If beauty were an international calling card, Michael Pitt would easily have enough minutes for a Shakespearean monologue, performed in two acts. His searing blue eyes, swollen cherry lips and Dutch boy puckishness hark back to the quirky Americana of a pre-Academy Leonardo DiCaprio, circa Lassa Hailstorm's cult classic "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" But the truth is that physical attractiveness, at least in this case, lies more than just skin deep and we may, fingers crossed, have a genuine star on our hands. Why? Because beneath the pouting lips and crystalline gaze, there is a breakable quality that draws us into Pitt. We actually feel a cloud of interest brewing over the ripe-for-picking 22-year-old.

Despite his youthful glow, Pitt is no newcomer. His stint as Henry Parker on the television series "Dawson's Creek" was followed by move roles in "Finding Forrester", "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and, most notably, Larry Clark's irreverent coming-of-age thriller "Bully". Significantly, "Bully" became Pitts' breakout performance as well as his testing ground, and proof that surface ornamentation does occasionally coincide with raw, visceral talent. In addition to acting, Pitt likes cats and enjoys playing his guitar and has a band called Pagoda. He performed the song, "Hey Joe", for the soundtrack of Bernardo Bertoucci's "The Dreamers", which he also starred in, mostly naked.

The list of accolades and rumors, including his role as Kurt Cobain in Gus Van Sant's forthcoming feature, as well as acting alongside playwright Stephen Adley Guirgis in Brett C. Leonard's Jailbait", is seemingly endless. But his latest and, in more ways than one, his most telling role of late, is as dowdy and self-doubting prop store clerk Chep in Canadian Aaron Woodley's feature-length indie debut "Rhinoceros Eyes" (released by Madstone Films). Pitt's searing blue eyes are still present, but we are also treated to a stranger, more introverted version of the boy who could be Brando. Far from Hollywood aspirational, the mood feels closer to street-level realism, with a touch of sci-fi paranoid fantasia. Chep finds comfort in nightly screenings of the same movie, has ongoing conversations with the animated props he spends too much time with, and enters into a one-sided courtship with Fran (played by Paige Turco), a sultry set designer. She being so much of a woman that he can barely bring himself to say her name. The line that sticks is delivered by Chep's weathered boss, the prop store owner: "Chep is what you'd call and idiot... savant. I only hire idiot savants."

Idiot savant or beleaguered golden prince? My prediction is that one does not exist without the other in Pitt's case. If his minutes don't rung out, he may well continue to eclipse expectation and prove us all wrong.