From Pageants to Party of Five to peevish peers

Toronto Star, May 2, 2004

Mean Girls co-star Lacey Chabert gained fame on TV Mississippi actress remembers her roots, as well as our Roots

Lacey Chabert was supposed to be a boy. At least that's what the doctor had promised.

"My dad was in the delivery room with football in hand," says the 21-year-old actress, best known as Claudia Salinger from TV's Party Of Five, but who hits the big screen this weekend in Mean Girls.

"Everything was blue. My name was going to be Tony, after my dad, and literally there were moments of silence when the doctor announced, 'It's a girl!'"

Her parents were at a loss about what to call their third daughter.

"I was wearing this lacey dress that they brought both of my sisters home in. It was a tradition," she said. "So they were like 'She looks pretty in lace,' and that's how I got my name. I think I was named in the hospital parking lot."

Chabert is French-Cajun, from her father's side of the family. (He works for Texaco; mother Julie is a retired music teacher.)

She says she intends to keep her last name even if she decides to get married one day.

"I would probably just move it to the middle," she offers with a laugh. "Chabert-Cruise would be nice. Or Chabert-Law ..."

Of course there is no need to buy any blenders or monogrammed towels just yet. Lacey is happily single, but "kind of dating one guy. Nothing serious yet."

There hasn't exactly been much time to socialize lately. These days, she's spending up to 10 hours on the set of her upcoming movie, Dirty Deeds, which is being filmed not far from her parents' home in southern California's Ventura County, where Lacey still lives with her Chihuahuas - Teacup, Teaspoon and Kitty Cat.

She is also taking classes at nights and weekends at Moorpark Junior College, where younger brother T.J. is student body vice-president.

"I am trying to get my degree there and then go to UCLA," says the 5-foot-3 star. In the meantime, there's Mean Girls.

Lacey plays Gretchen, one of three spoiled rich kids who team up to torment the new girl in school (Freaky Friday's Lindsay Lohan).

Though Lacey traded formal school for on-set tutoring in the sixth grade, she too has been on the receiving end of a few "mean girl" pranks.

"I was on the school bus in the first grade and a girl said, 'I bet you can't hold up just your middle finger,'" she said. "I had no idea what it meant. And so I did it and I was flipping everyone off. She was like, 'Ha Ha. You just cursed at God. You are going to die.'

"I was 6 or 7, and so I believed her. I was just waiting for my death to come for about a week and then I told my mom."

Mean Girls was filmed almost entirely on location in Toronto, with exteriors shot at Etobicoke Collegiate, and classroom scenes at Ursula Franklin Academy and Shaw St. Public School. The cast lived together at Sutton Place hotel last fall.

During that time, Lacey celebrated her 21st birthday with dinner at Sotto Sotto in Yorkville, enjoying angel hair pasta with eggplant and mozzarella - and a glass of fine wine.

"I didn't even get carded," she said. "The drinking age is only 19, so it was very anticlimactic."

But shopping at Roots ... well, that's another story.

"I went there four times a week," Lacey said. "I bought all my Christmas presents there ... Every time I saw Roots I had to enter."

They don't have one, after all, where Chabert's from - tiny Purvis, Mississippi. "It's just a couple of churches and a Sonic Burger."

Her parents were sweethearts at Purvis High and Chabert still returns several times a year to visit extended family and friends.

Growing up, she competed in numerous pageants and was once awarded the title Miss Junior Mississippi. It is an experience she is somewhat embarrassed to talk about today.

"(Pageants) have such a bad reputation. People think it is like child abuse, and it wasn't. It was something my sister and I did together. I loved to perform. Anybody who would let me sing or talk, I was there. It was just fun. I sang at school plays. I sang at church ..."

And eventually, she sang on Broadway. In 1991, after scoring her first paid gig in a cough syrup commercial on television, Lacey landed the role of young Cosette in the New York production of Les Miserables.

That same year, she was a finalist in the junior vocal competition on Star Search. She later starred opposite Matt LeBlanc in the sci-fi bomb Lost In Space and contributed voices for numerous animated features.

But she remains best known as young Claudia Salinger - one of five children left to raise themselves when their parents die in a drunk driving accident - on the melodramatic, often depressing television series Party Of Five.

People still come up and hug me and say, "You made me cry every week, I was so sad for you,'" she said. "But as far as the industry goes, there is still this misconception that I am like 15 or just strictly a dramatic actress."

Lacey tried to break out of that mold a few years ago by posing for the cover of men's magazine Stuff.

"I don't think it is something I would do again. It worked a little bit. But I am not looking to be a sex symbol."

Still, Lacey can't help but laugh when strangers approach with comments about her grown-up body.

"Someone asked me where I got my boobs the other day and I said 'puberty.'"

At least boys don't have to deal with that.

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