The first time Teri Polo met Robert DeNiro, she grabbed his face and smothered him with kisses. "Basically I threw myself at him," she laughs, recalling the audition that landed her a starring role as De Niro and Blythe Danner' daughter and Ben Stiller's fiancée in the romp Meet the Parents.
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"In the script, Bob and I were supposed to be very close, and I knew that if I didn't give seventy-two million percent, I would never forgive myself. So I was all over him the entire time we were shooting. I think I drove him crazy!" In the story, she brings Stiller home to meet her hard-to-please folks and Murphy's Law wreaks its havoc. Was it anything like what happened when she took her husband of three years (photographer Tony Moore) home to her real-life parents? "I didn't really worry about it," she says. "It was like, if you can deal, deal. It you can't, too bad."
Polo says the comedy bears a certain resemblance to her career. "Everything that could go wrong did." she says with a laugh. But after 13 years of small roles in films such as The Arrival, The House is the Spirits and Mystery Date, and on TV shows like "Felicity" and ''Sports Night," Polo's perseverance has finally paid off. In addition to Parents, she recently wrapped another lead role opposite Andy Garcia in the thriller Sins of the Father. "It's as if I'm experiencing some kind of rebirth," she says. "There are people who fly to the height of stardom in a single day, and then there are people like me. I used to have this ridiculous idea that I absolutely had to be a big, big movie star. Now all I'm after is happiness."
Malissa Thompson