‘Love and Death on Long Island’: Jason Priestley’s memories of working with John Hurt

Jason Priestley was 26 years old and in the thick of his pop Hollywood stardom as part of the “Beverly Hills, 90210” cast when an unmissable opportunity to stretch his acting muscles came along: “Love and Death on Long Island,” an indie drama about love and obsession in which he’d star opposite Academy Award-nominated actor John Hurt.

“All around the planet [‘90210’] had become a global phenomenon,” Priestley reminisced by phone last week from Vancouver, where the actor-turned-helmer is directing “Ghost Wars” for SyFy. “Having the opportunity to work with an actor like Sir John was an amazing experience, especially for a young man like I was at the time.”

Priestley was craftily cast as a young American actor who becomes aging British author Giles De’Ath’s (Hurt) object of obsession after the older man inadvertently catches a matinee of a teen B-movie one rainy day.

“’For me to get to play a character like Ronnie Bostock was such a great opportunity to let everybody know that I was kind of in on the joke,” he said, laughing, referencing the low-rent teen-comedy-within-the-film that sparks Giles’ instant infatuation. “I know I’m doing ‘Hotpants College’ over here!”

He found he could relate to his on-screen alter ego, an actor struggling to break out of the teenybopper mold. “He was this guy who was trying very earnestly to get taken seriously as an actor, and I was too. I thought for me it was a great opportunity to not only embrace my situation, but also poke fun at it a little bit.”

Richard Kwietniowski wrote and directed the tongue-in-cheek drama, adapting the tale from the novel of the same time by Gilbert Adair. Before filming began in picturesque Nova Scotia (standing in for Long Island, N.Y.), the film’s two stars spent time getting to know each other by exploring Halifax.

“There was a lot of food, there was a lot of coffee, and there was just spending time together,” said Priestley. “There used to be this little farmer’s market down at the old Alexander Keith’s Brewery building. We discovered that the first weekend we were there; he and I went down to that little farmer’s market and spent the whole day there.”

The quality time helped Priestley and Hurt develop the intimacy on display in the film’s diner scene, a proposition turned confessional turned heartrending breakup in which emotions are unleashed, hard truths come into focus for both men, and the power dynamic they’ve been cultivating over the course of their fast friendship shifts back and forth like a tennis match.

“It’s a monstrous scene! It’s so beautiful, powerful, emotional and tragic — and of course, filmmaking being what it is, that was the very first scene that John and I ever did together,” Priestley remembered with a laugh. “I always felt, and John felt this way too, that [the movie] was absolutely a love story — an unrequited love story, but a love story all the same. It was about a man who fell in love with another man but didn’t really know what that meant.”

Shooting the film during a break between seasons of his hit TV show gave Priestley a brief escape from “90210” mania.

“Being in the eye of the storm on ‘Beverly Hills, 90210,’ it was difficult to get perspective on it sometimes because it was so crazy,” Priestley said. “But giving myself two months to go to Nova Scotia and go make this beautiful movie and get some space from it — and to make a movie that was sort of about what I was doing, but was far removed — gave me a little perspective.”

Twenty years after making “Love and Death on Long Island,” globetrotting to do press interviews and taking the film to the Cannes Film Festival together, Priestley reminisced about the late Hurt, who died earlier this year at the age of 77.

“John was an incredible friend, he was an incredible teacher, he was an incredible example to me of what an artist could be, and how a man should comport himself in the world,” said Priestley. “Having that kind of opportunity with a man like John Hurt is a gift that I feel very lucky to have received.”

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jen.yamato@latimes.com