Bledel's Movie Jitters

Here's Alexis Bledel's dilemma: She likes being an actress; she doesn't like attention.

"It's so nerve-wracking," says Bledel, promoting "Tuck Everlasting," which gave her her first starring film role.

"I have this level of recognition from the show, and it's taken me two years to get almost adjusted to it," says Bledel, 20, who plays teenage Rory in "Gilmore Girls," the WB TV series whose following is devoted and growing.

"I don't want to sound like a brat or anything, but it is scary to me. When I started working on 'Tuck' I was this ball of nerves, because here I was with these real actors who had won Academy Awards and everything -- William Hurt, Ben Kingsley, Sissy Spacek, for God's sake. I felt like, who am I to think I can work on that level with these people?

"I went to Jay (Russell, the film's director), and he was so good. He said, 'Use that, Alexis, because that's what Winnie's going through, too.'"

In "Tuck Everlasting," based on a young readers book by Natalie Babbitt that has become part of many schools' reading curriculum, Bledel plays 15-year-old Winnie Foster. The daughter of wealthy, stuffy parents in Victorian-era America, Winnie longs for a less constricted life.

Bledel is currently filming her third season of "Gilmore Girls" and auditioning for movies that would be made while the show is on hiatus in April and May.

"It's frustrating to hear about roles in movies that would be shot while the show's filming, so I just don't read those scripts. I just hope people still want to see me when the show's over."