everybody does."

Pepper launched his career with his role as a Bible-spouting southern sharpshooter in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan , and followed that up with further uniformed turns in The Green Mile (another southerner) and the TV baseball drama 61*. His role as an urban New Yorker in the Spike Lee movie opposite Edward Norton and Philip Seymour Hoffman is a departure- for one thing, Pepper has more dialogue than usual.

"It was such an extreme from anything I've ever done before- a fast-talking, high-level Wall Street hustler, a real hard-edged, foul-mouthed thorn in the side of his friends and co-workers," says Pepper. "A womanizing partier, the antithesis of who I am. I'm a mellow, low-key family man, small-town Canadian kid, so it was a real challenge for me".

The Campbell River-raised Pepper has been based in Los Angeles since the mid-'90's but still maintains a home in the Vancouver area with his wife Cindy and 2 1/2 year old daughter Anneliese. Get him talking about recent projects and he'll switch from film to talk about the backyard paly center and swing set he built out of cedar for his little girl: "All hand-made but I got all the professional playground stuff. She's at that age where she can really enjoy it".

25th Hour follows a convicted drug dealer (Norton) on his last night of freedom before going to prison. Hoffman and Pepper play his boyhood friends. Pepper showed up three weeks before filming started las summer to get ready.

"Spike hooked me up with this Wall Street success-story hustler friend of his, this $20 mis-a-year whiz kid," Pepper syas. "I used him as the template for the character- he showed me all of the hot spots on Wall Street, all the fancy steak houses, took me down to the traking floor, showed me where they live, where they get their coffee. It was a cool process."

The result is an actor's showcase for Pepper and his co-stars. Hoffman plays a private school teacher obsessed with a student (Anna Paquin) while Rasario Dawson shows up as Norton's girlfriend, who trades insults with Pepper's abrasive suit. Pepper says Lee's reputation is what draws the powerhouse actors to his movies.

"Everything I'd been told about him bieng tough and difficult and hardcore was only ture to the point of his undying passion for filmmaking," says Pepper. "He's like Spielberg, he's got that Midas touch. Spike has such a tight-knit crew and he prepares his cast so ferociously, so by the time the camera rolls, you hit the ground running. Everybody and thir dog wants to work with him- it's because he puts toether genius material.

Also last year, Pepper starred in and produced the Canadian wilderness drama The Snow Walker , which should hit theatres by springtime. The actor figures he'd like to direct some day but working with Spielberg and Lee has convinced him he has a lot to learn.

"I could direct a film tomorrow but it would probably be less than gratifying because of my lack of technical knowledge," he says. "I feel like I have the basics but a Spielberg or a Spike Lee, they can do everybody's job. I'm in such awe of that ability and I see how that pays off."

ãHe was asleep with a cigarette in his mouth,ä Pepper says of the culprit. ãThe stairwells were full of freaks, the elevators were broken, and down below I could hear gunfire,ä he adds, waving his hands as if describing the latest ride at Disneyland.

For any other actor this might have been enough to elicit a temper tantrum or an angry call to his agent, but the quiet and impeccably well-mannered Pepper, cool under pressure like the characters he plays, didnât break a sweat.

The 31-year-old blue-collar boy from a farming family of Canadian cowboys, most famous ad the Bible-quoting sharpshooter in Saving Private Ryan, has plenty of experience with extreme situations. He spent five years of his adolescence at sea onboard a 50-foot sloop his mother and father built to sail around the South Pacific. Then, as a young adult, he lived in a hippie commune on a Canadian island settled by American ex-pats and the offspring of death-row prison workers. ãIt was a real crazy, eclectic community,ä he says, ãwhere there were barefoot dances, farmerâs markets, live bands and sweaty freaks, hippies and gays.ä

He started acting in Vancouver in 1992 and paid his dues on every half-baked TV show from Highlander and Lonesome Dove to Sliders and Outer Limits. When he did arrive in Hollywood, it took him a mere three months to land Saving Private Ryan. That led to The Green Mile and a role in Battlefield Earth that heâd rather forget. Currently, heâs getting ready for the release of We Were Soldiers with Mel Gibson. Pepper plays a photojournalist who is forced into combat in Vietnam.

Splitting his time between LA and a five-acre farm in western Canada, this most regular of regular-guy actors and married father of a one-year-old daughter has a tolerance for the bizarre and insane that is unheard of ö as shown by his day in Crackville. ãBefore we started the shoot, all these toothless winos and crackheads were banging on my car window trying to sell me Percodan and uppers,ä Pepper, sharply but casually dressed in black pants and a white shirt, says. ãI knew it would be a strange day. And I had a great time.ä

Much like the freaks in this neighborhood, you do a lot of killing in your movies. How close have you come to killing someone in real life¿
My buddy and I were screwing around as teenagers. My dad had this two-level workshop and there was a door between the two levels. The door was open, and my buddy and I were throwing rusty darts at each other as we ran past the door. I caught one right in the arm, right in the shoulder. It was just so demented. I nearly killed him a few times.

In your new movie, We Were Soldiers, you play another gun-toting hard guy. Do you take classes in bravado¿
I wanted everything to be as authentic as possible. Everything down to what kind of cigarettes he smoked, down to the fact that he had a little can opener for eating his rations attached to his dog tag. This guy stepped onto a battlefield with just a camera and no helmet and wanted to be a part of what was going down in Vietnam. It was the place to be for a young reporter and that battlefield turned into such an absolute hell storm. He was handed an M-16 and said, ãIâm a noncombatant.ä But they said, ãNot today, son.ä He had to help fight. So he walked on the battlefield a witness and walked off a soldier.

You train for your movies. What was the coolest bit youâve experienced¿
I just did ranger boot camp in Fort Benning, GA. When I got there, the general asked if I would go out and meet with the snipers. I learned so much more than I ever did in the research for Saving Private Ryan. I got to shoot their Remington 700 at a 700-yard target. I hit a few in the chest. Itâs so specialized because they spend so much time in the bush in camouflage and thatâs their mission. The snipers I met with really gave me a strong indication that snipers are real loners. Theyâre fascinating guys.

On the other end of the spectrum of toughness, is it true you were in a boy band¿
I was in this band called Band in the UK. It didnât matter if you could sing. I did the dance choreography for it and some backup vocals. It was lame. We cut a video and a CD. We were No. 1 on the local radio station for a week. It was embarrassing as all get out. Everybodyâs got skeletons, right¿

Growing up on a hippie island, you must have seen so much Î70s stuff.
Hippie women with bushy armpits and cotton dresses and all, yeah. They reeked of amazing homegrown grass. There were nude beaches and areas where squatters would just find a plot of land and put up a tepee or live in a school bus. And kids in tie-dyed diapers!

Did you dabble in the tie-dye, bellbottom pants and platform-shoe craze¿
I was into psychedelics more. But mostly hot pinks, purples, sky blues and psychedelic colors. It was really hot for a few summers and then it died out.

What other fashion trends were you into that fell off¿
I used to breakdance. We were the West Coasters. My handle was ãDr. Pepperä ö you know, tracksuits, bandanas, the whole bit.

Were your folks people of peace and nature¿
My dad was a lumberjack. He was a scrapper. He was the guy Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood play in movies. Some drunk would come up and start hassling my mom at a party, and heâd cold-cock him. Drop him on the floor like a side of beef. He taught me to fight by knocking my lights out in the backyard. He was rugged.

Youâve played in a couple of movies with Vin Diesel, who seems to be a bit of a scrapper himself. Could you knock him on his ass¿
He can kick some serious ass. He used to be a bouncer in New York before he got into the business. Vin is trained in jujitsu and shute wrestling so that would be a pretty serious fight. I think with Vin, my speed in boxing would be to my advantage. I just got hooked up with a guy whoâs teaching me Brazilian shute wrestling. But Iâm more fascinated with martial arts ö kung fu and tai chi. Thereâs a great book you might like to check out; itâs called Bruce Leeâs Fighting Method. And itâs all knees, eyes, throat and groin. I couldnât believe that Bruce Leeâs there in the pictorials telling you how to mangle somebody.

Do you worry about the ãSkeet Ulrich Curse of the It Guyä¿
No, and you know why¿ Because Iâll only get there when I totally deserve it, not because somebody out there says or writes, ãI discovered him.ä And not because I have the cheekbones for it. I donât want to be there until I feel like I have the chops to back it up. And thatâs the way my careerâs gone so far.

When was the last time you pulled some cliché celebrity move¿
We were filming on this lake in California and I had a house with my wife and baby. I was walking around at night with bare feet, turning out the lights and shutting the doors. I was shutting the last door and boom, I got stung on the foot by a scorpion. So my wife comes down, sheâs got a flashlight and sheâs up on a chair. Iâm squeezing the blood and venom out, and I hear this skittering, this clattering across the linoleum. And the little prickâs running for me again. The next day, the agent gets on the horn, starts freaking out, and thereâs a big hoopla. I was embarrassed, because everyone on set heard about it. Iâve got the scorpion in a little Ziploc bag now. I kept him. We donât have scorpions up in Canada.

Have you ever blown a part by screwing up an audition¿
I auditioned for the role of a bartender. I had bartended, so I figured I was a shoe-in. I could do all kinds of tricky stuff with the bottles, flipping this and that. I could take the cap off a beer with my forearm and then drop it into my hand and flick it across the room into the garbage can. So I threw a couple of beers into my knapsack and off I rode on my mountain bike. I got in there and I threw on a white shirt, black vest and a bartenderâs apron. I pulled these two beers out of my pack, put them on the table, they called ãaction,ä and the beers burst all over the casting director and director and all of her papers on the table. They just exploded, man. I didnât get the job. My agent heard about it and yelled at me and told me to never again bring live props to an audition. It was pretty humiliating.

You came to LA in a â71 Dodge Dart named Grace. Do you still have it¿
We gave it to a friend, a single mother. Her husband left her in the lurch with their young sons. She was on welfare and couldnât afford a car, so we gave her Grace. I got it totally repaired, got an engine and everything done up for her so that it was in good running condition. All I said to her was when my daughter turns 16 you have to give it back to us, you canât sell it. I said that anything that goes wrong with it Iâll repair ö new tires, new engine, whatever. But at the end of the road, who knows if my daughter will even want that piece of crap.

When youâre not hanging out in a crackhouse in Armani and Dolce & Gabbana, what are you wearing¿
Tonight I put on some nice clothes because I thought Iâd go have a good meal with a friend of mine. I have about 20 suits that every designer in this city has given me. Bit itâs always jeans and T-shirts.