Movieline

Busy Philipps: Keeping Busy

Age: 24 Hometown: Scottsdale, Arizona ALL DOLLED UP: Before her stint as the hard-partying Audrey on the final two seasons of Dawson's Creek culminated in a drunken Christmas car crash into Dawson's living room and a trip to rehab, Busy Philipps was working the toy fair circuit in New York as a real-life Barbie doll for Mattel.

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"They dress you up like a giant version of the doll. Toy buyers come and you have to give them this speech about projected sales and price points," Philipps explains. "One of the other Barbies introduced me to my first manager. If I hadn't done that, who knows how long it would have taken me to break into the business." HAPPY BIRTHDAY: On June 25, Philipps will have two causes for celebration: she turns 25 and her new movie, White Chicks, will just have hit theaters. It stars Marlon and Shawn Wayans as FBI agents who attempt to save the very rich (and very white) Wilton sisters from a kidnapping plot by assuming the heiresses' identities and infiltrating their Hamptons social whirl. Philipps, who plays one of their socialite friends, says it was easy to pretend the Wayans were the Wiltons. "Once they got into their makeup and started doing their thing, they were always in character. We would all just stand around and chat it up like girls." CAMERA SHY: On a recent trip home from working out with her personal trainer (she's toning up for a new Conan O'Brien-produced pilot she's starring in with Macaulay Culkin), Philipps was stalked by paparazzi for the first time. Yet she's convinced it was a case of mistaken identity. "I don't see how anyone would pay for pictures of me," she laughs. "My hair was back, so I was like, 'Holy shit, I bet they think I'm somebody else!' I said, 'I'm not famous. I'm not who you think I am.' It's horrifying. It made me never want to read Us Weekly again."

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Melissa Quinlan