All Pop - Movies

HOLLYWOOD -- If places like Rhode Island didn't breed them and if high schools in Southern California didn't finish them off nicely, Hollywood moguls would have to invent sexy starlets such as Mena Suvari.

It's easier this way. With a background in child modelling, with a minimum of muss and fuss, she showed up fresh and ready to go with just the right blend of beauty, limited education and wide-eyed innocence. The paradoxical addition of Lolita-esque sensuality, something she of course denies either having or exploiting, just clinched the deal.

"It's kind of going okay, I think," she offers now about her career to date.

At about 15 or 16 (she can't remember exactly), Suvari made a never-released B-movie called Live Virgin. Calling it "a very adult comedy," she assures us we need not worry, despite tentative plans to finally release the sucker.

Even though her Live Virgin character cuts a deal with a porn producer (played by Bob Hoskins) to lose her virginity on the Internet, "It doesn't get to that because I get back to my boyfriend, so you really don't see anything." Nevertheless, it tells you something about how filmmakers visualize young actresses as playthings.

Meanwhile, her official film debut came in a more respectable manner in Gregg Araki's Nowhere. Roles in Kiss The Girls, Carrie II: The Rage and Slums Of Beverly Hills followed. So did last summer's trashy hit American Pie.

Teen tease

More critically, in every sense, American Beauty came along next. And Suvari was 'the beauty,' the teenaged tease who became the willing object of sexual desire for her best friend's testosterone-driven daddy.

Kevin Spacey won the best actor Oscar for his on-screen lust. The movie, which made its world premiere at the Toronto film festival last September, won as best picture and emerged as the clear-cut overall winner of the Oscar parade. Box office soared.

Which brings us back to Mena Suvari. Her celebrity comet is heading skyward. Her next film, Amy Heckerling's latest teen comedy, Loser, opens across North America on Friday. Despite nearly insurmountable odds, the filmmakers hope Loser will be to this decade what Heckerling's Fast Times At Ridgemont High was to the 1980s and her Clueless was to the 1990s.

In the movie, Suvari plays the petite college princess bedding down in secret with her English lit professor (Greg Kinnear) while a gentle doofus (Jason Biggs, another refugee from American Pie) tries to overcome his hick ways and start a romance with her. Entertainment Weekly magazine recently named both Suvari and Biggs as two of the young actors most likely to still have careers when they turn 30.

As for the present, the 21-year-old Suvari once again co-stars in a movie in which she is caught up in a troubled relationship with an older man.

"It's just a coincidence," Suvari offers when pressed about the common theme. "It isn't what I look for. It's just the fact it's age, just the fact that it's somebody younger and somebody older. It means nothing else."

In life, the older man/younger woman arrangement is a private matter, according to Suvari. "Age is just age. If you're really happy, then that's all that matters."

Although she talks little about it, Suvari is married to cinematographer Robert Brinkmann, a man 17 years older than she. She only mentions her marriage in a separate part of the conversation when she waxes enthusiastic about being named in that Entertainment Weekly article.

"That is such a nice compliment," she says of the honour, "and I hope it comes true." Not that she is filled with confidence. "God, I have no idea," she says of what things might be like for her at age 30.

"I really live my life day by day and try to work really, really hard and see what comes my way. I think really the most important thing for me about success is happiness. So I hope that I'm still with my husband and married and happy and maybe have some kids. That would be nice, if my career kept going."

And if it didn't? "I didn't go to college. I could always go back. Who knows? All I can do is keep working hard and be motivated. That's the only thing I can do right now."

Suvari, an American of Estonian and Greek heritage. Mena, named for her Egyptian godmother, comes from a family in which you are as old as you feel. Her dad, psychiatrist Ando Suvari, is 24 years older than her mom, nurse Candice Suvari.

Nice things to say

They must have raised Mena to be polite and say nice things about people. She is a veritable gush-aholic when talking about the cast and crew of Loser.

On Jason Biggs: "Jason's great. He's the best. I would work with him again in a split second. We had so much fun. I felt like I had known him a long time. I think he's so talented and so down-to-earth and so willing to just give you what you want. He works so hard. Fun! Really fun!"

On Amy Heckerling: "It's really funny because, when I think about Amy, I just get goosebumps. She's just got 'It.' She's got something."

And so it goes, on and on. Not bad for a girl who still insists she was "a loser" in high school in California, where she and her family moved after a stint in South Carolina and, before that, Rhode Island.

Suvari didn't even get to go to the prom. "American Pie gave me the experience I needed, the high school experience," she says of missing out in real life. "I guess I was a dork, right?"

Hardly. But that self-deprecation and the gushy 'Look how lucky I am' attitude are winning her friends in Hollywood.

The MENA SUVARI File
The ingenuous ramblings of a starlet:
ON AMERICAN BEAUTY: "I knew it was an exceptionable piece, but I didn't think it would sweep so much. I was blown away and it was great -- icing on the cake."
ON CELEBRITY MAG COVERS: "I never wanted any of that, but it's all great and nice. I like it. But that's not why I'm in it."
ON BEING 'IN' ON THE SET OF LOSER: "I've never had that before. (Usually) I'd go to work and do my thing and come home. I was, like, hanging out with everybody (on Loser).
It was really, really cool."

Loser star feels pretty lucky