by Natasha Stoynoff
Toronto Sun
July 4, 1998

Across the street from the bright lights of the Royal Alex, actor Cary Shields hovers by a hot-dog stand surrounded by a gaggle of giggling females.

Cary Shields landed the role of Roger in Rent after his mother wrote a letter to the casting agent insisting her songwriter son, a self-confessed slacker, was perfect for the part. PHOTO: Veronica Henri, SUN

"You look so much like Richard Gere!" coos one middle-aged woman, pushing a matinee program into his palm for an autograph.
 
"No, he looks like Tom Cruise," insists a teen in the pack.
 
Twenty-four-year-old Shields, the newest, cutest addition to the Canadian production of the hip stage hit Rent, smiles and poses in a picture with the stage door fans -- dubbed "Rentheads" in theatre circles.
 
"I get that a lot," he says later, slightly embarrassed, as he slips crossed-legged onto a park bench.
 
"Strangers come up to me and comment on the resemblance."
 
It's true, there is a twinkle of Gere in the eyes, some Cruise in the jaw line, an Ethan Hawke sensibility.
 
Shields' success-in-progress story, from rags to Rent, also resembles a splice off the movie screen.
 
Responding to a Rent casting call in the newspaper, Shields' mother sent in a letter insisting Cary was perfect for the role of Roger, the struggling songwriter, and signed her struggling-songwriter-son's name to the note.
 
A few mornings later, Shields was nudged awake by Mom with phone in hand and an agent on the other end of it.
 
"They wanted me to be at an audition within the hour," Shields says.
 
Half-asleep, and with no acting experience, the between-gigs musician strolled into the audition, belted out Glory -- one of the show's powerful ballads -- and nabbed the part.
 
Call it fate, a mother's intuition, or the luck of the Irish.
 
Either way, Shields muses he may have been "destined" to play the role.
 
Last year, he was just another aimless Gen-Xer, like his character, looking for direction.
 
"Basically, I was unemployed and sleeping on the couch all day long. I'm sure my mom was thinking, 'I wouldn't mind if he did something with his life,' " he laughs.
 
A singer and self-taught guitarist in a rock band, Thieves Crossing, since age 14 (they've played at Lee's Palace and The Horseshoe), he could relate to Roger's struggles when he saw the play on Broadway last year.
 
"It blew my mind," Shields says of his first viewing of the play in New York.
 
"This was a story about my friends and people I identified with. In terms of Roger, it was almost eerie how much like me he was.
 
"I know what it's like when all you want to do is make some sort of statement," he says, "to do something that will touch people."
 
He shuffles on the bench: "To do something that will reach out and help someone understand how you feel."
 
Pushing up his shirt sleeves with his hands, he points to the tattoos decorating his shoulders -- signposts to how he feels: A compass, a bird, the phrase 'La Vie Boheme,' and a Celtic snake with gills -- an ode to his Irish roots.
 
Growing up part Irish (with parts Native and French) "made me love music," he says.
 
"In the family, everybody had their song and we all got together and sang them. I sang Danny Boy," he recalls, "and Sunny Boy -- a lot of Boys," he laughs.
 
"Singing was the thing I seemed to be the best at."
 
Throughout school, "I sang my way to an A. Any project I had, I'd write a song about it."
 
As a teen, he took off for Dublin with his band for a few years and lived the glamorous starving-artist life.
 
"We would empty a packet of peanuts onto a piece of bread, and that would be our dinner," he remembers of not so long ago. "I ate a lot of mayonnaise sandwiches."
 
Back in Toronto, after an early marriage at 21 went sour, "I was constantly moving because I couldn't pay rent," he says.
 
"I felt like my life was a mess and there was nothing I could do about it."
 
Two weeks after the early-morning agent's phone call, he was onstage in Houston honing his skills with a Rent troupe there. Now he's back at the Royal Alex funneling his frustration with the character, who is stricken with AIDS.
 
"It was a lot different acting it out onstage than singing it in the living room," he says. "I had to learn how to act."
 
Vocally, "the show is brutal," he says. "It was out of my range to start with. And when you're up there, you really want to explode with everything you have."
 
One night, in fact, Shields passed out mid-song. "My co-stars thought it was an 'interesting' acting choice," he laughs.
 
Leaving his worries onstage each night, Shields has found a compass of sorts.
 
"It feels good to be doing something with my life," he says, glancing over at the Rentheads camped out on the sidewalk on King St.
 
"I'm here by the grace of a lot of people. And I'm finally able to believe in myself. That's my reward."
 
Instead of knocking on bench wood, Shields takes hold of his dangling necklace, a good-luck charm given to him by a stranger a decade ago.
 
"It was given to me on the boardwalk at Daytona Beach by some guy who liked the white in my eyebrow," he smiles, pointing to a white spec in the dark furrow of his brow.
 
"He said it meant I have a link to the spirit world," Shields says. "And he asked me if I had any kind of power. 'Can you move things with your mind?' he asked.
 
"I answered: 'I've never tried,' " says the actor, grinning, " 'but I'll give it a shot.' "
 
THE CARY SHIELDS FILE
 
THE RENT THEME: "Is to live each moment like it's your last," Shields says. "I think that's beautiful. But I like to live each moment like it's your first."
 
THE RENT EMOTIONS: "When I watch the show, even now, from offstage, I'll still cry," he says.
 
MORE GOOD LUCK CHARMS: "I wear the same shoes the Roger in New York was wearing," Shields says, "except his were brown."