Chris Pine on finding pleasure in the spirit of modesty

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I hope someone makes a live-action Barbie movie, so Chris Pine can play Ken. Sculpted of forehead, even of hairline, possessed of magnificent eyebrows and a fetching drop from shoulders to waist, the 35-year-old actor is such a doll that he practically has a permanent white highlight in his eyeballs to make his baby blues sparkle.

In his two outings as Captain James T. Kirk – 2009's Star Trek and 2013's Star Trek Into Darkness – he finds exactly the right placement of tongue in cheek to both embody the hero and nod to his campy quality. (His third outing as Kirk, Star Trek Beyond, is due July 22, timed to the 50th anniversary of the franchise.) As a Coast Guard boatswain in his new high-seas drama The Finest Hours – set in 1952 and based on the true story of one of the greatest marine rescues in history – Pine is an archetypal square-jawed hero: strong, taciturn, brave and true.

But it's his performance of the song Agony as Cinderella's Prince in 2014's Into the Woods that best showcases Pine's Ken-ness. Leaping on rocks, rending his garments, turning his eyes to heaven and being competitively lovelorn with another prince, Pine steals the film in 2.5 minutes. "Am I not sensitive, clever, well-mannered, considerate, passionate, charming, as kind as I'm handsome?" he croons. He even rolls his Rs.

Pine could be singing about himself, of course. But after spending 20 minutes on the phone with him recently, I'd change his theme song title to Modesty. He claims to be "continually stunned" that he's asked to play heroes. He admits that he loves "the pageantry and the weird, heightened state that Hollywood can bring you to," yet makes sure to add, "but I'm careful not to expect anything."

He admits that his 2014 film Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, in which he attempted to reboot the character previously played by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck, did not work out. He freely mentions a failed audition for Avatar ("I was horrible"). And asked for a crazed-fan story, he cites his appearance on English host Graham Norton's talk show, in which he and Benedict Cumberbatch went into the audience to mingle with their fans (Pine's are called Pine Nuts). "I spent all this time with one woman who, it turned out, wasn't there for me at all. She was there for Benedict." He chuckles. "That was humiliating."

So modest is Pine, he's willing to go where most leading men will not (or where their agents won't let them): He'll play second banana to a female superhero (Gal Gadot) in Wonder Woman, due in June, 2017.

The son of two working actors, Pine was raised on modesty. His father, Robert Pine, is best known for playing a police sergeant on the late-1970s TV show CHiPs; his mother, Gwynne Gilford, appeared in such films as Beware! The Blob and Satan's School for Girls. "I grew up in a situation where nothing was secure," Pine says. "There were good and bad years, tidal waves of success and fallow times. I was fortunate to go to really good schools and always have food on the table. But I know how fickle my business is."

He describes himself as an awkward, gangly kid with "pretty miserable acne." He spent a lot of time with his mom, listening to operas and musicals on the record player underneath their stairs, entertaining her with skits and songs. At 8, he developed a fascination with the 1940s, and dressed up in a fedora; later it was fighter pilots.

"I always felt on the outside looking in," Pine says. "It's ridiculous to me that people view me as this blond, blue-eyed guy. It's like I'm watching it happen to myself. So I have to laugh at it."

The Finest Hours recreates the events of Feb. 18, 1952, when a raging storm off the Massachusetts coast split apart two different oil tankers on the same night. Thanks to bold piloting by Coast Guard boatswain Bernard Webber (Pine), most of the crew of one tanker came home alive. The film is a somewhat uneasy combination of a CGI-heavy disaster pic with an RKO-era love story. But Pine is clearly channelling "the Jimmy Stewarts, the Gary Coopers, the Burt Lancasters of the world" that he grew up loving.

"I feel at home in that time period," he says. "There's something deeply resonant about it for me."

Some critics are finding Pine's performance almost too modest, perhaps because his natural charisma is dampened down – literally. He shot most scenes surrounded by blue screens in a water tank, which was built in a repurposed shipyard warehouse (the size of three football fields) in Quincy, Mass. The rest was shot off the coast of Chatham, Mass., "in the actual waters where it all took place," Pine says. The cast was sprayed with giant fire hoses and blown around by wind machines. Pine figures he spent "about 90 per cent of the movie soaking wet."

The last two survivors of that night who are still alive – the engineman on Webber's crew, Andy Fitzgerald, and one who was too ill to go out, Mel Gouthro – came to visit the set on Veteran's Day, and their bearing contributed to the film's modest tone. "These are humble men, from humble backgrounds," Pine says. "They found their honour and nobility, and a great amount of pride, in clocking in, doing their job well and then clocking out and going about their lives."

The "ordinariness" of the men, Pine continues, is what gives their story its impact: "I hope people relate to them – real, human guys next door, who could be your history teacher, or your EMT, everyday Joes who feel fear, as all of us do, but who decide to be selfless, and succeed."

Ever careful, Pine makes it clear that he's not dissing those who aren't modest. "There's a lot to be said for someone like Kanye West, who's been, in some ways, a beautiful narcissist," Pine says. "There are many things to be learned from someone who loves what he does so much, and is so proud of it. I'm not a judger. There are many different perspectives on how to go about walking in this world."

His heart, however, lies with the Bernard Webbers. "Our culture is driven by Twitter feeds and Facebook accounts and Instagram likes," Pine says. "It's all about seeing and being seen, and substantiating your existence by continually turning your camera phone on yourself to make sure that you're actually there, and worthy. There's a spirit in Webber and the guys from his generation that is not about that stuff at all. Their pleasure is in being there for the other human being."

Pine's pleasure is in bringing them to life.