Denise Richards: Drop Dead Delectable

Well, to be fair, let's go back to where Denise Richards first began. She started out a Midwestern suburban girl from a close, middle-class family, one of two daughters of a dad who worked for the phone company and a housewife mom. It was only when her father got transferred from Illinois to San Diego that she became, by 17, a cheerleader, a surfer's girlfriend and a teen-magazine and catalog model. On graduating, though, Richards hit the acting-class/auditioning circuit with a vengeance, for which she was rewarded with occasional decorative gigs on Doogie Howser, M.D. and Seinfeld. In 1993, she joined Ben Affleck in the cast of NBC's short-lived series Against the Grain.

After that stint the aforementioned embarrassments came along, together with a recurring role as Loni Anderson's daughter on Melrose Place. Starship Troopers, cartoon that it may have been, was the serious turning point for Richards. It got her noticed and it got her Wild Things. "I thought carefully about doing Wild Things," Richards says. "It was risky, especially at that point when I didn't have an established career in movies. It's very easy to get typecast in this town. But I thought it would be great to work with John [McNaughton], Neve [Campbell], Kevin [Bacon], Matt [Dillon] and Bill Murray. And I loved the character."

The frenzy Wild Things was destined to generate started right away. "The press junket was unbelievable," says Richards. "People had the flat-out audacity to ask me if I was bisexual, and if Neve and I had a thing going on. I can understand that, because I'm 'the new girl,' they think I must be just like my character, but get over it. I'm very comfortable with my sexuality and if a role calls for me to be with another woman, it's not a bad thing. I was more comfortable with Neve because she's a woman. With a guy, I don't exactly want to say, like I did to Neve, 'Can you protect me here? Would you mind putting your hand here or there to cover this or that flaw?'" At this Richards lets fly that great laugh and gives me one of her winking smiles as she blows back an errant strand of hair.

After Wild Things, Hollywood offered Richards just about every teen-slasher-on-the-loose flick, every She's All That-style romantic comedy, plus a part in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (or so it was rumored) and the lead in Tomb Raider. "And lots of scripts with eight-page lesbian scenes," Richards adds. "But I didn't want to do another movie like Wild Things. And I'm not a teenager. Plus, I need to be around seasoned actors, to be allowed to do great projects with great directors where I'm passionate about the character--to do, like, say, a real comedy, a beautiful period piece, something dark and gritty. I need to learn. That's why I went a whole year without work after Wild Things."

A year can be a momentum-draining lifetime in a young career, though, can't it? "I worried that I was never going to work again," she agrees. "But I didn't want to do just anything for the money. A lot of times with projects I loved, they already had offers out to Gwyneth Paltrow, Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet. I'd just go in trying to do my best. Luckily my agents and managers are truly interested in building my career. They kept saying, 'You will work again.'" The movie that brought Richards out of her self-imposed hiatus was Drop Dead Gorgeous, a darkly comic, often knee-slappingly funny mockumentary about nasty, behind-the-scenes in-fighting among a bunch of all-American crazies in a small-town Minnesota beauty pageant.

"I play a 17-year-old, and it's probably the last time I'll ever play a teenager again," declares Richards. "I'm clearly not close to 16, which my costar Kirsten Dunst actually is." So, exactly what is Richards's age? She laughs the question off with a wink and says, "Oh, twentysomething." (Some sources list her age as, oh, 28-ish.)

Richards's next film, The World Is Not Enough, in which she plays one of Pierce Brosnan's distractions (the other is Sophie Marceau), offers her the chance for global recognition, and for dangerous pigeonholing. The minute she was cast as the new Bond girl, her name and face became known to millions of Bond fans and linked inextricably for the time being to images of things shaken not stirred.

"I play a nuclear weapons expert," Richards explains, adding somewhat unnecessarily, "not the lab-coat-and-glasses-wearing kind." Is she the good Bond girl or the bad Bond girl? "I'm tough, strong and sassy. It's Sophie's character's agenda to make things terrible for Bond, and it's my character's agenda to make things good. Pierce and I have a lot of chemistry together." Will the movie ignore the age gap between Richards and Brosnan (he's 46) and feature a love scene? "He's not much older than I am," she insists, "but who'd notice anyway, because he's so sexy and fun? I can't really say, but maybe we have a little love scene. It is a Bond movie, you know."

Richards seems not at all nervous about being seen as just another Bond girl, the kind who, like Honor Blackman and Ursula Andress--said to play cameos in the new movie--tend to drop off the radar screen once they've kiss-kissed-bang-banged. "It's a great thing for me to work with the director Michael Apted, who's done wonderful things like Coal Miner's Daughter and the documentary 7 Up. He's an-actor's director and he's interested in the characters, so it's not just about the action. Hey, if I never work again because I'm a 'Bond girl,' then I was never going to work again, anyway. It's up to my agent and manager to provide me with the opportunities. My job is to work my ass off."

How does Richards cope with the anxious ups and downs of each move in a career that's finally got momentum? "It helps that my dad and mom are incredibly supportive, as they've always been. We're so close. They're very young--my dad just turned 50 this year and my mom's four years younger. They keep me very grounded. And, as always, my sister and Patrick are my best friends."

Patrick is Patrick Muldoon, former Melrose Place resident and Richards's Starship Troopers costar. "People say all the time, 'Never date an actor,'" she tells me. "I say, 'That depends on the actor.' I've dated other people since being in L.A., but Patrick is my first serious adult relationship. We were great friends for many years and I'd always been attracted to him, but the timing wasn't right. Then we really got to know each other on Starship. He has an incredible, sarcastic sense of humor, which is the most appealing part of a man, and a really sweet, lovable, endearing nature. And he's intense and passionate, besides being a goofball, which I love."

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