Flaunt Magazine - October 01, 2000
What's New, Pussycat?
Rachael Leigh Cook's heart-shaped face is a testament to all the reasons little girls collect dolls. With her doe eyes and
rosebud lips, her profile is perfect for porcelain, as if special ordered for silk organza dresses and a display case.
In a town littered with trashy plastic Barbies, her woman-child looks conjure memories of a young Hepburn or Wood. Not
surprisingly, Hollywood can't get enough of her. Winning her first role at 15 for the Babysitters Club, Cook has packed
twenty films under her belt in five short years, and at twenty she's proven she's far more than a pretty face. This year
she holds her own opposite Dylan McDermott in the western Texas Rangers, Slyvester Stallone in the detective thriller
Get Carter, Allen Rickman in the small-town comedy Blow Dry, and Ryan Phillippe in the computer-world drama Anti-Trust.
The living doll can act.
"She's got a lot locked deep down deep inside that personality of hers," says her Texas Rangers costar James Van Der Beek.
"She doesn't wear anything on her sleeve, and I think that's one of the most impressive things about watching her perform.
But more than that, she's one of the few genuinely sweet people I've met in Hollywood, and that shines through. To get to
were she's gotten, you have to be savvy and intelligent, but she's somehow managed to retain some of that Midwestern awe
about everything around her. That vulnerability, that every girl mentality comes across in her acting."
It's another hot-as-hell summer day in Los Angeles, but Cook is shivering against the musty onslaught of hotel air
conditioning, her thin shoulders folded towards one another like wings. She sips her cup of hot tea slowly, delicately. She
could be the perfect guest at any little girl's tea party. But the sweet little thing who smashed the shit out of an
unsuspecting kitchen with a frying pan in those "This is your brain on heroin" PSAs isn't really the silk organza type,
especially not today.
She's been plugging Blow Dry, her new movie about dueling English hairdressers, and as luck would have it, she's suffering
through the mother of all bad hair weeks. She runs her fingers through an unflattering mane of bright orange hair, a
sacrifice made for her role in next year's live action remake of the '70s cartoon classic Josie and the Pussycats.
"Red's a bitch," she says ruefully. "It fades every time, so I am hoping they just use wigs. Here I am promoting a movie
about hairdressers, and I can't show anybody my nasty, spotted orange hair."
So much for rock 'n' roll fantasy. Cook, quiet and soft-spoken, is the kind of girl who thinks nothing of showing the chips
in the veneer, the missing buttons, lost bows. It's an attitude that's both brave and endearing in a town where artifice is
everything. For example, she isn't interested in putting a happy spin on her recent stint in band camp, where she prepared
for Josie's concert scenes. "I am trying to think of how I can put this," she says, choosing her words carefully. "I'm glad
I am an actor. It was not fun for me. I think I am allowed to say that." An eyebrow arches for the punchline. "It's not quite
too late for them to fire me."
Learing the fine art of head-banging couldn't have been easy for someone who has struggled with shyness since childhood.
("Some people I feel ok with, and with some, I am like a turtle," she confesses.) But even as moments of self-consciousness
bubble through her otherwise poised surface, a glint of steel shines through as well. She's quick to describe herself as
"not a good risk-taker," fearful of heights, doing her own stunts, and plenty of other scary stuff. But this is the same
intrepid 12-year old who made up her mind to model like the little girls she saw in the Target ads despite her mother's
reservations. "She always said I could do anything I wanted to do," Cook laughs. "She was a little disappointed when I
pointed at a bunch of ads."
Since Hollywood came knocking, Cook hasn't shied away from demanding roles or equally demanding costars. She gushes that
Stallone "was the most fun! He is hilarious!" and speaks in awe of her table reads with Natasha Richardson and Bill Nighy
(Still Crazy) for Blow Dry. Now Josie marks the first time she'll carry a film on her own slight shoulders (with help from
American Pie's Tara Reed and Light it Up's Rosario Dawson). There's no denying that the stakes are high, and Universal has a
hefty budget pinned on Cook's ability to rock out convincingly whether she likes it or not. "There's a rock star somewhere
in here," she says. "I'm not sure where, but Maybe she'll show up when we are playing in front of 50,000 extras."
She politely thanks the room service waiter as he delivers her plate of vegetable risotto, then ponders the irony of being
cast as a rock 'n' roll kitten between bites. "Here I am playing the lead singer in a band, and I can't sing-at all. Or
dance," she shrugs. "I tried out for a big children's theater company in Minneapolis, and I couldn't even get into the class
to train for the company because I had trouble with left and right. I can tell figgin' Keats from Shelly, but left and right
I still have trouble with sometimes. It's a disaster."
Of course, that's why they call it acting, and Cook's sense of direction in Hollywood, on-screen and off, has always been
just fine, thank you. Though college piqued her interest, she's had to put any plans for higher education on hold as the
scripts keep rolling in. "I could see myself hanging out in college, taking some classes," she says. "I'd like that, I really
would. But I keep finding scripts that I really want to do, and I think, if I don't do this, I know they're going to get
this other person to do it, and I'll be so upset when I see it and they're good." And she's far too responsible to give in to
the usual Hollywood recklessness. She let teenage rebellion pass her by without any regret. "I really don't know what I have
to rebel against," she sighs. "Say I refuse to do press for a movie. People will say, "Rachael is difficult, we won't be
hiring her again." There are very real consequences to your actions. It's not like I trash a hotel room and send them the
bill and keep working. I always get confused when I see people in similar situations complaining and not appreciating what
they have. It frustrates me."
She almost seems too centered, too practical to be an emerging starlet. If not for the glossy premieres, the write-ups in
People (which recently slapped her with a nasty "What Was She Thinking?" crack about one psychedelic dress), she could just
be another pretty college girl who spends a little more time studying then she should, too shy to know the guy in her chem
lab likes her. And maybe that's not far from the truth. Describing the torrid love triangle she has with costars Ashton
Kutcher and Van Der Beek in Texas Rangers, she admits such melodrama would never happen to her in real life. "Guys have
trouble talking to me, I think," she says wearily, as if she's accepted the idea but not without getting her feelings hurt
in the process. "They seem to like girls who are fun. I have guy friends, and when they talk about girls, it's always, "Oh
yeah, she's fun! She's always up for anything!"
Silly boys. If they could see past the beautiful surface, they might be surprised to find a real, live girl underneath. One
with a tough streak, and unexpected wit, a sincerity that's too hard to find these days. And yes, a girl who's fun. Not a
fragile little doll after all.
Copyright (c) 2000 Flaunt Magazine.