‘Dog’ teaches her some new tricks
As she slips into the swimming pool for a game of naked Marco Polo in the gritty new film “Alpha Dog,” Amanda Seyfried goes from mean girl to naughty girl.
The sex scene – a first for the 21-year-old whose breakout role was in the 2004 teen comedy “Mean Girls” – is a high-profile part of her high-profile role in the controversial film set in a world of privileged teens and gang life.
Now Seyfried, who’s filming the second season of the HBO series “Big Love,” finds herself a starlet on the rise.
Although she’s on screen less than the other teen characters in “Alpha Dog,” her character, Julie Beckley, is a key role in the drama based on a true story about drug dealer Jesse Hollywood, who was one of the youngest men ever on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list.
The movie, starring Emile Hirsch (“Lords of Dogtown”) and Justin Timberlake, follows a group of bored teens in southern California who are enamored of the thug lifestyle.
They kidnap Zach, the 15-year-old brother of a rival, hold him hostage for three days and introduce him to drugs, alcohol and the opposite sex. Then events take a tragic turn.
Julie, the youngest of the girls who hang around with the gang, becomes enamored of the young hostage.
“She’s the one who is nice to Zach,” Seyfried says. “It was a good character to play.”
On “Big Love,” Seyfried plays Sarah Henrickson, the eldest daughter of a Utah man who must keep his marriage to three women a secret because polygamy is illegal and banned by the Mormon Church.
Shooting for the series, which stars Bill Paxton and Jean Tripplehorn, will finish in March and the new season will begin in June.
Seyfried is excited that Sarah is really growing and developing this upcoming season.
“She has a boyfriend and is being influenced by non-Mormons,” she says. “She’s asking a lot of questions.”
During shooting on “Big Love,” Seyfried says she has no time to work on other projects.
However, she managed to squeeze in a guest star role on the USA crime drama “Justice” just before the series resumed, and last summer she shot an independent film, “Solstice,” with Elisabeth Harnois, who starred in the short-lived TV series “Point Pleasant.”
In the film about a woman whose twin sister recently committed suicide, Seyfried plays the best friend of the main character played by Harnois.
For the role, Seyfried was asked to dye her blond hair brown so she would less resemble the blond Harnois.
“It was first time I ever dyed it,” she says. “I went through hell to get it back to blond.”
Despite having “orange” hair for the summer, Seyfried says she enjoyed working on the film, which was shot partially in a swamp in New Orleans where the actors had to keep an eye out for alligators.
The movie, from the same filmmakers who made “The Blair Witch Project,” is scheduled for a fall release.
The birthday bunch
Actress Piper Laurie is 75. Actor John Hurt is 67. Actress Linda Blair is 48. Actress Diane Lane is 42. Rapper-actor Jazzy Jeff is 42. Actor Balthazar Getty is 32. Actor Christopher Kennedy Masterson (“Malcolm in the Middle”) is 27. Singer Willa Ford is 26. Actress Beverley Mitchell (“Seventh Heaven”) is 26.