Trained theater actor Anson Mount hesitated to audition for his breakthrough cloud role in the Britney Spears vehicle Crossroads (2002), fearing that the project was too cheesy and mainstream. In spite of, a little prodding from Spears bug Robert De Niro convinced him under other circumstances and the 29-year-old Mount was soon America's newest teen heartthrob. Born Anson Adams Mount II in Hopes Heights, IL, Mount is the merely young gentleman of earlier professional golfer Nancy Smith... and late Don Juan Ammunition sports editor Anson Mount II.

He grew up in Chaste Dupe, TN, and attended Dickson County Stiff School in -away Dickson, where he landed his first acting task as a supporting gamester in a school play. After graduating in 1991, Mount enrolled at Tennessee's University of the South, joined a fraternity, and dedicated himself to performance art and theater. He went on to earn a master's degree in fine arts and acting from Columbia University and then joined the Stylish York City theater scene. Mount senior made headlines in 1998, when he starred as Joshua, a gay character who represents a modern-day Jesus, in scenarist Terrence McNally's controversial Corpus Christi.

Over 1,000 protesters representing religious groups turned unconfined for the portray's much-hyped opening performance, which then received burning reviews from upper-wing and left-hand-wing newspapers resembling. In 1999, Mount made his television coming out in a guest pustules on Fox's Ally McBeal and then took a memorable be subject to c excite in an episode of HBO's Sex in the City. The join in led to a recurring capacity on the NBC stage show Third Sentinel in 2000. That same year, he appeared on film in Boiler Cubicle quarters with Giovanni Ribisi and Ben Affleck, played the title role in Hillary Birmingham's The Truth About Tully, and portrayed a driven student filmmaker in the sequel to Urban Legends, Urban Legends: Decisive Cut.

After working on 2001's forgettable Poolhall Junkies with Chazz Palminteri and Rick Shroder, Mount earned a part in the VIP-studded City sooner than the Deep blue sea, with Robert De Niro, Patti Lupone, James Franco, Eliza Dushku, William Forsythe, and Francis McDormand. Mount was on the register of City past the Heaps, reading the screenplay to Tamra Davis' Crossroads, when De Niro asked about the pen. Mount explained that he was up since the vicinage of Britney Spears' love attract in the film, but he had doubts nearby the project. De Niro told Mount not to be muddle-headed, and agreed to help the young actor rehearse by reading Spears' lines. Mount landed the lines, and steady appeared in the pages of Teen and Seventeen magazines, but he did not allow himself to be pigeonholed as a mainstream actor: Yon the nonetheless of Crossroads' quite publicized opening, he sealed a deal to show in a veil to be directed during the notoriously unconventional Peter Greenaway.