Lisa & Joe

Sexy Craig

Joe Fisk

Joe Fisk

Craig Sheffer, stars as the street-smart Joe Fisk in Fire With Fire somewhat unjustly confined to an honor probation camp in Oregon, who when running through the woods in the midst of a competitive race, comes across Lisa (Virginia Madsen).

Backstage one night, Sheffer slipped and reinjured the knee he initially had hurt when he was quarterback for East Strousberg College (Pennsylvania). Reconstructive surgery was the only route to prevent permanent damage to the knee.

"A couple of days before surgery, my agent called said that Jackie Burch (the casting director) wanted me to read for this filme Fire With Fire, I said the surgery would keep me on crutches past the start date...I finally broke down, read for Jackie Burch and director Duncan Gibbins and then took a cab to the hospital and had a knee surgery the next morning".

He had not bothered to read the script for the movie, for the meeting and instead did improvisational material with Gibbins, who immediately decided, as did the others involved, that Sheffer was their man for the part of Joe Fisk, surgery or not.

"The minut i could take phone calls, everyone wanted to come by and bring different actresses to read with me right in the hospital. I put everyone off for a week and then did a screen test where no one could tell I was on crutches".

The filming on Fire with Fire did start on time, which forced the actor to wear a brace under his pant's leg durining filming. All scenes that required physical activity on his part were pushed back as far as possible. Like his co-start Virginia Madsen for her role, Sheffer was able to draw parallels from his own life to develop Joe Fisk. "For Joe, The Story is about Leaning how to trust, which quite frankly has been a problem in my own life".

Despite where Joe Fisk is and what has brought him to the detention camp, Sheffer sees him as someone teenagers can look up to "first of all he's only in the detention camp for driving his mom's car though a sears auto store window. Joe has an amazing lack of prejudice for someone his age. He takes people at face value, like mapmaker who no one else likes, and is also friends with Ben Halsey who is rather disturbed over certain personal things".