TORONTO -- Five years after his well-received debut in "Almost Famous," Salt Laker Patrick Fugit says acting is still as much fun as when he played the teen music journalist.

"I think it gets more and more fun because it just expands, it keeps expanding and it seems to be there's no limit to it, that it's ever changing," he said.

A groggy Fugit talked to The Salt Lake Tribune the day after the world premiere midnight screening of "Dead Birds" at the Toronto International Film Festival last September. The horror film about a band of Confederate soldiers who rob a bank and then hide out in an abandoned plantation will be released Tuesday on DVD.

"It was a genre that I had never been involved with at all," he said. "There's also the script, the structure of the story is cool and working with Henry Thomas ["E.T.," "Gangs of New York"] attracted me very much to the project." The pair play brothers in the film.

Between "Almost Famous" and "Dead Birds," Fugit has had roles in "White Oleander," "Spun" and "Saved," helping him build indie-movie street cred along the way.

And it all started with some advice from "Almost Famous" director Cameron Crowe. "Cameron said stay in Salt Lake as long as you can. I didn't really know [what he meant] at the time, but I do now. It's just the L.A. scene can just claim so many people and I don't want to be one of them."

He added: "You just get so wrapped up in listening, because people tell you things like 'You were really good in this' or 'You need to do this, you need to do that,' or 'This was a mistake' . . . and I think that can just beat at somebody's brain, you know?"

Fugit still lives in his east-side Salt Lake City home. Besides, he's not fond of Los Angeles. "The traffic drives me so insane I can't even stand it. There are so many idiots driving around everywhere, but especially in L.A."

He doesn't find it hard to avoid the trappings of fame because "there's not much to avoid. I mean, people come up to me and stuff like that, but I don't get mobbed or anything like that. I'm more just avoiding the business side of acting . . . . But it's also, I think, best for me to detach myself from it so that I can have my life and then go act."

To that end, he has three agents who help him pick roles, along with the advice of his parents.

Fugit has completed two films since "Dead Birds," including a stint alongside one of his favorite actors, Jeff Bridges. "The Moguls" stars Bridges as a man who brings together a group of buddies in a small town to make an adult film. "He's the reason basically that I took that movie. . . . I think he's really one of the most amazing chameleon actors that exists right now."

Fugit also has "Bickford Shmeckler's Cool Ideas" in the can, about a student who tries to locate his stolen journal.

Fugit's success has allowed him to purchase a Subaru WRX to drive to Los Angeles for work and "six motorcycles that me and my dad and my friends ride." His other hobbies include mountain biking, snowboarding and rock climbing.

And then there's Mushman, a band he formed with a friend.

"I use the name sometimes to check into hotels, which I probably shouldn't say, but the story behind it is there's this film called "On Any Sunday," a really old Bruce Brown ["The Endless Summer"] documentary about motorcycle racing and Steve McQueen is in it. He used to enter in motorcycle races under the name Harvey Mushman, so a lot of times I'll check into hotels as Harvey Mushman because I adore Steve McQueen, and that movie 'On Any Sunday' is a very big part of why I ride motorcycles."

Even though Mushman is "not serious at all," Fugit says the duo plans to make a few CDs "and give them out to people and see what they think about it."

How would he describe the music? "It's hard to say. We never took lessons or anything, so the music kind of developed on its own plane. It's not really blues, it's not really folk, it's not rock, it's somewhere in there."

bmac@sltrib.com