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Blanchard Ryan: some actresses swim with Hollywood sharks to catch their big break. She got stuck with real ones in this summer's scariest indie
Interview, August, 2004 by Juan Morales
Nipped by a barracuda on the first day of shooting Open Water, Blanchard Ryan saw the bite as a blessing in disguise. "I figured it made me disaster-proof for the rest of the filming," says the star of the new low-budget, special-effects-free thriller about a scuba-diving couple stranded in shark-filled seas. "What are the chances that I'd get bitten twice?"
Um, pretty good, actually, given that the predators nuzzling up to Ryan and co-star Daniel Travis in Open Water were real. And though she's helping scare another generation out of the water--when the film screened at Sundance, viewers likened it to a hell-raising hybrid of Jaws (1975) and The Blair Witch Project (1999)--the former aerobics instructor and commercial actress isn't rushing to conquer the shark-infested waters of Hollywood. "This all sort of fell in my lap," she laughs. "I was very happy just doing commercials and living a normal life. That's all I ever wanted."
Juan Morales is a frequent Interview contributor who will never scuba dive again.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
