If you pine after one heartthrob this summer, pine after Ewan MacGregor. But if you pine after two heartthrobs, make the second Seth Green, who’s back and stealing more scenes than ever as Scott Evil in Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me. That’s on the heels of the latest teen horror flick, Idle Hands, a new gig as the voice of a dysfunctional teen on Fox’s ‘tooncom The Family Guy and another sensational season playing Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Oz. At 25 years old, with nearly as many films to his name and the snowballing rep as one of Hollywood’s funniest guys, it looks like the force is definitely with him. Amazingly, the busier-than-thou redhead still had time for a few phone minutes with lil’ ol’ TC.

How do you juggle doing movies and a weekly television series, with all the other stuff, like The Family Guy, thrown in?
[Laughs] I don’t know! We just finished Buffy and I’m thoroughly exhausted. I plan on getting some rest and getting back to it next year.

Do people ever approach you to ask about Sarah Michelle Gellar?
Mostly guys will come up to me and ask “Where’s Buffy?” and “Can you give her my number?” I usually just politely reply “No.”

Sarah is always so cute and nice, you just want to strangle her. Is she as perfect as she seems?
As far as being too nice, she’s no Jennifer Love Hewitt! But she definitely knows how to handle people.

Tell us about your co-star/love interest on Buffy, Alyson Hannigan.
Alyson and I have been friends for about ten years--we met while we were both doing My Stepmother Is An Alien and we’ve stayed in touch. For the last two years we’ve been very close.

Is it weird when a friend plays your girlfriend on TV?
We joke about it because we have to do kissing scenes. And we keep getting accused of completely lacking passion onscreen--that may be true, but it’s only because we’re both so exhausted.

But doesn’t a romantic onscreen kiss ever spark true romance?
I admire Alyson, and I have been attracted to her, but we’ve become friends and now we’re at a place where romance doesn’t really exist.

Did you know that Alyson called you a “star whore?”
Me?

I think she was kidding.
Well, I’m good friends with Breckin Meyer and Ryan Phillippe, but then again, we were friends before any of us were successful--so I can’t really be accused of latching on to other stars to further my own celebrity.

What do you think about Hollywood’s obsession with the teen market nowadays?
It’s really simple. Kids go to see movies--a lot of movies--and Hollywood is trying to make films for them. Only they keep producing junk, like a teen slasher film set in Shakespearean high school They throw a bunch of ingredients into a pot, stir it up and think they’ll have a hit movie. But they never will. You can’t predict your audience. I’ve seen more movies that I thought were so great get absolutely nowhere, and other movies where I thought, “God, how can people sit through this?” make hundreds of millions of dollars. But as soon as teen movies don’t make money, Hollywood will declare that the trend is over--only it was never a trend to begin with! There just happened to be a few very good teen movies that came out. The good part of all this is that while it lasts, these great young talented actors are given the opportunity to act.

So while the “trend” lasts, do you think it’ll help your career?
It’s nice to be included in what people consider to the “the next big thing,” but I know that soon, there’ll be another “Next big thing” and I can’t invest any time or effort into worrying about it. I don’t know the key to longevity. There’s no formula to it. It’s all about continuing to work and do things that appeal to me--and if they all happen to be the exact same character, there’s nothing I can do about that.

Are there days when you and Ryan Phillippe sit around the fire and wonder when it’s all going to end?
No, we’ve had a lot of conversations and not one of them has revolved around the “Boy, I wonder how many days we have left” theme.

Are you all about comedy roles these days?
Yeah, I love doing comedy. I love to make people laugh. But if the right dramatic part came along, I hope I’d be able to play it.

I have to confess that the funniest movie I’ve ever seen is Austin Powers--and I’m not just sucking up.
Thank you!

Are you afraid that Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me won’t live up to the original?
I’ll tell you, there’s no pressure. This film is a sequel. Nobody has high expectations for a sequel. But I think everyone will be pleasantly surprised because the movie’s really, really funny.

Tell us about working with Mike Myers.
It’s great! Mike is truly great to work with. He’s generous and funny and just...so much fun.

Can we talk about Idle Hands for a sec? What was with the bottle sticking out of your head?
They had that bottle glued to my head for hours at a time. It didn’t come off. It was a three-hour process to attach it and a 45-minute process to remove it. But I used it to my advantage--people kept getting freaked out by it so I would just run at them, screaming.

What sold you on the script?
I thought it was original and funny. And the co-star is Vivica A. Fox--she ain’t bad to look at.

There are more than 30 Seth Green Web sites in cyberspace. Do you ever go on the Internet and read all the dirt that’s being dished about you?
It’s like an alternate reality. When I first started playing on Buffy, I ran into these two girls who said they’d dedicated a Web site to me. So I went and checked it out and I sent them some stuff to help them out. But I think it’s a little too self-congratulatory to constantly look up stuff that’s said about you.

What have you read about yourself online that wasn’t true?
There’s plenty of stuff, but I’ll tell you something even funnier. There are these “Sign My Guest Book” pages, you know--so once my friend and I went on this site and pretended we were Seth Green fans. We signed all these crazy things in the guest books.

I noticed your autograph is being auctioned off at eBay.com. What does a Seth Green autograph go for these days?
I don’t know. I think it’s about 20 dollars.

Cosmo recently described you as a “Geeky but cool, cute but attainable. He’s the kind of guy we all dated in high school.”
Hey man, if women who read Cosmo think of me as “geeky cool,” I have no problem with that. I am pretty attainable; I don’t really set myself apart from anyone else. I’m very aware of my place in the universe.

Are you sensitive to what the critics say about your acting?
I read all 150 of the reviews of Can’t Hardly Wait, and I think 80 percent of them were unfavorable. So I sat down and highlighted all the stuff that was so creatively mean!

What was the worst?
One review equated the cast to cartoon animals; another likened us to Vaudevillian performers who were clearly out of their element. But hey, we all liked the movie so if they don’t get it...forget ‘em. I mean, am I supposed to get worked up because some guy at the Buchanan Examiner thinks my head looks big?

I saw you recently on Politically Incorrect--are you the type who enjoys a good debate?
I was on that show twice--the one with myself and Jeanane Garofolo was a great panel, but the second time I was on, everyone was more interested in being right and pointing out the flaws in other people. It’s a tough show. You can either defend yourself or you can’t. I’m supposed to do the show again to promote Idle Hands, and they tell me Jerry Falwell will be there so I’m kind of excited about that.

Do you see yourself being the next actor-turned-President, a la Ronald Reagan?
Man, I have no political aspirations! That whole scene has nothing that I would ever want to be a part of. I don’t have an agenda, but I will lobby for causes that I believe in and I’ll speak openly for things I think the public should know about. But I have far too many skeletons in my closet to run for President. Man, I’ve got a graveyard of skeletons!