“I’ll be pregnant by the time I’m 30…hopefully.”

Kim Kardashian interview
By E.C. Gladstone

Many see Kim Kardashian as a one-dimension media personality. But after having talked with her and seen her in work publicity modes, I have a different opinion. I think Kardashian has the insight and drive to go as far as she wants to: the next Oprah, perhaps. Don’t believe me? Read on…

EG: Everyone seems to know so much about you…

KK: But it’s so wrong.

EG: It seems like you life is your job

KK: That’s what I should say, when people say ‘what’s your job, what do you do? “my life’

EG: We’re here at a photo shoot—something that to me seems like a mixture of tedium and anxiety. And you you’ve said you love them.

KK: If I could do it every day I would. I have a book for my house, on my coffee table, my photos printed out 11×14. I’m not vain at all! I look at pictures I did years ago. I used to model as a kid, 7-8, I would do the Barbie ad campaigns. I have pictures of me at Venice Beach roller skating with all the Barbie girls. The girl from Wonder Years, Winnie [Danica McKellar] she would do it.

EG: I’ve read many places that you’re a big bowling fan. Is that serious?

KK: I really am into bowling. I went last week. I like Lucky Strike [in Hollywood], but I also like Pins in the Valley, connected to Jerry’s Deli. I got everyone for Christmas their own ball last year. I got my boyfriend [Reggie Bush] a clear ball with a skull in it, cracked with blood dripping. I got my sister a black and white swirly thing…

EG: When did u become obsessed with bowling?

KK: It’s kind of the thing that Reggie and I do together, especially in New Orleans. We have bowing parties, we make up teams. You know what I’m going to do for Christmas this year? I’m going to get everyone bowling shirts, make up teams, girls against boys or something. I became obsessed with bowling when I worked at my dad’s office on Ventura Blvd. next to Pins, I worked there for 7 years, and one of my jobs is I had to pick up my brother from school. He went to Buckley right across the street, so I had to take him to Jerry’s and he had to do his homework before he could go bowling. So every single day, he would go bowling until my dad was ready to take him home. So my brother is like the best bowler ever. I had to go back to work so I couldn’t really bowl, but I’d sneak it in every once in a while.

EG: You were doing music licensing with your dad’s business, Movie Tunes, you had this whole other life, a career going, then you were a stylist, got married, then all of a sudden you started getting noticed for…

KK: Odd things. Going on dates with people, hanging out with people.

EG: You could’ve just said ‘that’s not my life,’ but instead you decided to go with it.

KK: I decided, I felt like opportunities were coming my way, people were asking ‘hey, will you shoot the cover of this magazine…’ I don’t really get it, why do you want me? I don’t act, I don’t sing. And I sat down with my mom and said what should I do? I would love to model. Girls always dream of modeling…

EG: And you had done it as a kid

KK: Yeah, but they made me stop for school. And I was working in my dad’s office, things I was doing were deadline based, and I’d be ebaying all these clothes. I’m so into fashion, all my friends are into fashion, and this whole lifestyle is very fashion driven. That’s what I love to do. Before I did anything I had a closet full of stuff with the tags on, and my sisters would be like ‘where are you going?’ And I said, one day I’m gonna have somewhere this will be perfect for… I had this vision. So when this opportunity came up to be a spokesperson for a jeans company, and I hadn’t done anything, I said ‘why not?’ It’s financially a good move, why wouldn’t I do it, one photo shoot’s more than my whole [annual] salary at my dad’s company.

Continued at Pt. 2

Read More

–FF–

Copyright 2008, ECG

“When I am so tough in my professional world, what made me put up with the abuse, drugs and alcoholism, and basically Jekyll and Hyde [behavior]?”

It’s rush hour in Los Angeles, possibly the worst time to be on the Sunset Strip, but Kristin Chenoweth isn’t bothered. She’s letting the whole thing pass by while getting her blond highlights touched up in her favorite salon, Argyle, in the trendy Sunset Towers hotel. Coincidentally, Chenoweth is actually getting ready for a weekend trip to Las Vegas with best friend Denny.

“I’m staying at the Venetian, I’m going to see Celine Dion, I’m going to lay by the pool under an umbrella, getting a massage, probably go to TAO, and play some blackjack,” she says. “We’re going to hit the outlet malls, because we’re a little white trash, and we’re going to hit Sonic Drive-In.”

If that sounds like a pretty packed 48 hours, it only reflects Chenoweth’s typical level of activity. In fact, using the word “overachiever” to describe Kristin might actually be an understatement. Within the last year, she’s completed five films, finished a recurring role in the final season of “The West Wing,” and performed a “mini-opera” with Placido Domingo in Washington, DC, while developing her first starring film role (playing ‘60s singer Dusty Springfield) and working on her third CD for Sony. In January, she’ll perform in concert at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.

“I’m such an enigma,” Kristin says, agreeing with a hearty laugh that she’s undoubtedly the only Southern Baptist who’s worn lingerie on the cover of a men’s magazine (FHM) and worked with Elmo on “Sesame Street.” Just as far flung, her movies this season include Running With Scissors, a drama in which she has a lesbian love affair with Annette Bening; Stranger Than Fiction, a largely improvised story where she plays a “Katie Couric” style interviewer against Emma Thompson; and Deck The Halls, a “complete family movie” with Danny DeVito and Matthew Broderick.

Chenoweth knows “Scissors” will likely raise hackles among a portion of her fanbase more comfortable seeing her in wholesome fare like 2003’s “The Music Man” or hearing her “inspirational” CD, 2005’s As I Am. “Yeah, some people, even some of my relatives, will say “why’d she do that?” But  you just can’t please everyone all the time. I’m sort of graduated from the class of giving a crap anymore.”

Born in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Chenoweth (who is 1/4 Cherokee) was adopted into her family as a second child, and has never felt less than complete support from them. Particularly when she chose to follow the arts rather than the family profession (chemical engineering), getting her Masters degree in music at Oklahoma City University , While at school, she placed first runner up in the Miss Oklahoma pageant, and decided to add an ‘n’ to the end of her given name Kristi (Her mentor Florence Birdwell having convinced her that no one would rush to hear someone named “Kristi” sing arias) before winning a scholarship to Philadelphia’s prestigious Academy of Vocal Arts.

But two weeks before going, she was helping Denny move to New York and, while there, decided to go to an audition, “just for fun, and to see what it was like.” Those of you making the rounds and reading Backstage religiously may be just a tad envious to know she hit a home run her very first time at bat: a lead role in Moliere’s “Scapin,” followed quickly by the Kander/Ebb musical “Steel Pier,” “Strike Up The Band,” You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown” (for which she won the Tony and Drama Desk awards), and ultimately the role of Glinda the Good Witch in the 2003 smash stage hit “Wicked.”

“I was never a chorus girl,” she says, with an air of amazement still in her voice. “I always got the part!

Now, if you’re beginning to wonder about her and Denny – “We’re like Jack and Karen on Will & Grace,” she says – Chenoweth, 38, does have other men in her personal life, having dated violinist Josh Bell and West Wing writer/creator Aaron Sorkin, and even been engaged to actor Marc Kudisch. Which one of those she’s talking about when the subject of her greatest regret comes up, we wouldn’t hazard to guess.

“Don’t we all have one relationship that we wish we’d never had?” she laughs. “As a woman, you have to go, ‘When I am so tough in my professional world, what made me put up with the abuse, drugs and alcoholism, and basically Jekyll and Hyde [behavior]?’”

Chenoweth bounced back from that, just as she did from “Kristin,” her short-lived 2001 sitcom (13 episodes shot; 6 aired) which, again, grew from her first shot at a TV pilot. “I’ve often thought it was ahead of its time,” she says now. “Maybe once every two years, I pull out [the tapes] and watch and laugh.”

It was in “Wicked,” though (so the story goes) that Nicole Kidman saw Kristin and suggested her for a role in the Bewitched movie, which started an avalanche of film roles ever since. But Broadway fans shouldn’t even suspect that she’s turned her back on the stage. A dedicated philanthropist, she says she wouldn’t trade her Tony award (the Broadway revival of You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown) for anything short of a cure for cancer or AIDS. “Breast cancer has been in my family, and I’ve had many friends who’ve died of AIDS.”

Her next album, she promises will be “very different” from her previous discs; there’s practically nothing she wouldn’t try, though she promises. “There will be no hip hop coming from my mouth!” Chenoweth also has more film releases to look forward to in the new year, will undoubtedly work in a healthy amount of charity work, and is already scheduled to appear in a proper Met opera production the season after next. But she’s most looking forward to the Dusty Springfield project, “Ready Steady Dusty.”

“She was very different from me, but also a very petite woman, and very ambitious,” the 4’11” powerhouse explains. “It’s a sad story, but also inspirational. The nails, the makeup, and the dresses … that’s going to be fun to recreate.”

Now finishing up under the hair dryer, Chenoweth says she steers clear of most Hollywood obsessions. But she will admit to one indulgence – Slurpees. “Love ‘em. Have one every single day.” Wow. Wonder where she finds the time.

–FF–

Copyright 2006 ECG

“I didn’t really know what an audition was. And I didn’t know what being in movies was all about. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as acting.”

Anna Paquin Interview
By E.C. Gladstone

I spent an afternoon in Venice, CA with Anna Paquin back in 2000, when the 18-year-old was truly on the cusp between girl-and woman-hood. As we sat down for a bite at an outdoor café, she muttered about being bad at making decisions. I decided to start with that thread…

EG: So you were saying you were bad at making decisions…

Anna: Well when there’s three hundred things on the menu, yes!

EG: Is it that way with deciding what projects to do, too?

AP; No, that’s like,‘do I want to be this person for three or four months?’ Like you ‘meet her’ and either you want to be the person or you don’t. If you’re going to be irritated with yourself for four months because you’re getting up and you’re going to work and you’re being this person that you don’t like or that you just can’t see the point in being. If there’s a maybe, then it’s a no. You know what I mean?

EG: Give me a couple of examples.

AP: Well, I think that would be things that I wouldn’t do and therefore I’m not playing…
Of something that’s very different, or that’s very like myself?

EG: How about one of each?

AP: Um, the character I played in Finding Forrester, with Sean Connery. I mean, she’s pretty similar [to me], she just has a kind of very–other than that whole kind of moody thing that I do–um, has a normal life. Just very regular 17 or 18-year-old girl. And the character in Hurly Burly was very different from myself, But, that was enjoyable and that, you know was an interesting thing to get to do, and it was a good character, I thought. There’s like a time, when there’s just some things I would read and, there’s just no way I could say this or be this person. I would feel stupid or just hate doing it.

EG: It seems like you’ve explored different identities with some of the characters you’ve chosen.

AP: Yeah, I mean there’s some similarities in the sense like, how different can teenage girls really be? You know what I mean? But yeah, I really don’t like doing the same thing twice. And I wouldn’t feel like I was doing anything, I was really stretching myself or challenging myself in any way if I kept on choosing film after film that was exactly the same character. I definitely think I can do more than that and I think that the great thing about getting to do what I do is that you can just be someone completely different and you get to play around with that and there’s no consequences, you know, you can try out being a different person without really having to screw up your life to do it.

EG: Does it help you figure out who you want to be in real life?

AP: Maybe in some ways, or like, I know what I don’t want to be. You know what I mean? Just the way that they respond to sort of various situations, I’d be like, no I wouldn’t have done that–that was, that wasn’t very smart. I think the interesting thing about acting is that every single scene, you are thinking through like, why are they doing this? How is this going to affect things you do later? How does this all fit in? And you get to see consequences, a bit. You don’t really do that in real life–I mean I consider consequences but you don’t pick it apart in minute detail. You know, what will this mean if this character responds in this way in this scene, how does it all fit in to the bigger picture. It’s not really anything particularly deep, but its something.

EG: You’ve played radical characters in at least a few things: HurlyBurly and It’s the Rage.

AP: You saw that? Oh cool. She’s not a nice girl. She’s not nice. That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t still bleed when you shoot her, which you kind of forget when it’s like this really nasty attractual thing. Sort of, prejudiced bigoted little bad mouth punk. She just says what she’s thinking, doesn’t hold anything back… I’m just saying that when it comes right down to it, she wasn’t really the smartest cookie in the jar, if you know what I mean. What she was doing wasn’t exactly the most life preserving tactics to personal relationships. And I’m older than she’s supposed to be and I’m still very much alive, so therefore I think that I’m more experienced in living in a non-self-destructive way.

EG: How do you get into a role like that?

AP: You know what, I have no idea, because I’ve absolutely no idea what it’s like to be that person, but I figure as many different ways as I could imagine being that person–because there’s probably so many different people that have had so many different kind of life experiences that is in some way similar. If I can just think up something kind of stupidly elaborate for her whole life scheme, then I am sure that someone somewhere has had that life, and so it is going to be relatively somewhere near truth, do you know what I mean? And also there was a lot in the script and the dialogue and you can just imagine what that person has grown up like, she’s so completely monumentally screwed up. And, I don’t know, just using my imagination really.

EG: Does it interest you to play those characters in terms of wanting to find that out, or is it just, ‘Well this isn’t boring?’

AP: I would say that I had the best time being that girl, because absolutely everything about her was so unlike myself. Although the punky thing is kind of fun. I enjoyed the clothes and the hair and the horribly trashy thing that basically is everything that your parents would say ‘Go back upstairs and change,’ or ‘I hope you’re going to a costume party,’ if you came down, leaving the house looking like that, you know? Yes, kind of is something new.

EG: You’ve played a motherless child a lot. Is that anything you’ve ever thought about?

AP: In so many scripts and movies, there’s either no mother in the story, or the mother’s kind of absent, or there’s bad relationships with the mother. I don’t know why that is. In especially everything I’ve done there’s been, like, mother issues, and I don’t have any! I don’t really know, maybe there’s a lot of people that feel that they have issues with the way they were parented or mothered or whatever, and therefore it comes out in what they wrote about, but I was very well mothered and still continue to be very well mothered, so I really don’t have answers on that one. But I have noticed that–like, OK, Piano mute mother; Jane Eyre, no parents; Fly Away Home, no mother… yeah, I’ve pretty much had no parents or no mother.

Continued at Part 2

Read More

FF

Copyright 2001 ECG

“I never want to be on the cover of US Weekly.”

Mila Kunis
By E.C. Gladstone

Mila Kunis is moving. She’s had enough of West Hollywood–the traffic, the attitudes, the celebutantes who have ruined her nail salon and her gym, and most of all, the paparazzi, who sit outside her house waiting for…what? A trip to the dry cleaners? Walking the dog? Her boyfriend taking out the trash?

“Makes me so angry,” she says with a barely-throaty rasp. “So many people care about your personal life over your talent. I don’t live to be famous, I don’t live to be recognized. I never want to be on the cover of US Weekly. I truly am telling you: I despise this aspect.

“There used to be mystery, mystique,” about the lives of filmland folks, she rants. Now, “There’s a war going on, and we’re still [asking] ‘What did Britney Spears have for breakfast?’”

Anyway, this is kind of a big deal. Mila moving, I mean. Because the tough little cookie (who you know from That 70s Show, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and now hopefully Max Payne) is practically a West Hollywood native, having lived here 17 of her 25 years, ever since emigrating with her family from the Ukraine.

Wearing a vintage Bowie shirt and tourniquet-tight jeans, Kunis is meeting me at Cake & Art, a WeHo staple of sorts, which—aside from having some of the best cupcakes in this cupcake-obsessed town—specializes in XXX-rated party pastry. Though she suffered a bout with food poisoning the night before (“sorry if I’m a little quiet,” she says!), Mila could not resist the appeal of her own personal lesson in cake frosting from Kody, the manager–who also happens to be one of the country’s pre-eminent Britney Spears impersonators. This is the world that f-bomb loving Mila is totally comfortable in. “Absofuckinlutely!” says MK, con mucho gusto.

But we’re not quite done with the rant. “According to ‘those’ magazines, I’ve been married, I’ve been divorced and I’ve been pregnant,” she says with a bitter laugh. None of the above, in fact. It is true, however, that along with her dogs Shorty and Audrey, her other housemate is longtime boyfriend Macaulay Culkin.

“We don’t talk about it,” to the press, Kunis insists. “We’ve been together going on seven years. Because we don’t talk about it.” Nor will you often see them walking red carpets together. “Its already more high profile than I want it to be,” Mila moans, insisting they have a “good healthy relationship,” and telling me warmly that they met “in New York on a beautiful, beautiful Spring day” before closing the subject.

Well, almost. Kunis admits Culkin shares her unhealthy obsession with videogames, particularly World of Warcraft, which they had to swear off earlier this year because their circle of friends realized it was actually taking over their lives! “There’s no such thing as ‘just five minutes,’” she laugh/cries. “It got to a point where I was so excited to get home, not to see my family, but to play WOW.” Nevertheless, she’s looking forward to Spore (probably addicted already by the time you read this) and still enjoys Mario Party.

Ironically, she isn’t much a fan of the Max Payne game, but enjoyed learning to shoot real weapons in order to play an assassin in the movie, and wrestle Mark Wahlberg. That isn’t to say she trains vigorously for every role. Between bites of chocolate-on-chocolate cupcake, Kunis chuckles about guzzling mai tais and something called a “monkey’s lunch” on the beach while Forgetting Sarah Marshall co-star Kristin Bell worked her body out to pefection during the Oahu filming. “The first two weeks, for sure, whenever she did yoga I was right there. And then I was like ‘eh, I get it.’”

What concerned her more was rising to the challenge of improv comedy in a Judd Apatow film, much like her next film, Mike Judge’s Extract, with Jason Bateman and Ben Affleck. “I play a kleptomaniac psychopath, a pathological liar. And… hilarity ensues.”

Despite her candid demeanor (“I’m pretty much an open book.”), Mila can be a little evasive, even argumentative. When its pointed out that she doesn’t smile a lot in photos—obviously touching a nerve—she argues to the contrary, complains about people who fake a smile all the time, makes a point of grinning widely in the pic we take together, then finally admits she has a cracked, discolored front tooth. (Her other imperfection, a disease in her right eye that occasionally discolors the iris, is kept under control by steroids)

“I have nothing fake about me,” she insists. “Not one single thing. I will never. I don’t have a boob job, I don’t have extensions, I don’t have fake lashes. Do I wish I had bigger tits and an ass? Absolutely! If it makes you feel better about yourself on the inside, I see nothing wrong with it. But I am 100% happy with what God gave me.”

Still, Kunis has declared a moratorium on Maxim-type photo spreads. Not in protest of her slipping down the ‘Hot 100’ lists (“Seriously, where do you think I went wrong in my career?” she cracks) but just because “It’s time to move on. My dad’s like, ‘okay, we get it, put some clothes on.’”

Mila says people already look at her differently at 25. But arguably they are just doing math in their heads, trying to figure out how she could have eight seasons of That 70s Show already under her belt. As has been oft reported, Kunis fibbed about her age when auditioning, managing to score the role of 14-year-old Jackie when she was actually only 14 herself.

“It was eight years of my life that sculpted me,” she says, admitting the end was bittersweet. “There was so many things I went through on thst show as a girl,” she says, although she insists she never watched an episode after the first season, and hasn’t since. “Are you fuckin’ crazy? No. I don’t need to see myself going through puberty.” On the other hand, her parents–who live across the street (!) and still have blue collar jobs at Rite Aid and behind a taxicab wheel–practically TIVO it daily and have a shrine erected.

She is obviously close to them, and to her older brother Mike, an entrepreneur with a biochemistry background. In fact, one of Mila’s happiest times was traveling to Korea with him, where—apparently—no one has seen That 70s Show. “I took the subway, I went to the mall, I went shopping, I was running around by myself and I was safe. It was so incredibly freeing.” She also loves Disneyland, enjoys “getting pampered” at spas as often as possible, and waxes lyrical about a recent trip to Key West. “It’s really fuckin’ cute, the water was beautiful, and they had really great crab, great fish. I loved it.”

She’s also excited for Halloween, which will find her and Kulkin … not going out! But in a good way: “We do murder mystery dinners every year. It’s really fun. We get a group of 14-20 people, give people their characters beforehand, everyone dresses in costumes. Last year I was Morticia Addams. I still have the dress.”

Not long ago, she would’ve been happy doing just about anything but acting. At 19, she says, “I wanted nothing to do with this industry. Hated every aspect of it. I was going to go to college. I wanted to be a teacher.” Actually, Kunis did attend classes at Loyola Marymount for a time.  Then, “I realized I enjoyed doing what I do, minus all the other bullshit that came along with it.

“When you’re young you want to please people,” she explains. “You want to please people you don’t know, so that the stranger on the street says ‘good job!’ because that’s what matters. And at a certain point you’ve got to realize that’s not what matters. What matters is you being happy with what you did.”

Today, she’s perfectly comfortable saying  “I’m not‘industry,’ I’m not gonna make an album, I’m not going to come out with a fuckin’ clothing line, it’s not who I am, and people are fully aware of it.”

On the other hand, the immigrant is fully aware that she’s living “the American dream, right?” At least, that is, when asked about the irony of someone who learned English as a second language—supposedly from watching The Price Is Right—now being a well-compensated voice actor as Meg on Family Guy.

Where will she go from here? Says Mila, as she hops back in her black Lexus, “I don’t fuckin’ know, I’ll let you know when I get there.”

One thing is for sure: it will definitely be in a different zip code.

FF

copyright 2008 ECG

“I swore I would never be with another actor… You know, ‘Make a plan, hear God laugh!’”

By: EC Gladstone

Geoffrey Rush is buzzing around the crowded patio. Sean Penn is in the lobby talking on his cell and scarfing down a salad. Suits are doing deals everywhere. There’s no doubt that we’re in Hollywood, and Oscar season is heating up. Nevertheless, there is always an element of escape at the storied hotel Chateau Marmont. Which is why Rebecca Gayheart likes to lunch here.

“I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather go,” she says, as a waiter brings menus and a double-shot espresso. “I mean, I love the food at the Ivy, but I can’t take the scene in front.” Though Rebecca has an important role to promote, in the new Fox-TV show “Vanished,” the actress has no need for the sort of attention that the paparazzi camped outside Tinseltown’s most infamous eatery bring. And Gayheart certainly isn’t interested in putting on airs: she arrives early, by herself (no handlers, no publicists), parking on the street, and dressing down in slim grey jeans and a big comfy black sweater.

Despite this, Rebecca maintains an irresistible glow – the same that made her a natural “Noxema girl” back in the early ’90s and yet, at the opposite of the spectrum, gave flight to her fear in Scream 2.

That teen popcorn flick is one of several (Urban Legend, Jawbreaker) for which Gayheart is probably best known – along with a stint on ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ as Luke Perry’s bride. But Rebecca’s hoping to change that now. Though she’s actually worked steadily for the past 15 years (with one significant hiatus), the actress sees her portrayal of Judy Nash in the Atlanta-set ‘Vanished’ as “my first ‘adult’ role.

“She’s ambitious and aggressive, she’s really smart, really clever,” Gayheart says of her investigative journalist character, “and she’s not afraid to use her sexuality.” No kidding — viewers got to see her in the altogether (or as much of that as a primetime network show allows) on the very first show. “It’s very layered,” she adds, of a part important enough to get her to straighten her naturally curly hair. I’m enjoying myself.”

Indeed, at 35 (and wearing it well), Gayheart seems to be the rare maturing “teen queen” who is getting better with age. “When you get older, you realize where you are is where you’re supposed to be,” she says, “you’re not chasing something, you know?” Maybe that’s because Rebecca’s found what most women would envy: a happy marriage to fellow actor Eric Dane, none other than ‘Gray’s Anatomy’s own Dr. McSteamy.

“I swore I would never be with another actor,” Rebecca laughs, “because it just seems so typical. You know, ‘Make a plan, hear God laugh!’ But he’s fantastic, the greatest guy in the world,” even though, she admits, “he’s not romantic. But he tries for me.”

Their pairing at least has the scent of romance—or romantic comedy. After being introduced by a mutual friend, Rebecca and Eric kept running into each other with other random pals they had in common. “Finally he just asked me out,” she sighs. “It took a while. I was like, ‘What’s wrong with this guy? I’m giving him every signal I can!’” The pair ended up dating steadily for ten months. Then, after forcing themselves to take a two week break, they got together for dinner, realized “this is it,” and decided to elope immediately to Las Vegas.

“Otherwise, I would’ve talked myself out of it somehow,” she says. Catching literally the last flight of the night, they convinced a cabbie to help them find the only chapel willing to do the ceremony at that late hour without a license in hand. “We paid Sam our cab driver fifty bucks to be our best man…got married, checked into the Bellagio for the night, woke up, got the license, and came home,” she laughs. “It was so much fun.”

So far, it’s been nothing but happily ever after. “We’re very compatible,” she says with satisfaction. “We just enjoy the simple things together. It’s about friends, family, good food, good times, nothing complicated.” While some might consider their actor-heavy crowd to be glamorous, “it doesn’t feel like that because we’re not out at [Hollywood uber-hotspot] Hyde every night, we’re at home playing Scrabble.”

In their limited down-time, Rebecca has been taking lessons to play golf with Eric, while Eric has picked up her passion for craps (and jetting to Vegas to play!). Gayheart, who was raised Southern Baptist, is considering conversion to Dane’s Judaism. “He’s not pushing me,” but “I just love all the traditions,” she says, launching into a Hebrew prayer, then gushing about brisket and macaroons. Eric has even become good friends with Gayheart’s ex-fiancee, Brett Ratner (who, by a twist of fate, directed Dane in X-Men 3).

“We’re family. We raised each other,” says Gayheart of Ratner, whom she met in gritty downtown New York, when she was a teen model and he, an NYU-aspiring film director. It was only 15-year-old Rebecca’s third day in the city, having been drafted by the Elite agency on a shopping trip in Lexington, Kentucky. Gayheart had grown up in tiny Pine Top, where her father Curtis is a miner, and her mother Floneva throws Mary Kay-style makeup parties. A middle child of four, Rebecca took piano lessons and from the age of five dreamed of being on the big screen.

“I was just always so sucked in to movies and characters,” she says. “I think it’s the escape from yourself, being someone else, that’s so attractive to me.” While Gayheart claims she was “a little neglected” as a kid, she nevertheless paints an idyllic picture of her parents.

“My mom and dad are amazing people, They’ve been married for 40 years. My dad is just a hardworking, honest, good guy, and he’s got just a sense of happiness all the time. He never complains about his life, and he’s had a rough one. So I think I got a really great work ethic from them. [And] I know exactly what’s important in life, which is my family, my friends and my health. It’s never confusing for me, because I have them to always remind me, and to keep me grounded and grateful.”

Though it gave her the opportunity to travel, and opened her eyes to the world of fashion (South Africa and Mexico are among her favorite destinations; Lanvin, Chloe, Escada and upstarts Riser Goodwin her favorite designers) Gayheart says modeling ultimately “wasn’t my cup of tea.

“I found it really difficult having all the attention placed on my looks, for lots of different reasons,” she says. “They don’t want to know what you have to say, or who you are.” After being teased by other models for her “very thick” Appalachian accent, she took lessons to lose it (though she admits it comes back when she’s tired, or talking to relatives) and then enrolled at the famed Lee Strassberg Theatre Institute. “I wanted to know what I was doing,” she says. “And I wanted to be taken seriously.”

A steady succession of soap opera, film and series TV roles followed her Noxema ads, eventually bringing her west to Los Angeles, where she and Ratner planned to marry. Rebecca admits she still misses the energy of New York, and her circle of friends, which, incredible as it may seem, included rappers from Wu-Tang Clan, A Tribe Called Quest and Run DMC (she still stays in touch with Reverend Run). Then again, “My 20s [were] exhausting. So many parties. I don’t miss all the craziness.”

Her lifestyle came to an abrupt halt in June, 2001, when, while driving a friend’s car, Rebecca was involved in an accident which resulted in the death of a 9-year-old boy. Gayheart references the incident only very indirectly. It’s understandably clear why she doesn’t want to relive it, or have it define her future. But it did lead to her finding a way to make a positive difference in society.

“Up until a certain point in my life, I wasn’t charitable,” she admits. “I thought I was, because I would give a dollar to someone on the street. But I never thought of being charitable as a responsibility that we all have.”

Searching for an outlet to fulfill her community service obligations, Gayheart discovered downtown LA’s Chrysalis, an organization which helps the homeless help themselves, by giving assistance and opportunities toward permanent employment. “It’s an incredible foundation, a really, really positive thing.” In addition to giving tours of skid row to prospective donors, and doing one-on-one job interview training, Rebecca also organizes the annual Butterfly Ball fundraiser.

While that part of her life took a positive turn, Gayheart’s engagement to Ratner fizzled out, and her career took a two year break. When she returned to acting, she found unexpected opportunities with Southern characters on the stage, appearing in “Steel Magnolias” on Broadway, and an LA production of Alfred Uhry’s “Last Night of Ballyhoo.”

“I think it’s the only time you get to truly experience a character on that level,” she says of live theatre. “I wish I could do more of it.”

Rebecca also enjoyed several television opportunities, including a notable turn as a blind seductress in F/X’s ‘Nip/Tuck’ (she’s revisiting the role as we speak), as well as the ditzy Betty in Showtime’s ‘Dead Like Me,’ and the lead in Lifetime’s ‘Scarlett.’ Unfortunately, she left the former after one season, and the latter was probably doomed the moment its first day of shooting in New Orleans was the same that Hurricane Katrina hit. But then, if either had continued, we wouldn’t have Rebecca’s Judy Nash.

“What’s great about doing a show with an ensemble cast,” she says of ‘Vanished,’ “is that some weeks are a lot of work and some weeks aren’t. So you can really balance your personal life and work schedule.” Despite what you may think about everyone in Hollywood, Gayheart for one does not have a personal assistant. “I drop off my own dry cleaning and do my own laundry.” Can you guess who picks up after her maltese, Jackie?

She’s also her own interior decorator for the new house, which – while trying to quit smoking – she admits may be a mistake. “I like to have things done yesterday, especially in my living space, and I’m very organized and very anal about all of that stuff. But I have to slow down, because it’s not going to be done in a day.” After a small rant about some new curtains being hung with the wrong hardware, in the wrong room, and the refrigerator dying, she allows, “It’s kind of fun living with just a bed and a dining room table. It’s kind of punk-alternative, the pictures are leaned up against the wall, all of our books are just stacked up on the living room floor. You feel like you’re at a hotel.”

Her regular tennis game tomorrow will help her get out some aggressions, as well as, no doubt, keep her girlish waistline (impressive considering her obviously healthy appetite). But once the house is done comes an even bigger objective: kids. “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready-ready, so I think I just have to do it,” she says, thinking out loud. “I could wait another year. But should I wait another year?”

Lest anyone worry, that doesn’t mean Gayheart has any intention of giving up acting. “I’m looking for that role that I can really sink my teeth into,” she says, praising the work of actresses like Meryl Streep, Annette Bening, Cate Blanchett… “a role to make people think and feel.” Clearly, this southern girl is not one to be counted out. Smiling at Geoffrey Rush as he passes by the table, she says, “Do I think I’ll ever get to do the dream roles? I hope so. I won’t stop trying to get them.”

FF
Copyright 2008, ECG