Selma Blair: The Girl Who Never Gets the Guy

Pretty brunette actress Selma Blair is hot and smart so why does she always lose the guy? In Legally Blonde, she lost to Reese Witherspoon. In Cruel Intentions she lost Ryan Phillippe and it happens again in her new comedy A Guy Thing. We interviewed the dark-haired pixie and we certainly don't understand it. She's beautiful and looked very prim in her jeans and fitted tweed jacket. That short, black hair is perfect. Soooo, we asked her.

TeenHollywood: You always seem to be the girl in every movie who loses the guy. Isn't that unfair?

Selma: Tell me about it, are you trying to make me cry? [Laughs]. Is that how you want to start this off? No. I don't know what that is. I think that sometimes when you're the character actress in a lot of these movies, you're hence, not the leading girl and so, the leading girl gets the guy. In some of the independent films that I do, I get the guy. I think that's part of the comedy, and I'm able to kind of play these tightly wound girls. I guess, call me lucky that I can play them without breaking anyone's heart. I can play losing the guy without it being a sad thing.

TeenHollywood: You are also good at being the upper crust, society girl.

Selma: I don't think that I am very well known and I think that when you break into something like Cruel Intentions and you kind of have a little bit of success, and then, in Legally Blonde, kind of playing this upper crust girl I guess they think if it ain't broke, don't fix it and it's just kind been a lucky charm for all of these gorgeous blonde girls that I've worked with. I have no complaints yet.

TeenHollywood: Do you like doing independent films?

Selma: Storytelling was very important to me. I mean, that was the greatest gift that I've had so far, other than the film that I have coming up called Hellboy. They were both directors that really wrote and directed these movies and believed in them and they chose me. I'm not a star and I'm not some big box office draw. Todd [Solondz] was a real turning point. He gave me the confidence to think that I can do this and I don't have to pigeonhole myself as some teenage goofball.

Selma: (continuing) Then Guillermo del Toro called me to do Hellboy. I'm going to go and shoot that in Prague next month, and it's a complete departure again. You know, I play a young woman fire starter and I don't lose the guy. I have the affections of two men and I am the leading lady in that. I'm so thankful to have worked with Reese [Witherspoon] and Cameron [Diaz], and I've learned so much from them.

TeenHollywood: What made you want to act in the first place?

Selma: You know, I never thought that it was feasible as a girl from Michigan to be an actress. So, it wasn't something that wasn't always on my mind growing up. Although, I saw Sissy Spacek in movies when I was little like Coal Miner's Daughter and Badlands or Julie Haggerty who is in A Guy Thing. She was a huge inspiration as a comedic actress for me and Judy Davis. Actually, My Brilliant Career, was one of the first movies that I'd seen. These were all strong women that told such beautiful stories, and I thought, 'God, I would love to tell stories like this,' but it wasn't until college that I started doing theater. After university, I moved right out to New York. My mom helped me pack my bag and I went to live in the Salvation Army and struggled with it like everyone else, and loved it.

TeenHollywood: Jason Lee's character in this film is about to marry you then falls for your cousin. Have you ever been going with someone and suddenly their brother or cousin looks great?

Selma: [Laughs] God, yeah, my high school boyfriend, Tony Phillips, his older brother, Mark, was really, really good looking and when Tony was in the shower, I would creep into Mark's room and pretend that I was waiting for Mark to get out of the shower instead, and that's as far as it went. I have a sister that's just a year older, and I think that I've had so many boyfriends who have seen Lizzy in a bikini and I've never heard from them again. Yeah, that's happened plenty.

TeenHollywood: Do you think that there is something naturally funny about weddings and preparing for them?

Selma: Well, I think that weddings can be awfully ridiculous because they give you the opportunity to lose sight of everyone around you. So, it opens the door for many merry mix ups. I think that they're also something that's usually a grand event, it's very theatrical. There are so many expectations. I was very excited to be the bride, but the dress was a little tight, and everyone went away for lunch and I had to sit on a stool and watch everyone go because I couldn't undo the buttons. I'm not so anxious to walk down the aisle anymore, after I've done it twelve days in a row. I think that weddings will continue to be very popular Hollywood stuff.

TeenHollywood: What impressed you about working with Jason Lee?

Selma: His height, he's tall, and I'm not, and that was a tough one. They actually made apple boxes for me to stand on which I would fall off of repeatedly. He has a sense of humor about everything around him. He's always curious. I mean, he's so into cameras and with every shot, he'd be like, 'What kind of lens are you using. That's a fifty? Yeah, I think that you should move to a seventy five, that's good'. He was buying cameras off of the camera guys, talking about producing his own film which in fact, he is doing. He has so much equipment in his house for his music and everything. I mean, he's really a well versed dabbler in everything. He's a fine actor. He has a lot of Jimmy Stewart qualities. I'd seen him play all of these movies with guys. He's obviously a great buddy in movies but I was surprised at just how much I wanted to wrap my arms around him in all of the scenes.

TeenHollywood: What particular trait do you consider "a Guy thing'?

Selma: I don't know any girls that leave wet towels around as much as guys do. I've never seen a girl leave balled up sweat socks around the way a guy does, everywhere, by the refrigerator, by the waste paper basket as if they're going to throw them away. It's a very odd thing. It's very much like an Easter egg hunt when I have a boyfriend with the socks. In this movie, it must pertain to the bachelor party which is obviously very much a guy thing. Bachelorette parties are pretty tame because I don't want a slippery guy in a cowboy hat dancing all over me before I'm about to get married. Bachelor parties, I don't know. Why wait until right before you're married and have found the girl of your dreams to get all slippery with some very slippery girl?

TeenHollywood: Was this the first time you worked with Julia Stiles?

Selma: No, I actually worked with her once before and we're both keeping mum about it, but, despite not loving the project, we are very fond of each other. So, it was great to be back. I have a lot of repeat customers; Reese and Julia and Roger Krumble and I knew Jason, before the movie, a bit through friends. I'm so proud of the success that Julia has, and it's so wonderful to see her turn out to be such a charming, goofy woman. School is so important to her and relationships and the girlfriends she's made. I'm just proud of her and she's lovely.

TeenHollywood: Is there anyone that you would love to work with?

Selma: Oh God, everyone! [Laughs] I would love to work with Johnny Depp. I think that he's an incredible talent. I would love to work with Nicole Kidman, Anne Bancroft, Helen Mirren, Sissy Spacek. I mean, it goes on. I would love to work with Reese again on something where it's a bit more challenging, where it's not that we're just a couple of buddies spitting lines at each other, having a laugh. I think that she's just an unbelievably talented girl.

TeenHollywood: What, in your life, works as an anti-drug for you?

Selma: I'd have to say my dog. That's the most honest thing that I can give you. Having my pet around has curtailed all my negative behavior that I do when I isolate. When I'm by myself, the stuff that you want to do, self sabotaging behavior or whatever, I find that taking a walk or hugging my dog or petting my dog is the simplest thing or taking someone else's dog for a walk.

TeenHollywood: What kind of dog do you have?

Selma: I have a one eyed dog named Wink. She's here, down the hall. She's great. She's a Jack Russell mutt, I think. She's built all wrong. I adopted her from the Lange Foundation that has the most amazing misfit dogs in the world. You want a three-legged dog with a wheel chair or a dog that has no bowel control, that's the place to go. There are amazing dogs. They are mostly older dogs and their owners died. Very safe dogs, bomb proof dogs where you could throw a book at them and they'd read it. They're completely the cutest and sweetest dogs, and so, I have Wink and she's playful and wonderful and she saved me from myself many times..

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.