Billy Ray Cyrus: Wonder if he has an achy breaky heart for being better known as someone's father

November 8, 12:42 PMPittsburgh Stage and Screen ExaminerAlan Petrucelli

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Some gave all.
     Just ask Billy Ray Cyrus.
     Cyrus will tell you that he wasn’t exactly a neophyte in 1992 when he burst on the national music scene with his multi-platinum album Some Gave All (which topped the pop charts for 17 weeks) and its blockbuster No. 1 single “Achy Breaky Heart.” He had already paid 15 years of dues leading up to that moment.
     But by comparison, Cyrus’ acting career has been less a rocket shooting into orbit than a steady flight above the clouds. He started off with a key role in the 2001 David Lynch film Mulholland Drive and morphed into a starring presence on series TV, first in the family drama Doc and now, of course, opposite daughter Miley on Hannah Montana.
     But his most recent role is said (by him) to hold a special place in Cyrus’ heart, playing the daddy to one of a pair of feuding boys in the Hallmark Channel movie Christmas in Canaan, film premiering Saturday, December 12, 2009.
     First, we go back to 1996 or so, when Cyrus was still relatively fresh from the mega-stardom of putting out a country album that scored eight Top 10 singles. He had the country world by the tail and was the pop crossover toast of Nashville. He was newly-married to his wife, Tish. He’d just settled back on a farm in Tennessee and was feeling pretty darn good about life and the direction where things were headed.
     “I was writing a whole bunch of songs at the time, was hanging with my dad and it was all going great,” he recalls. “I was loving making music, satisfied with who I was, where I was. And there I was with my dad beside this roaring campfire on a hill. My daddy says to me, ‘Son, I’ve been thinking about your career. And I want you to have one of those careers like Kenny Rogers.’ And I’m like, ‘Well Dad, I’d love to do that. But how in the world is that gonna happen?’ And he says, ‘You’ve got to get into acting.’ I’m like, ‘What? Dad, you know that I’m not an actor.’ And he tells me, ‘I know you can do it. Just take one step at a time. You’ll figure it out.’”
     And figure it out he has.
     Within a few years, he auditioned for the key role of Gene, the pool man, in David Lynch's 2001 indie feature Mulholland Drive. And he got it.
      “It was just kind of amazing,” Cyrus remembers. “Lynch says to me, ‘You know, son, you can be an actor. A real actor. Your instincts are the kind that every director is looking for. It’s just about being real.’ And I was like, well, real is the only thing I know how to be.”
     And so it was. And is. Cyrus was a genuine actor, not just a country crooner moonlighting as a pretend performer. A lead role in the family drama series Doc (2001-04) portraying a doctor soon followed, along with roles in other films and, of course, opposite daughter Miley in both the Hannah Montana series and theatrical film.
     This brings us up to right now and that whole “full circle” thing. It surrounds Cyrus’ starring role in Christmas in Canaan, a holiday flick that finds Cyrus portraying Daniel Burton, the father of one of a pair of squabbling boys who are brought together through unlikely circumstances in the small town of Canaan, Texas in the '60s.
          It’s not like Cyrus had a choice over whether or not he would accept the part when it got offered earlier this year, since it’s based on a book that was co-authored by a fellow named . . . Kenny Rogers.
     Yes that Kenny Rogers.
     Full, meet circle.
     “I just couldn’t believe it when I saw the script,” Cyrus admits. “I mean, this is exactly as my father had discussed it with me. But the truth is, this almost didn’t happen at all. I was that close to turning it down before ever reading the script.”
     It’s true. Before diving into the script that had been sent to him, Cyrus was told by his manager, “It’s a great story, but you just don’t have time to do a movie.” He looked at his work calendar and instantly agreed. He told his people to pass.
     “So I hung up the phone,” Cyrus recalls, “and within three minutes my intuition screamed at me, ‘Who do you think you are?’,” Cyrus remembers. “I immediately called Hallmark back and asked if they could get it to me so I could read it. My assistant gets the script and meets me at this tour bus at midnight, and she’s got tears in her eyes. As she hands it to me, she says, ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I read it. And I know it’s not my job to tell you what to do. But this guy in the script, this character Daniel, he’s you.’ She told me the story, and it sounded too good to be true.”
     So Cyrus grabbed the script and, as soon as the bus was on its way, he was diving into the Christmas in Canaan story. As he was reading it, the coincidences began to pile up. It was set in Texas, and he was on a bus at that moment from Houston. He had his dog with him–named Texas.
And then he saw who co-wrote the book on which the film was based.
     “It’s two in the morning, and reading this I’m starting to cry myself,” Cyrus admits. “The character I was being asked to play, well, I realized that was my dad. I fell in love with it and I told everybody I didn’t care what it did to my schedule, I had to do this movie.”
     Cyrus’ beloved father, Ron, whom he calls “my idol,” died in 2006, before ever seeing an episode of Hannah Montana reach the air. But he knows his dad would have approved of the Christmas in Canaan story–and would have been proud.
     “I feel like this character I’m playing, Daniel, was my dad,” Cyrus explains. “Really and truly. It’s like I’m able to honor him on this role. And that’s a bigger thrill than I can say. I also get to sing the theme song for it. And it was just an amazing shoot, giving me a really challenging role to sink my teeth into and more depth than I was used to as an actor.”
     A pause. This movie really does make me feel like everything has come full circle in my life, and has a purpose,” he says. “And I know how happy my Dad would be to see how everything he predicted, and hoped for, has actually come true.”

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