She was the teen saint in the miniseries Joan of Arc and the teen vamp, in the big screen's Eyes Wide Shut, and now she's the teen Camille in Here on Earth. In real life, Hollywood's ethereal young million-dollar-a-movie darling Leelee Sobieski is the teen boho.
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Contemporary Hollywood teems with temptresses who know how to make teenage sexual provocation look good. Seventeen-year-old Leelee Sobieski makes it look classy. The insolent aplomb she brought to her portrayal of an uninhibited teen expatriate in A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries gave the first notice of that. Then in last year's Eyes Wide Shut there was that devastatingly sly, come-hither look she gave Tom Cruise as the half-clad nymphet being pimped by her papa. Even her Emmy Award-nominated performance in TV's Joan of Arc radiated healthy sensuality alongside the requisite religious fervor and valor. The offscreen Sobieski is a refreshing, delightful change-up from the odd, sometimes dispiriting Hollywood twinks, too. Like Jodie Foster in the '70s, she manages to radiate brainy sexuality, otherworldly beauty and playful humor. She recently lamented to one magazine journalist that, like Joan of Arc, she remains a virgin; to another writer, she described her ceaseless search for Mr. Right--or rather, Mr. Right Now. You've got to wonder where someone so young comes by this unflappability.
Sobieski hails from what she likes to call "a daring family." Born Liliane Rudabet Gloria Elsveta, she's a direct descendent of King Jan Sobieski, the Polish monarch who aided the Holy Roman Empire in defending Vienna against Turkish invaders in 1683 and was so illustrious in his own land that even today, Leelee could, if she chose to, dwell in the city of Sobieski, Poland, puff Sobieski cigarettes and quaff Sobieski vodka. And if she decided to nosh a bagel, it would be with the knowledge that the genre of breadstuff in question was invented in her ancestor's honor. Leelee herself was born in France to Jean Sobieski, an accomplished painter, and Elizabeth, a writer, and shows the pleasing effects of her background as she floats into the dining room at The Argyle on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Statuesque, hair flowing, she looks like a princess out of an illuminated manuscript, only she's dressed in a man's dress shirt and vintage tie. There's a lovely bohemian rebellion written into this fashion contradiction, I decide to find out right away how playful a spirit Leelee is. With that in mind I ask how she feels about Milla Jovovich, whose portrayal of Joan of Arc in The Messenger presented a big-screen alternative to her own mini-series saint. Sobieski's expression lightens and her eyes twinkle at the question.
"I danced with her at a premiere," the young actress recalls, speaking in precise, clipped tones that suggest the Upper East Side with a touch of Continental added in. "I was like, 'Would you like to dance?' and she said, I have to go get another drink,' She did, and then she came back and we started dancing. I felt like, 'I've got to dance with her like she's my bitch.' Which I did." Leelee shoots me a conspirational look. "This is Leelee the exhibitionist at work now, you understand. It was a merengue kind of tune and she was touching her face, rubbing her hair, like, 'Oh, I'm just a little androgynistic thing,' while I was just coldly watching her. She came up to me and I just pushed her away. Our mutual agent was there and going, like, 'Stop--don't do this!' Oh, I got a real kick out of it. Not only two Joan of Arcs dancing together, but also the whole Joan of Arc lesbian intonation. I mean, I think Joan must have been a lesbian, don't you? Milla is really nice, lovely and so gracious."
So I'd say we're off and running with our inquiries into the sensibilities of young Leelee Sobieski. It quickly becomes apparent she's been a singular, highly dramatic handful from the beginning. "A friend of my mom's told her that when she saw me as a newborn she knew who I was right away. Apparently, all the other babies were either serious or crying or sleeping, and I was the only one making faces and looking around at everybody else." When I ask Sobieski how she became an actress, she repeats the word "actress," skewing it with a dose of irony and says, "Do you know, I really hate it when friends introduce me as 'Leelee the actress? I'm not Leelee the actress. I'm Leelee the wacko. Leelee the really annoying girl Anything but, 'actress," How's that? "This wasn't supposed to happen at all," declares Sobieski, referring to being an actress. "I was determined I was going to be a writer and a painter, solid, from a very young age. You know, the other day I read a really funny, dorky paper I'd written in the seventh grade where it was-- chirp-chirp-chirp--'I want to be a painter and be married, though I really don't care what my husband does, and I want to do my pottery with my children doing it right next to me, and we'll live in New York half the time and somewhere else the rest and we'll travel a lot." She rolls her eyes and laughs at herself with dead-pan incredulity. "Imagine having it all mapped out like that. Geeky, or what?"
If she was indeed geeky, how did she become so early what so few are ever able to become--and what she was supposedly hell-bent on not becoming? "I was a pretty obnoxious child," she declares with a nonchalant shrug. "I made these silly lists of things I wanted to be. Acting ranked way down compared to being an artist and writer." According to press legend, though, Sobieski auditioned fiercely for the role Kirsten Dunst eventually landed in the 1994 film Interview With the Vampire. "I don't know how that rumor started," Sobieski says of this. "Actually, I was in my school cafeteria in New York and a casting director asked me to meet with one of her assistants. It turns out she was casting Interview With the Vampire, but I went in only for a general purpose meeting. The irony is that I constantly think how I would love to be a vampire--not for the blood-sucking part, but for the essence, the coolness, the magical quality. Anyway, I read some lines and I was just awful. I thought acting was making a lot of expressions. So, I still thought I'd be a writer and artist, but I also thought, 'Why not?' about this acting thing."
Sobieski's looks, poise and nonchalance landed her the 1994 TV movie Reunion, with Mario Thomas and Peter Strauss, and she got guest stints on series like "NewsRadio" and "Grace Under Fire." In 1995, she was cast in a short-lived TV series, "Charlie Grace." Then, in 1997, she made her feature debut with Tim Allen and Martin Short in Jungle2Jungle and hasn't stopped working since.
Did the precocious Sobieski indulge in acting classes at any point in her early trajectory? "I took lessons in New York with this wonderful woman, but it just felt like fun lessons for kids. As time went on, my father became my coach. He'd acted in Italian and French films to make ends meet when he was younger. He says he wasn't very good and he won't let me see any of his work, but he read some books on Stanislavski and he'd present me with little examples and exercises. We came up with our own sort of Stanislavski/Sobieski Method, and that's how I work today,"
Sobieski can't say enough about her father--"He's very handsome, hair everywhere, the essence of a man painter"-- and she clearly cherishes the time she spends with him. "I like to paint alone, but I almost like it better when my father and I work together on the same painting, because two different worlds come to bear. I'll go over to his side of the canvas and just destroy it, color over it, add a line, and then he'll define things, make them more precise. In the end, there are two energies that are in union but are also very different." She seems equally enamored of her mother, whom she describes as "beautiful, with a walk like the space woman in Mars Attacks!"
Sobieski's debut movie, Jungle2Jungle, notwithstanding, her upbringing appears to have predisposed her toward fairly arty film fare. Both A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries and Eyes Wide Shut were aimed at sophisticated adult audiences. With her new one, Here on Earth, she's aiming for the solidly teen audience that knows her well from Deep Impact and Never Been Kissed. The film presents Sobieski playing a girl who's torn between a gorgeous preppy brat played by Chris Klein and a gorgeous hometown childhood sweetheart played by Josh Hartnett. Then, quicker than you can say Love Story, fate deals all three a. blow that ought to have young moviegoers reaching for their handkerchiefs. "I thought the original script was really lovely," says Sobieski. "It kind of reminded me, in a teenage way, of that Bette Davis movie where she loses her eyesight." Like, Dark Victory? "Thank you," she says, laughing. "I'm awful on my film culture. On any culture, I'll bet if I asked you your top 10 movies, I haven't seen one of them. I'm just a mixed-up, awful teenager. Anyway, I think it's going to be a very, very charming film with some decent moments in it. I think teenagers will love it. Do you know something that should make the movie special? I don't want to spoil what goes on in Here on Earth, but I like that the movie acknowledges that people don't end up always picking the right person or thing, and that you have to live with the consequences."
Since the two actors who play Sobieski's boyfriends in the movie are fantasy figures for many young fans, what's her take on them? "I like Josh," she replies. "He's very mysterious, with his glance always shifting. He's always hiding under his hat brim because of the many teenage girls who are so in love with him. He's really become a great friend." And Klein? "This is Chris," she says, suddenly bolting upright, squaring her shoulders, pinning me with an earnest look and pumping my hand like a hearty politician. "Hi. Chris. Nice to meet you." Sitting back down and laughing, she adds, "He's crisp, with lots of 'young man' energy, from Nebraska and is very proud of his chest. What was also very nice about Josh and Chris is that they're both really tall, well into six feet, which is especially nice for someone who's five-feet-nine."
Since Sobieski is so effortlessly playful, I ask if she could capture the essence of Klein or Hartnett by saying what animal they're most like. Her eyes widen and she beams as she explains that she considers this very question all the time about people she meets in her life. "I've already thought about this," she declares. "Chris Klein definitely looks like a yellow Lab. I believe Josh looks like a ferret. He told me he thought I was a mouse and I got furious, and then he decided I was a bird. My mom thinks I look like a bird, too, but I think I look like a kangaroo. If I had my way, I'd love to run away and be with the kangaroos the way Anthony Hopkins was with the gorillas in Instinct."
Animal instincts aside, what qualities in a person attract her? "Mystery and intrigue," she answers right away, "When someone is hidden, I like to get to the core of them but to always be left not knowing everything. I like to be left uneasy, on the edge of my seat. I become easily infatuated, but, like most members of my obnoxious female gender, the minute there's some sort of commitment, I'm like, 'Well, that's enough of that.' I'm always on the quest. What doesn't attract me is a man who pays too much attention co the exterior. I'd rather be with someone who's handsome in an awkward way. I like weird, beautiful types." Such as? "Lukas Haas was really handsome and sexy in Johns. I find Jeff Goldblum really handsome. Anytime I play a game where someone asks me the one actor I would marry, I always end up picking Jeff Goldblum, who likes tall women. He's supposedly a womanizer to some extent, but he'd be constant fun because he's really smart. I found Kevin Spacey really sexy in American Beauty. I had a big crush on Morgan Freeman and when I met him a long lime ago, I turned bright red, and he said, 'I have a granddaughter your age.' Inside, I was like, 'I don t want you to think of me in that way.' When I was younger, I often said I was attracted to Johnny Depp, but now I'm not attracted to him anymore, Vanessa Paradis is certainly beautiful, but lately he hasn't been picking the women who are intellectually stimulating, has he?"
Given her list of crush-worthy men, I predict Sobieski could easily align herself with a much older guy. "I think so, too," she replies. "Maybe I'll fall in love with all my directors. I like it when someone teaches me. I can chatter on about my opinions for hours, but they're the opinions of a teenage girl whose ideas have been borrowed or stolen from others and infiltrated by those of her parents. I like it when someone tells me something that suddenly challenges what I've been saying all along. All I know is, it's tough to be in a relationship with an actor if you're a normal person. If I were a normal person, I certainly wouldn't want my husband to be an actor."
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.