Leelee Sobieski: Leelee Land

Here Sobieski breaks off and announces, "I mean, I feel stupid talking about this because it reads in a magazine as if I'm saying, 'I really need a boyfriend because I can't, like, live without one,' which is not at all true. But I would like to meet the right person for six months, not for the rest of my life. I'm too young for that to happen right now. I don't have a lot of time because I'm always busy working, so experiences on the set and offscreen are really what I have right now. Sometimes because scenes in films are so perfect, you expect life to be that way-- and it's not."

After Here on Earth, Sobieski will turn up on-screen in writer/direcror John Dahl's Squelch, a thriller about three college students whose road trip turns ugly when they're pursued by a psycho trucker. Is this her Scream? "It's very cool that my scary movie is directed by John Dahl. My part isn't necessarily the biggest, nor is it the showiest. I wanted to work with Dahl because I loved The Last Seduction and Rounders. I read the script and I was scared--I mean, whenever I go to bed, I jump straight into the bed and make very sure my feet aren't dangling off the edge anyway."

One scene in Squelch requires costars Paul Walker and Steve Zahn to run naked through a parking lot while Sobieski stays put in the car. Was the streaking a revelation for her? She responds with unalloyed delight in the affirmative. "Paul Walker has the most beautiful butt I've ever seen. He looks like a Greek god, but at the time I saw him nude for this scene, his genitals were covered so i assume they're bigger than a Greek statue's. Steve Zahn has a really beautiful body, but in a completely different way. When Paul did this scene, everybody's jaws just dropped. His body is perfect. Perfect." Perhaps it is the painter in her, but Sobieski has observed this subject with a detailed eye. "Paul's butt: is really white because it doesn't get a lot of sun, so the light bounced perfectly off this amazing white, round surface. His body is perfectly muscled, but in a not-contrived, went-to-the-gym way. They're muscles from surfing or physical activity, not from stuff done merely to gain him muscles. He's just beautiful."

Did any romantic sparks fly between Walker and his costar/connoisseur? "I hope that we do have some chemistry on-screen," she asserts. "I can feel that we're creating it while we're working. But offscreen, it stops completely. Its fine and it's very comfortable that way." And Steve Zahn? "Just seeing him, I'm hysterical with laughter. He doesn't have to do anything. I don't know if he inspired me or what, but I began writing a poem on the set about shitting. Like, actual shitting. Its not done yet, but it's funny and disgusting."

The set of Squelch does indeed seem to have been a lively one. Sobieski tells me that she got everyone playing the game Martin Short taught her while they made Jungle2Jungle, a game in which each person names three famous people of the same sex they would most like to have sex with. "Sexuality is so much more ambivalent than people make it out to be," observes Sobieski. "With Paul and Steve, I was very crude about it--I said, 'If you don't answer, you're just a little pussy and you're not comfortable with your masculinity or your femininity.' They all gave me names, but then I didn't know who they were, so I felt bad." Which women did Sobieski name? "I used to be attracted to Angelina Jolie. She was really sexy in Gia. I find Drew Barrymore incredibly sexy as a woman. She has the shape of a woman and she's so, so warm. I mean, if I were to be with a woman, it would be a rounded, womanly woman with big breasts. If I'd been alive during her time, I'd love to have kissed Bette Davis. That persona in films is so powerful, though I don't actually find her very sexy. I told Maximilian Schell, a very sexy man, about this when we were having such a hard rime on those 16-hour days making Joan of Arc, and he just said, 'Achh--Bette Davis! I went out with her daughter. And no matter what people say, she was a good mother." At this, Sobieski lets out a hearty laugh.

With her star very much in the ascendant, Sobieski can afford to talk about the projects that got away from her, so I ask her if, for example, she was really in the running for Sarah Policy's Go role and Thora Birch's in American Beauty? "I guess maybe I was too young for Go," she says, "Anyway, I applaud Sarah Polley's. She's a wonderful actress and a truly lovely person. I really, really wanted to do American Beauty, but the director just didn't like me. Looking at that film now, Mena Suvari and I wouldn't have worked together at all. She has something special about her and she did a wonderful job in the movie." And what about the roles in Star Wars Episode I--The Phantom Menace and Anywhere But Here, both of which went to Natalie Portman? "I don't think I'd ever actually seen her in anything except Everyone Says I Love You" Sobieski says, chortling with a self-mocking touch of glee. "Natalie Portman ... well, what a lucky girl," Then she lets out a delightful shriek. "That's evil, and I'm kidding. She's really beautiful. She looks like Audrey Hepburn to me. And she certainly looks like a really smart young woman. There have been cases where she'll get something and I'll go, 'I wish I did that.' For Star Wars, I sent them this really bizarre photo with my hair high on top of my head, but they said, 'We're only seeing Asians and black girls.' Then, all of a sudden it's Natalie Portman. I was kind of annoyed. I haven't seen the movie, but when I saw the ads, I thought she looked great. My mom read Anywhere But Here, and she thought I should do the film, but, oh well, there's always going to be someone who gets something you want. There are plenty of good roles to go around now. If you get everything you want, that's not such a good life."

Sobieski appears to be getting enough of what she wants, including My First Mister, to be directed by Christine Lahti, which she calls "a mental love story" between a young goth and an older man (to be played by Albert Brooks). She also won the lead in the thriller The Glass House, for which she'll be paid $1 million.

With five movies to her credit in the last 18 months, how does she feels she's measuring up as an actress? "A lot up to this point has been based on instinct," she responds. "Now technique comes a little bit more into play. I like instinct much more, but you have to have technique to back you up. The older I get, the better I'll be able to create a role. I'm most interested in actresses who direct as well as act, like Jodie Foster and Anjelica Huston. Someday I'd love to do that, too." And if, on the very off chance, the whole Hollywood thing goes away? "Well, of course I could return to my silly list of dream occupations like painter, writer, potter, psychiatrist." What if, just for argument's sake, she had to choose just one? "My dream is to sing like a big fat gospel or jazz singer because just listening to their voices I die," she says. "When I sing for my friends, I imagine I've got triple-E breasts and a great soulful voice like Nina Simone doing I Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl. They say, 'Shut up! You sound like a thin white girl.'"

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Stephen Rebello interviewed James Woods for the February issue of Movieline.

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