Joey Lauren Adams: Kitschy-Coup

The character who finally deflowered Bud Bundy blossoms in Chasing Amy.

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In Middle America, Joey Lauren Adams is best known as the temptress who took Bud Bundy's virginity on Married...with Children. "If I go to any gas station or Home Depot, everybody's seen that show--it airs all the time," says the actress in her distinctive, sexy-squeaky bleat. After busting Bud's cherry in prime time, Adams, 29, went on to a string of slacker sex-kitten roles in Dazed and Confused, Sleep With Me, S.F.W. and Mallrats. A quirky combo of little-girl precociousness and steel-magnolia strength, the Arkansas-born Adams has a penchant for power tools and white-trash kitsch, drives a Firebird with a dashboard Elvis shrine, and writes country songs like "Daddy's Dead in Mama's Head" (inspired by an affair her father had).

Adams first hit Hollywood nine years ago. "I was so naive, I thought William Morris was William Morrison!" she reports with a chuckle. Hanging out at Nicky Blair's, the notorious, now-defunct Sunset Strip watering hole that was home to the Industry's lech/Lolita mating dance, she endured six months of "bad experiences with sleazy producers--the hand on the leg and 'What are you gonna do for me?' I thought, If I have to fuck someone to get a part, it's not worth it." Other means of getting ahead seem to have worked. Adams most recently played the Midwestern waitress in Michael who serves John Travolta pie and adds the angel's a la mode offscreen--"The one love scene I would have loved to do, and I didn't even get to kiss him!"

Adams breaks out of bimbo typecasting in Chasing Amy, a dramatic love story by Kevin (_Clerks, Mallrats_) Smith--who also happens to be her boyfriend of nearly two years. While the director created the multidimensional, sexually ambiguous character Alyssa just for her, the actress has mixed feelings about being his leading lady offscreen and on.

"It's hard enough just having a relationship," she says. "We had our biggest fight ever." On the other hand, she adds, the Sundance-debuted film includes some "very dark scenes where you reach an awful place, and it's wonderful to have your boyfriend there to hold you and calm you down."

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Vicki Jo Radovsky