From School Girl To Skull Girl - Brief Article - Interview

They couldn't keep Leslie Bibb down on the farm

Cool, calculating, and mercilessly confident. That may not describe many high school students here on planet Earth, but it pretty much sums up Leslie Bibb In her role as flawless teen siren Brooke McQueen on television's Popular. This spring, the 26-year-old beauty, who was born in North Dakota and grew up on a farm in Virginia, temporarily sheds her porcelain persona to work up a sweat in Paramount's thriller The Skulls. Sporting spectacles and hardly any lip gloss, she saves her boyfriend from a perniciously powerful college fraternity. The former model looks forward to even more grueling, less glamorous roles.

DAVID BAHR: OK, be honest: Were you popular in high school?

LESUE BIBB: No. I was really popular with my clique, but everyone is popular with their clique. Brooke McQueen is the Gwyneth Paltrow of the high school world. She's the chick. And I certainly was not the chick.

DB: While attending an all-girls school at 16, you won The Oprah Winfrey Show's nationwide model search. That must have made your classmates catty.

LB: Not really. Actually, all of a sudden some people who had been bitchy before started liking me.

DB: Were you confident you'd win?

LB: I never thought about winning. My mom said, "Let's do it, let's have a kick." I never thought I'd be moving to New York to model and then to California to become an actor. When you grow up in Nelson County, Virginia, it's not that your dreams are squashed, but your reality is tweaked. I thought I would be really lucky if I went to UVA [University of Virginia] and became a lawyer. That would be making it.

DB: Do you think you'll be able to maintain a private life as you become more famous?

LB: I don't know. Recently, I was surfing with a friend in this out-of-the-way area of Santa Barbara. After an entire day in the water my fingers were numb and I could barely take off my wetsuit. So I wrapped a towel around my naked waist and threw a big sweater on and headed back to this little hotel. Coming in, I heard the voices of young girls. I turned the corner and there were forty fifteen-year-old girls from some soccer convention. I was naked under the towel. I couldn't sign autographs. So I put my head down. I took about five steps into the lobby and out of the corner of my eye I saw a mouth open wide and as soon as I heard her gasp, I started running. My towel fell off, I practically mooned them all. We got to the room and my friend was panicked, trying to get his key out. Quickly, we opened and shut the door, and all we could hear were these footsteps outside. My friend said, "That was the weirdest thing I've ever seen."

DB: Jeez. In The Skulls, you're the sole female star in a movie about a fraternity. How was it to be amid all that male-bonding?

LB: Great. To be around that many guys in the summer was awesome. Granted, there was a lot of testosterone. But I'm something of a tomboy and felt like one of the guys.

DB: Did you overhear any boy-talk about women?

LB: [laughs] Too much. It was a learning experience.

DB: You've mentioned you'd like to take on less glamorous roles.

LB: I don't want to just play the pretty girl. That's the biggest pain in the ass about Hollywood. I went in and read for this mousy secretary role in What Women Want. She was a really funny character. The casting director said, "That's very good, but you're pretty." People forget we're actors, we play parts. I'll gain 100 pounds or shave my head if I have to.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group