Timothy Olyphant Living The 'High Life'

Additional reporting by Brandy Schaefer

This past summer, we watched Timothy Olyphant "Die Hard" alongside Bruce Willis; these days, the blockbuster baddie is working on bringing himself back to "Life."

"[It's about] four morphine addicts in 1983 who try to rob a bank," Olyphant said of "High Life," a black comedy he recently began filming. Based on a production of the same name by award-winning playwright Lee MacDougall, Olyphant's character Dick is an ex-con planning one last heist. Soon enough, he encounters catastrophically funny imperfections in his fool-proof plan, thanks to his incompetent partners played by Joe Anderson ("Across the Universe"), Stephen Eric McIntyre ("The Lookout"), and Rossif Sutherland ("Timeline").

Olyphant was quick to point out, however, that Canadian filmmaker Gary Yates has definitely not been making the "High Life" an easy life for his actors when it comes to the dialogue-heavy scenes. "We're only a couple days in, but last night we shot five pages of dialogue," the "Hitman" star marveled. "It was kind of great; I don't remember doing that in a while."

The original play won a DORA Award (yeah, we don't know what that is either, but it sounds impressive), and toured internationally, so we'll believe Olyphant when he says the flick is shaping up to be something special "It's very well-written," he enthused. "It's a fun movie."

With "Hitman" now marking his first leading man role, and the already-completed Iraq war drama "Stop Loss" on the way opposite Ryan Philippe, the 39-year-old former "Go" star looks to have a promising 2008 ahead of him. "High" is expected to be released late in the year, and as Olyphant continues working hard on the Winnipeg set, he likely has visions of a good "Life" ahead of him.