“I belong somewhere trapped in a castle in the 14th century, in the rain, churning butter…”

Olivia Wilde
By E.C. Gladstone

Where are the paparazzi when you need them?

It’s a crisp winter day in LA, and Olivia Wilde, who’s just flown in from New York, is dying for some sushi. So when the actress calls from the lobby of the W hotel as I’m pulling up, I tell her to skip formalities and just meet me at the curb.

Would it be too much to ask that at least one photographer be there to capture the former O.C. co-star getting into my car? Just a grainy shot to get people wondering about her “mystery man?” I mean, this is the kind of publicity a guy can’t buy.

But nobody’s on the sidewalk. Not even a college kid stringing for TMZ with a cell phone camera.

Wilde, dressed in denim with a cloth cap over her long brown hair, is apologetic—not for that, but her sleep-deprived and makeup-free looks, which, truth be told, make her only stop-you-on-the-street beautiful instead of the usual coronary-inducing gorgeousness when she’s actually trying.

She also smells fantastic.

When we park on the street and she leaps out and feeds the meter without even mentioning it, I’m already won over. That small act is almost the equivalent in a Hollywood actor to an ordinary person stopping traffic for an old woman. Very classy.

But if looks and manners were all Olivia had to offer, I could stop here and save space for more photos. Five minutes later, though, after she’s told me about her hilarious plane flight next to effusive fitness guru Richard Simmons, and touched on the joys of ensemble acting, the best Mexican restaurant in New York, the cultural renaissance of Ireland, and political author Chinua Achebe, it’s clear that Olivia is the type of person whose intellectual curiosity and engagement with the world goes far beyond the apparatus of entertainment.

And she’s all of 21 years old.

“In order to get enthusiastic about a role, I have to feel like it means something, that it will have some sort of relevance to the world,” says Wilde, who’s in the middle of being everywhere, with this season’s ‘Turistas’ (a cautionary tale about organ harvesting) and Alpha Dogs (drug dealers in over their heads) in theatres, ‘The Black Donnellys’ (a family of Irish mobsters) on NBC in a few weeks, and Death and Life of Bobby Z coming up. “But you find it in any role that’s well written,” she says, raving particularly about ‘Donnellys.’ “Even if they don’t seem they’re in any way politically relevant.”

For prime example, Wilde points to her breakout performance in the second season of The O.C., as Mischa Barton’s lesbian girlfriend. “That was extremely important, because of the influence it had on all these women around the world. I got letters from countless girls saying that I made them feel comfortable with their sexuality, that they thought they had to be ugly to be a lesbian…”

Continued at Pt. 2

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–FF–

Copyright 2006 ECG

‘Here’s my picture, what’s your MySpace address?’

“Exactly! ‘Want a house guest?’” She laughs.

Alright, so Wilde, who has a world-class smile, and peppers her speech with outbursts like “un-bee-lee-vable” and “cul-chah.” isn’t too self-serious, thank God. Because her background is the kind you’d expect for someone walking the halls of the Capitol or debating public policy on Sunday TV (neither of which would we rule out down the line) rather than staking a claim in Young Hollywood.

Born in New York City to globe-trotting journalists Leslie and Andrew Cockburn (pronounced Coh-burn), Olivia Jane grew up as an alternately rebellious or over-achieving middle child in the “musty brownstones” of Washington DC’s Georgetown. ‘Everything was about this old intellectual history,” she says, with family friends who were seemingly all controversial fellow scribes like Christopher Hitchens, Seymour Hersh and Gloria Emerson.

“It was pretty obvious from when I was very little that acting was my calling,” she says. “I was always very outgoing [and] existed in several different fantasy lands. Sometimes I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep at night because I would be creating little movies and plays and characters in my head.” Her mother (who had attended Yale Drama School with Sigourney Weaver and Meryl Streep) was happy to encourage her. “She said many people would tell me it was going to be impossible, and that I never ever could believe them. That came in handy a few…dozen times!”

While Olivia’s parents frequently took dangerous assignments around the globe (particularly Leslie, who was even five months pregnant with Olivia’s younger brother while covering the “Black Hawk Down” incident in Mogadishu), the tweener concerned herself with ballet recitals and competitive swimming –which would later help her perform most of her own underwater stunts in ‘Turistas’–at Georgetown Day School. She also attended cooking school during summers in Ireland, where the Cockburns maintain a home on the southeastern coast of County Waterford. “I belong somewhere trapped in a castle in the 14th century, in the rain, churning butter,” she jokes, “I’m very comfortable in that environment.” The skills learned there come in handy when she throws large dinner parties, but her love of food (she is a somewhat flexible vegetarian) has become politicized as well: “I’m really interested in how nutrition affects education and crime, especially in this country.”

Her family’s tradition for outspokenness, which also includes uncle Alexander Cockburn and other more distant relatives, goes back to her grandfather Claud Cockburn (who wrote as James Helvick), known in his home UK as an unrepentant socialist reporter and novelist. “There’s an amazing community of intellectuals in Ireland, and being a part of his family let me into that circle,” she says. “He was blacklisted, and I seem to have trouble keeping my mouth shut as well.”

Continued at Pt. 3

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–FF–

Copyright 2006 ECG

Olivia Wilde
By E.C. Gladstone

Back in DC, Olivia also developed her own anti-authoritarian “Ferris Bueller mentality,” as she puts it–taking the train to New York (where she got a tattoo on her rear end at 13) or Philadelphia (where she played drums on South Street with musician friends at 14) without notice.

“My parents were angry,” she says (Olivia had sold her sister’s clothes to finance the latter trip), “but part of them was a little proud that I had the wits about me.” For the record, she would be grounded months at a time.

Though Olivia doesn’t argue the fact that her looks now are the stuff supermodels are made of (5’8” tall, no more than a size 2 I’d guess, cheekbones that could cut glass, eyes like frickin’ laser beams), she insists she was a late bloomer, and anything but waif-like in her teen years. Still, from her freshman year at the storied Phillips Academy Andover boarding school, where her parents had sent her with the “sense that I could use a little structure,” she was getting the leads in school plays.

“They did try to kick me out about four times” but insists “I didn’t do anything cool. [Andover] had a lot of rules, and I had grown up with parents who gave me a lot of independence.” It was during a production of “The Importance of Being Earnest” that Olivia decided to follow her family’s “history of pen names” and change Cockburn for Wilde (in homage to Oscar, naturally).

Back in Ireland, she studied acting at Dublin’s Gaiety theatre, where director Patrick Sutton advised her to defer Bard College and go straight to Hollywood. Consequently, her mom’s college roommate, producer Sarah Pillsbury (And The Band Played On), arranged an internship with noted casting director Mali Finn–all of them possibly thinking the experience would get it out of her system. It didn’t.

“Working behind the scenes was great because I found out about the entire process,” she says. “I have a lot of respect for casting directors now, for extras and people playing small roles.” Her first part, a walk-on in The Girl Next Door, came directly from working with Finn, which then led to The O.C. and subsequently ‘Turistas’ (for which she dyed her naturally blond hair brunette, finding that the change suited her), Alpha Dog (in which she has her first, rather unglamorous, nude scene), etc.

But she found fortune in her personal life even more quickly, becoming engaged to 27-year-old Italian musician/filmmaker Tao Ruspoli a mere two months after they met at an LA dinner party. Ruspoli’s family background is at least as fascinating; his father, an infamous European socialite, descended from the legendary “Black aristocracy” ruling class of Italy. The family owns two castles and central Rome’s noted Palazzo Ruspoli.

“I was a very old 18-year-old,” Wilde insists, crediting their three-year marriage (which was kept secret for the first three months) as a source of strength. “I feel really liberated by it, which a lot of people don’t understand. The whole department of thinking people are only talking to you to sleep with you gets shut down.”

Though they’re currently staying at the Williamsburg, Brooklyn apartment of her sister, the couple also share a home in LA’s Venice with their dog Paco, a lab/shepherd/terrier mutt who incidentally won Old Navy’s 2006 mascot contest, almost by accident (Wilde says the prize money was mostly donated to animal rescues, and a bit pampering Paco). They also have “matching” vintage cars—her ’58 Chevy Biscayne and his ’59 Ford Thunderbird. After Wilde came this close to being a Bond Girl before losing the Casino Royale role to Eva Green, the couple used the time to do charity work together for Doctors Without Borders and Iraq Vets Against The War.

Cherishing her privacy, Wilde is happy that her personal life is probably considered too boring to interest the tabloids. “Until they think I’m having some lurid affair.”

Well, I think, as she offers a hug goodbye, if anyone around here had a camera…

–FF–

Copyright 2006 ECG