LOS ANGELES—The Vancouver media have been so hard on the Canucks that it might surprise many fans to know that there are supporters of another team who believe our pundits are just as tough on their heroes. Entourage star Kevin Connolly, who was raised on Long Island and counts former New York Islander and current Canuck Shane O’Brien as a friend, says the Islanders usually get skewered by the press when they come to our city. “The writers in Vancouver tend to be a little hard on the Islanders when they come to town,” he says in a Los Angeles hotel room. “They misspelled Matt Moulson’s name [a local daily allegedly called him Matt Coulson] and the guy is a 35-goal scorer! And another time they said, ”˜This game shouldn’t even be played.’ I don’t know why they do that, but they’ve complained about us [the Islanders] a few times.”

Connolly says that although he’s “primarily a hockey fan”, he grew up close enough to Long Island’s Belmont Park racetrack that he knows a little about horseracing. That helped when he took on the role of journalist Bill Nack in Secretariat, the story behind that horse’s 1973 bid to become the first in a quarter-century to win horseracing’s Triple Crown: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes. (The film opens October 8.) However, when he met with Nack, who wrote the book Secretariat: The Making of a Champion, on which the film is based, he learned a lot more about a horseracing world known to few people.

“My dad was big into betting, and we went to Belmont and I loved to watch the horses run,” Connolly explains. “But through Bill, I learned about the things that lead up to the horserace. I don’t even mean the training of the horse but more about the politics and how much money is at stake. I knew that it was expensive, but I didn’t realize what a big business it is.”

Like the entrepreneurial Eric Murphy, whom he plays on Entourage, Connolly is ambitious. Faced with the fact that the TV show will end after shooting has been completed on its upcoming eighth season, he is moving on without regret, taking the skills he learned from directing episodes of the show to TV commercials. He has managed to land one of the bigger accounts in the profession and says that it had little to do with his acting fame.

“I am directing a few Burger King commercials,” he says. “I think the greatest gig in the history of directing is commercials. But products like Burger King aren’t easy to land. You don’t just walk in and say, ”˜I want to direct a big commercial.’ You have to go in there and grind them, and you literally start from the ground up. They may say, ”˜We love Entourage,’ but what the fuck does that have to do with anything? So it took a little scratching and clawing, but I finally broke into it.”