Mena Suvari: Mena Season

Part of her thing was going up for modeling jobs and commercials, and she quickly landed some. Then, when her family decided to move to Los Angeles, Suvari suddenly gained cachet with her formerly unimpressed classmates. "The girl who had been the worst to me was like, 'Ooooh, you're acting! I'm coming out to L.A. to visit,' and I was like, 'See ya. Honey, I don't forger so easily.'" Los Angeles presented a new set of problems: "I was 16 and got teased for being from the South. I was also ahead in my classes, so I was a freshman in sophomore classes and they were like, 'Who does she think she is?' But when things started going well with my career, people were suddenly like, 'Oh my God! Congratulations,' and I was like, 'Where were you three weeks ago when I wanted to hang out and you didn't call me back?'"

Suvari insists she didn't dream of a movie career or do much to pursue one, but she had, after all, been modeling since she was 13, and she obviously went so far as to go to auditions, which tend to up the chances of an attractive young girl's getting cast in things. "I started auditioning after school because my modeling agency had a commercial division. I did a few commercials and got cast in a couple of sitcoms and in 'ER,' But when I graduated in 1997, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I thought, instead of working in a bagel shop or a McDonald's, I've got this acting thing going on that doesn't seem too shabby. The money was good. The fact that I looked younger than I was seemed to be working For me. I thought, 'I may as well take advantage of this while it's in front of me.' I was pretty much 'la-di-dah,' while trying my hardest. With me, it's always been, whatever happens, happens. I saw how flighty the business was. When you're doing cattle calls with 50,000 other girls, all you can do is to go in there, smile, do your best and what will be will be."

Suvari was clearly aces at those cattle calls, because she quickly started getting movie roles and never stopped. She's done 10 movies in less than four years. "I look at it this way," she says. "For me, it's fun and it's going well. It's better than I thought it was going to be. My family can't believe it. They're like, 'Oh, my God--our Mena!' Maybe there will come a day when the phone never rings, but then I could always go back to school and get a degree in something."

She's unlikely to do that any time soon. One of her two follow-ups to American Pie and American Beauty is a black comedy titled Sugar and Spice, in which she costars with James Marsden and Marley Shelton.

"I feel like I'm under a microscope, but I'm not about to kill myself if my next movies are not hits," she says. "I'm in the business to provide entertainment to others, but I'm not necessarily going to please everybody. I do things that I think are going to be challenging and cool. When I think about a project, my only decision-making is about whether I think it's going to be fun, with a great crew that's really organized. It doesn't matter to me that something is or isn't going to make $100 million."

OK, so how's Sugar and Spice? "It's a comedy to the core, a lot of fun and no more than that," she tells me. "It's got this cute little Reservoir Dogs feel to it because each of us wears a signature color when we're not in our cheerleading uniforms. I'm in black and blue because I'm the tough girl named Kansas. It's kind of like a girl-power flick. I hope girls like it."

Suvari has a bigger role in what could potentially be a bigger movie, too. She and her American Pie costar Jason Biggs star with Greg Kinnear in writer/director Amy Heckerling's Loser, a bittersweet riff on Billy Wilder's Oscar-winning classic The Apartment. Heckerling's clever reworking of Jane Austen's Emma, the hilarious 1995 hit Clueless, gave Alicia Silverstone a career-changing opportunity few young actresses get. With Loser, Heckerling has refashioned Wilder's tale in a contemporary college setting, and given Suvari, cast as the lower-class, tough-talking, emotionally bruised student befriended by outcast Biggs and abused by professor Kinnear, the chance for an interesting career stretch.

"It worked out beautifully," Suvari says. "It's funny and romantic, something I hadn't done before. I'd never seen The Apartment, because I don't know anything about old movies. That's one of the reasons I'm a horrible actress and need to build up my library of older movies. Anyway, I met with Amy and [co-producer] Twink Caplan and they were so cool, so completely wise and down to earth. I've been trying now when I go into a room to make it more friendly -- we don't all need to be so damned nervous. It went well and they had me back to read with Jason to see our chemistry. When it comes to chemistry, you go in the room and look at somebody and just know whether it's going to work. Jason and I were there for an hour and a half just fooling around, and when I left, I was like, 'This better happen because I would just have so much fun with this guy every day. I love the guy."

Is Jason Biggs sexy? "Of course he is," she says. "There's more than just physicality that makes someone sexy. You meet him and he's so-o-o sweet and funny." And is he more or less kissable than Chris Klein or Kevin Spacey? "Each kiss means something different in a different scene," she says, "No one was better than the other. But should we really let readers know whether there's serious kissing in Loser? OK, there is some kissing, definitely. And it was such a blast."

I tell Suvari that not long ago another actress told me in an interview how she'd had no interest in doing a movie in which her character uttered the line, "I swallowed your cum and you won't let me sleep on your couch." It turned out to be a line from Loser. "Yes, I know, that was Christina Ricci," Suvari replies. "But if you take any line out of context, it could seem rude or be misunderstood. She took it too literally. In fact, it's a really important moment in the movie because it's a turning point for the character beginning to stand up for herself in a bad relationship." Suvari shrugs, as if to suggest that Ricci's loss was her gain, and says. "I've seen it and I really like it. It's a sweet, romantic movie. You're so happy at the end of it."

Since we've been discussing the topic of sex and romance, I ask whether she's had the experience of being hotly pursued and hit-on, despite her marriage to 37-year-old cinematographer Robert Brinkmann. "I don't look for that, pay attention to it or expose myself to that by going to places where it could happen. I don't really drink or go to bars. I pretty much hang out at home, go out to a movie or to dinner. For the same reason, I haven't gotten much weird behavior from fans either." Does she understand how sexy some people find her? "I'm pretty much humble about that, I was just lucky the director saw that in me for American Beauty. It's flattering, but I don t want to be a model or a beautiful girl. Look at Cameron Diaz in Being John Malkovich--now that's so cool." Suvari is referring here to Diaz's mouse-brown frizz and washed-out face, which even admirers of Spike Jonze's little gem found perhaps too authentically unglamorous,

"If someone says I look nice," Suvari continues, "it's great. But I don't feel I've earned anything for being that way. I don't really even think about it." Speaking of that, do she and Brinkmann have plans for a child any rime soon? "I really enjoy my husband. We have no plans to have children yet," she replies. "I want to be a bit more settled in my career and I'd have to take off over a year to have a child. I still feel like I'm a kid in a lot of ways and I would never want to do that to a child."

I tell Suvari that I hear a lot of actors claim they're not obsessed with their careers when they obviously are, but that I believe her when she insists it's not what makes her tick. "Then I must be a good actress, huh?" she shoots back, and laughs. "No. I'm not fooling. That's really how I feel. I just want to be happy. All of this career stuff is great and now I'm getting offers to do a couple of period movies that would be very different for me. The fact that people are responding to me is astounding. But, honestly, I just live my life day by day. And I'm not going to die if this movie career doesn't work out."

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Ridley Scott for the May issue of Movieline.

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