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.......It's 10:00 pm and Sarah Michelle Gellar's workday is just about to begin. Because so many scenes in I Know What You Did Last Summer -- a psychothriller starring Sarah, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ryan Phillipe and Freddie Prinze Jr. -- take place at night, Sarah and her costars usually don't go to sleep until after 7:30 am. "Night shooting has been really hard," says Sarah, 20, whose time-off from killing bloodsuckers as Buffy the Vampire Slayer is now being channeled into battling her own biorhythms. "It's much different being up all night watching bad infomercials than trying to be, like, coherent and working." Such grueling hours underscore the notion that moviemaking isn't really about taking Evian showers and sitting around in a director's chair. "Oh, it's really glamorous," Sarah says sarcastically, offering up as proof her substate-of-the-art trailer, which lacks a phone - an amenity you'd expect a Hollywood actor to receive.
..........Last Summer's dismal, rain-soaked set, on the outskirts of Bodega Bay, California, is as forbidding as the film's work schedule. Eerie and isolated, the set is perched on a rocky cliff right off of a sinuous two-lane highway that skims the Pacific Ocean. It's a perfect backdrop for tonight's sinister scene, which is central to the plot. In it, two couples -- Barry Cox (Ryan) and Helen Shivers (Sarah), and Ray Bronson (Freddie) and Julie James (Jennifer) -- are driving home from a party when they take a sharp curve too fast, accidentally hitting and killing a pedestrian. They flee after promising to keep the death a secret. Later, they each receive a note from someone who saw the crime, and the real horror begins.
.......Joining the cast of Last Summer was a surprising choice for Jennifer Love Hewitt, (known as Love to her fans). The 18- year-old costar of Party of Five confesses that she had never even seen a scary movie until she took the role of Julie. "I don't like horror films," she says. "I wouldn't watch them when I was growing up. But I've always told myself that I have to face up to what scares me." As preparation for appearing in Last Summer, Love saw The Shining with the hand-holding company of her costars. "I covered my eyes most of the time," she recalls, laughing.
.......Moviemaking, however, is more ho-hum than scary, even on the set of a horror film. When filming is delayed by the pouring rain, Love waits in her trailer. She kills time by writing cards to her friends and talking to her beau, 21-year-old Will Friedle from Boy Meets World. "We speak twice a day," Love says dreamily. Dressed in a long floral skirt and a knit cardigan, she looks no different from her character, Sarah, on Party of Five or Julie in ...Last Summer, which she freely admits. "I am exactly like them. But Sarah and Julie are both smarter than me," the recent high school graduate quips.
.......Sarah, on the other hand, is nothing like Helen, the skimpily clad beauty pageant queen she's playing. She bides her time inside her trailer by flipping through snapshots of herself with her costars. Sarah laughs and says, "It's easy to get cold when you're wearing stuff like this." She reveals the short, black, skintight dress that is underneath her long down coat. A self-described 'ponytail and sweats kind of girl', Sarah jokes, "I think the scariest scene in this movie is when I'm wearing a bathing suit in the beauty pageant!"
.......Despite the hour, Sarah glows with enthusiasm. Her boundless energy, she says, comes from working with such cool costars. "Love and I bonded really easily," she shares. "When I'm feeling down, she'll sing for me." (Love likes Hanson's MMMBop) The two have already made plans to go shopping once they return home to L.A.
.......The four stars have grown so close that they kiss and hug goodbye at the beginning and end of the workday and even hang out during their time off. "It's like sleepaway camp because the guys have rooms in one building and Love and I have rooms in another," Sarah laughs. "And we all have I Know What You Did Last Summer matching luggage."
.......The actors also goof around together during lunch, which is served at midnight. It's a big feast held under a tent, complete with scrumptious food like veggie burritos, grilled swordfish and brownies. "Sometimes we talk about absolutely nothing, and other times Ryan and I listen to Sarah and Love go on about how hot certain guys are," explains 21-year-old Freddie Prinze Jr. (the son of the late comic who starred in the sitcom Chico and the Man). Looking fine in worn jeans and a black T-shirt, this native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, says his lowly high school status ("I didn't have many friends, and I wasn't the best- looking guy") helped him relate to his character in the movie. "Ray is a loner," says Freddie. "He's experienced a lot more 'real life' than the other characters. . .. I also feel like I grew up differently from other kids."
.......Freddie, who now lives in L.A., has worked straight for the past 13 months (he has another film due out this month: The House of Yes, a dark comedy starring Parker Posey and Tori Spelling). He says that working on Last Summer has been great because of the friends he's made. "When you see the four of us together, we're really a team, a family," he says.
.......The cast definitely exhibits tight-knit teamwork during the pivotal hit-and-run scene. As soon as the rain stops, the actors walk down the slick highway to Reaper's Curve, where a fender- bent blue BMW is parked. A man's legs are sticking out from under it. "Ready...and action!" shouts the assistant director. Take one goes smoothly, except that director Jim Gillespie takes Freddie aside and asks him to put more oomph into his lines. While the crew sets up for another take, the actors huddle together, trying to keep warm in the 45-degree weather. Five takes later, the director is satisfied. Now the crew moves the camera to film from another angle. The actors recite their lines over and over again. Two hours later, they've finished the 12-line scene. I Know What You Did Last Summer is based on a children's book by Lois Dunkin. When Freddie read the script, the plot sounded familiar to him. "I read the book when I was in fourth grade," he says. "I really liked it, although it scared me."
.......You can find 23-year-old Ryan Phillipe with his nose in a book when he's not on the set. This River Phoenix look-alike plays Barry, an arrogant football jock. "Barry is a boisterous and cocky person. I am so not confrontational. This role has taught me how to be more assertive." Sporting thick-framed nerd-glasses and chain-smoking American Spirit cigarettes, Ryan has tomes like Thomas Mallory's The Confessions of Felix Crow and Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy strewed around his trailer. "Since we've been doing this film, I've probably read about 10 books," he says matter-of-factly, his foot tapping to the beat of a Spearhead CD. Ryan also spends his off-hours making long-distance calls to his family and friends in L.A. (An infamous phoneaholic, Ryan ran up the second-highest phone bill in the history of an Austin, Texas, hotel while filming Little Boy Blue.) Some of those calls are presumably to his agent because, like Freddie, Ryan's career is red-hot. His next film is Homegrown with Billy Bob Thornton; next year he'll costar with Neve Campbell in 54 - a film about Studio 54, the infamous New York club.
.......In the meantime Ryan and his costars are just trying to make it through the long moviemaking night. At 7:30 am Freddie, Sarah, Love and Ryan will slowly scale the hill back to their hotel rooms, exhausted but still enthusiastic. Freddie and Ryan will head off in one direction to the boys' wing, leaving Love and Sarah to kiss each other on the cheek and say goodnight.
