It must have been too much fun growing up with the name Amy Smart.
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"Even my teachers used to tease me, on top of all my friends," says the actress who was christened thusly. '"Get Smart.' 'Amy Not-So-Smart.' Et cetera. But I like it--it's a good name to live up to."
And of course, it's ready-made for magazine headlines. "Yeah," she quips, "that's definitely gonna be a problem when my career takes off." Which, in fact, is happening now. Early this year Smart played heartthrob James Van Der Beek's girlfriend in the surprise hit Varsity Blues and started getting recognized on the street. "Which was nice," she says, "but what was better was finally being able to walk into auditions knowing they'd seen my work." And liked it. Transcending the clichés of Varsity Blues's high school-jocks-and-jokes script, Smart was remarkably convincing as the smart--OK, intelligent--girl who loves the star quarterback but doesn't give a fig for football. In this month's Outside Providence, a 70s-era coming-of-age comedy, she plays the rich girl who falls for the poor boy.
"It's my first good role in a good film," she says. Though the screen-play was written by the usually over-the-top Farrelly brothers, whose There's Something About Mary was the gross-out shock wave of last year, Providence is, according to Smart, "lovable and endearing." She further contends, "There are funny parts, but on the whole, it's a bittersweet coming-of-age story."
On-screen, Smart has a blonde-tomboy look reminiscent of Chloe Sevigny and Sarah Poltey, but in person, she's beautiful in a down-to-earth way that meshes just fine with her laid-back personality. I'm guessing that's thanks to her childhood in L.A.'s Topanga Canyon, a funky/chic, rustic counterculture paradise just up the hill from the Pacific Ocean. "Everybody there is barefoot, healthy and easygoing," says Smart. "There's no pretension in Topanga." But now she's moved "in town," as they say in the Canyon, to Beverly Hills, where she 'fesses up to hanging with lots of young actor types. "But only the ones who are grounded," she emphasizes. "I don't want to be around people who desire to be movie stars--it's just a facade. This may be 'Hollywood' to a lot of people. But I grew up here--my family's here. It's home to me."
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Joshua Mooney