Lisa Loeb is living proof that Hollywood makes passes at singers who wear glasses.
_____________________________________
Lisa Loeb first registered on the pop-culture radar screen when her song "Stay (I Missed You)" from the Reality Bites soundtrack rose to the top of the charts in 1994. She's since released two albums and carved out a niche for herself among Lilith Fair touring peers like Paula Cole and Sarah McLachlan as the wistfully thoughtful brunette with the quirky pop sensibility. Having single-handedly made tortoiseshell glasses seem sexy, the Brown University-educated singer is now working to transfer her appeal to the big screen. She makes her studio-picture debut in House on Haunted Hill, opposite Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush.
DENNIS HENSLEY: Let's skip the music-star questions and go straight to movies. Tell me about House on Haunted Hill.
LISA LOEB: It's a remake of an old Vincent Price movie. Geoffrey Rush plays a man who creates really scary rides for amusement parks. I play a news reporter who interviews him about his brand-new roller coaster and finds out he's very crazy and very evil.
Q: Did you get the part in this film because the filmmakers knew your music?
A: They did know me some from my music, but I auditioned for it just like everybody.
Q: So you go on a lot of auditions?
A: Yes, though I've put them on hold lately, because I'm finishing my new album for early next year.
Q: How do people react when you tell them you're trying out for films?
A: Some people are sort of sarcastic, like, "Oh, you decided to start acting" and other people are like, "That's cool."
Q: Do you get called in for a lot of girl-with-guitar parts?
A: Sometimes, and it's always a little awkward because I don't want to be pigeonholed as a musician doing a cameo. I don't want to be Davy Jones on "The Brady Bunch," though I love Davy Jones.
Q: What do you look like in the film? Do you have anchorwoman hair?
A: No, my hair is up, and I'm wearing other glasses. If I'm playing me, I'll wear my real glasses. If it's not me, I wear other glasses.
Q: How many pairs of glasses do you own?
A: Probably eight or ten. People have started giving me glasses, especially old antique frames.
Q: What's wrong with contact lenses?
A: I'm allergic to them. When I was much younger, I wore them for a year and developed an allergy to them. I'd get weird, gross blisters on my eyes that took a long time to go away. For any kind of formal pictures in high school, I'd always put in my contact lenses because I could wear them for six hours.
Q: Do people assume certain things about you because of your glasses?
A: People think that I'm smart because I have glasses. Of course, I am very smart, but not because I wear glasses. [Laughs] People assume all sorts of things about appearances. When my assistant had purple hair we always got stopped by airport security, so she had to dye it black.
Q: Do you wear your glasses in romantic situations?
A: Let's just say, I don't wear my glasses to bed. They'd get messed up.
Q: You're going out with Dweezil Zappa, right?
A: Yes. We met at the beginning of'97 when he interviewed me on TV and we became friends and started playing music together. It was a very gradual thing.
Q: Are you aware that your posters up on one of the characters' walls in "The Sopranos"? A: That's really cool. My dad called me and said, "We're watching The Sopranos and your poster's up." When I was really young and saw posters in movies I'd think, "An Elvis Costello poster is up. That's so cool!" Now, I'm like, "I wonder which record company is related to that TV show."
Q: What's your favorite tabloid story about yourself?
A: That I was dating David Duchovny and he was choosing between me and two other people to marry. I've met him, but I wasn't dating him. There was also a rumor that I burned down my boyfriend's house, because people confuse me with Lisa Lopes from TLC.
Q: If you were profiled on VHl's Behind the Music, what dirty laundry would you air?
A: I take a lot of cough medicine when I'm sick. I recently went through a whole bottle of Robitussin with codeine.
Q: That's not good enough. Did you ever take on two groupies at once?
A: No, but I have time. [Thinks a moment] I used to get really depressed in high school and college, but there was such a taboo in my family about psychiatrists, I'd say to my parents, "I have to go to some doctor, this is crazy," and they'd say, "You can just talk to us."
Q: What movies rocked your world when you were growing up?
A: Grease was a big deal for me and all my friends. I went to an all-girls school and we loved Olivia Newton-John--especially when Sandy turns into Slutty Spice.
Q: Yeah, the message being if you want to keep a man, you have to smoke, wear spandex pants and put out.
A: Right, and we were so excited because we didn't even know about spandex yet. We thought she was sewn into her pants. I dressed up as her one year, but I looked like a prostitute.
Q: What's something you're good at that might surprise people?
A: I speak Spanish. My sister Debbie is working on a TV show for kids called Debbie Debutante and I get to play two Spanish soap opera stars who talk to Debbie from her mirror.
Q: Ethan Hawke gave you a big push when he got your break-out song "Stay (I Missed You)" into Reality Bites. How did you meet him?
A: We met at a party in New York through a common friend. A woman who was working with me was also working with his theater company, so she put together a tape for him, and [director] Ben Stiller liked our song.
Q: Did you know it was going to be a single?
A: No. It wasn't the single that the record company was promoting, but this radio station in Houston started playing it and it caught on.
Q: OK, here's my music-star question: what's the weirdest thing a fan has ever thrown onstage?
A: I got a whole Hello Kitty collection when I was in Japan, including a Hello Kitty vibrator. It was a dream come true.
_____________________________________
Dennis Hensley interviewed Halle Berry for the August 99 issue of Movieline.