| Brittanys Multi Personalities | Brittany and Ashton talk Marriage |
 Will the real Brittany Murphy please stand up?
"What's that line again?" Murphy wonders aloud as she stares into an MTV News camera, adopting the voice of her "King of the Hill" cartoon character Luanne. "You think you know, but you have no idea."
She holds up a copy of New York magazine with her picture on the cover. "[The] poor man's 'Diary,' " she says, referring to the MTV show that gives a peek into stars' daily lives. "Murphy? She's such a little twit. ... People tell me that I look like her sometimes, though."
It's 4 a.m. and Murphy's wandering the New York set of "Molly Gunn," the first major motion picture to give the blonde bombshell top billing. A handful of her friends and coworkers are asleep on couches in her trailer. Thanks to a fridge stuffed with Mountain Dew, Murphy's as energized as ever, as pumped up as she was the night she flipped off Eminem during his performance at the MTV Movie Awards.
Like most mornings, Murphy's incredibly animated, just like her bubble-headed character in "Clueless" or the crazy-girl-with-a-secret she played in "Don't Say a Word." Last year's Michael Douglas thriller catapulted Murphy into the limelight, landing her roles in the Ashton Kutcher comedy "Just Married" (see "Ashton Kutcher, Brittany Murphy Talk About Being 'Married'), "Molly Gunn" (where she plays a down-on-her-luck rich girl forced to look after a 9-year-old) and Eminem's forthcoming "8 Mile"
"Eminem is incredible in [the] film," she says, taking a moment to relax between "Molly Gunn" takes. "His acting is unbelievable. And Curtis Hanson is an incredible director. And it's just beyond the pale, amazing. It's one of those things in life that you're about to be part of something important and that will change some things. I think this is an important film to be made."
"8 Mile" hits theaters in November, but right now "Molly Gunn" has Murphy's undivided attention. That, and the "poor man's 'Diary.' "
"See they pick me up in the morning, right, in this big, black Expedition," she says as Luanne. "And they bring me over to works. And sees, then I go over to the hair and makeup chairs and they make me look like a pretty girl for my mom, and then I go in front of the cameras and they ask me to, you know, like have emotional moments sometimes.
"So these are some of the tribulations and trials I have to go through at work," she says with a wide grin. "But they pay me a lot of money, so I deal with it."
|
| Brittanys Multi Personalities | Brittany and Ashton talk Marriage |
 Brittany Murphy's been a busy girl lately, honing her acting chops on a résumé's worth of projects from "8 Mile" and "Spun" to "The 25th Hour" and "Molly Gun." Despite her rigorous schedule, the irrepressibly peppy starlet still found time to smell the roses while making "Just Married."
"[I'm] in a wedding dress, for crying out loud," Murphy said, beaming, on the set of the romantic comedy. "I mean, when do you really have the opportunity to get married vicariously, through work, to, like, the perfect husband for hire?"
"['Just Married'] is a funny movie that you will laugh your b---s off at," said Murphy's "perfect husband-for-hire," Ashton Kutcher. "It's about two 20-somethings who jump into marriage and everybody thinks that they are too young and don't know each other well enough and that they're not in love, and they just might not be. That's what they find out during the movie."
Kutcher ("Dude, Where's My Car?") plays Tom, an aspiring sports writer who marries Sarah (Murphy), a writer from a well-to-do family who may be "a little bit out of [his] league." The newlyweds take off for a honeymoon in Venice, where they are stalked by Christian Kane (TV's "Angel") who plays an ex of Sarah's sent by her family to bust up the marriage.
Whether or not Tom and Sarah work out in the end, the actors who play them grew to admire each other while making the movie.
"I learn something from that girl every day," Kutcher said of Murphy. "She is a pro. ... She just brings it, man. She's really, really awesome. She makes me smile every day. She shows me something about my job every day. She's the best, man. I'll do anything with her, any movie, hands down."
"He's one of the kindest humans I've ever met," Murphy reciprocated. "He's really like Forrest Gump or something. He's an extraordinary person. Once you realize he does one thing amazingly, you're then shocked, and you realize that he does another thing equally as amazingly and then there's another thing after that."
Murphy's no stranger to multitasking. She surfaced most notably as Alicia Silverstone's "project" in 1995's "Clueless" and made a remarkable dramatic turn as a damaged witness in last year's "Don't Say a Word," and has since filled her plate with "Just Married" and a number of other projects.
First there's "8 Mile," Eminem's semi-autobiographical flick, in which she plays a love interest opposite Mr. Mathers' aspiring rapper. The rapper recently dodged reports that he and Murphy had become an offscreen item by playfully singing "I'll never tell," Murphy's signature line from "Don't Say a Word".
"Marshall is ... he really ... he's one of the most funny, honest, professional, hard-working actors I've ever worked with, if not the most," Murphy said of Eminem. "Such a hard worker, he blows my mind."
"8 Mile" is finished and set to be released in November. "Just Married" is also in the can, as is "Spun," an indie movie by video director Jonas Ackerlund (Metallica, Madonna) co-starring Jason Schwartzman ("Rushmore"), John Leguizamo ("Moulin Rouge") and Mena Suvari ("American Beauty").
Murphy is currently in New York working on "The 25th Hour" with filmmaker Spike Lee ("Malcolm X") and a movie called "Molly Gun," where she stars as a socialite who becomes nanny to Dakota Fanning ("I Am Sam") in an effort to impress her boyfriend.
"I've had really rewarding experiences in different ways," Murphy said. "['Just Married' was] just flat-out fun. ... Just a flat-out good time at work, good time on the job."
|
|
Will the real Brittany Murphy please stand up?