THE BREAKOUT
JESSE PLEMONS
Why Austin: Jesse Plemons, who
can instantly transform his corn-fed mug
from earnest bleeding heart to dead-eyed
sociopath, remembers coming to Austin
as a ffth-grader to see the State Capitol.
That feld trip was fun, but it wasn't until
the small-town boy—Plemons grew up on
a ranch in Mart, outside of Waco—moved
here to play the eternally good and loyal
Landry Clarke on
Friday Night Lights
that the city hooked him. "My world just
changed," he says of his adopted home-
town. "The people, the creativity, it feeds
me in every way."
Unstoppable: Since Friday Night
Lights, Plemons's career has soared, with
juicy roles as a stolid shop boy in the HBO
miniseries Olive Kitteridge and a stunningly
evil and murderous member of a white
supremacist gang on the fnal seasons
of
Breaking Bad. He firted with various
shades of menace alongside Johnny Depp
in the gangster drama Black Mass, re-
leased in September, and will next be seen
playing the tragically devoted husband
of Kirsten Dunst, a small-town beautician
with big-city aspirations, in the second
chapter of Fargo (premiering on FX on
October 12).
What's Next:
Whenever his directors
yell "Cut,"
Plemons races back to Austin,
where he owns a place on the East Side.
All of his best friends are here, like his old
Cowboy and Indian band members, who
are thinking of reuniting after a two-year
hiatus. In the meantime, Plemons is on
the lookout for a project to flm back on
his home turf. "
Friday Night Lights was
the best of all possible worlds," he says.
in his wor ds:
"The goal is to
bring more work
back to Austin,
because it's the
place where I feel
more like myself
than anywhere in
the world."
photography
courtesy
of
getty
images.
opposite
page:
Location:
hoteL
eLLa;
styLing
by
graham
cumberbatch;
grooming
by
stacey
hubrath,
roar
saLon
