The "Daring" Emmy Rossum

She's classy, sang at the Met, was the "Phantom's" obsession, was a murder victim in Mystic River and almost froze to death in The Day After Tomorrow but, until the teen-relevant, indie film Dare, Emmy Rossum had not had a hook-up scene in a film!  We met with the tall brunette actress in a homey setting in Hollywood to get the details on her love scene with Zach Gilford, her take on her character Alexa who morphs from studious, plain overachiever to sexy seductress, her own awkward high school years and how she ran around New York, in winter....in a bikini on a dare at age 15! Fun stuff!

Picture Emmy wearing Diane von Furstenberg and Pink Tartan (a black pencil skirt, beige sweater with black embroidered flowers on it and mega-high black snakeskin heels.) She sipped on her Starbucks while we chatted. We learned that half the cast and filmmakers of Dare were bunking at her L.A. home while in town. Nice gal...

TeenHollywood: Some teens might see this and say 'these people are all rich so why do they have any problems'. What would you say to that?

Emmy: But they are experiencing the confusion, the awkwardness with their sexuality and the comedy that arises from that and it's very realistic in the film. You don't know people just from looking at them. Just because they have cool parents or a house with a swimming pool that they're happy and not lonely or might be struggling with their sexuality. The film is about not categorizing people and not taking them on what your initial gut reaction about them is. So much time growing up is spent examining the lint in your own belly button (we laugh). In the film you see the characters from three different perspectives and they look different in other people's vignettes. Everyone is the hero and totally likeable in their own story but when you flip the coin, the other person becomes likable.

TeenHollywood: The dialogue was very real. Do you find, reading scripts, that that is a rarity?

Emmy: That was what was so exciting about making the film. I saw the short film that this film is based on. They made it when they were in Columbia film school, our writer and director. There was so much reality in the dialogue and the characters were more multi-dimensional and intelligent than most high school characters. Almost everyone on our cast and crew are under or just over 30. We're not that long out of high school. That's what gave it it's authenticity.

TeenHollywood: Has anyone ever told you to do something you are afraid of, like the Alan Cumming character tells your character Alex in the film? Or have you acted on a dare?

Emmy: Humm, I think I push myself out of my comfort zone in my work but not necessarily in my life.  But dares? Yeah, when I was 15, I was at a pool party in Manhattan. We ordered Chinese take-out.  We were in our bikinis and when we went to the door to get it, soaking wet without shoes on, I think the delivery guy was super confused. On a dare, my friend said, 'we should get that reaction out of more people. Let's run down Madison Avenue without our shoes on, soaking wet in our bikinis in the middle of winter! I dare you'. So, I did it with a bunch of my friends. We have pictures which I hope will never surface. I was 15 it was before any of my films came out. We did run by a couple of bistros at night and some patrons came out and gave us applause. We felt like Lance Armstrong on the last leg of the Tour de France. It was great!

TeenHollywood: Hilarious! So, how do you see your character Alexa?

Emmy: You see that she's this repressed, type A, can't really connect to her feelings, kind of lonely girl who wants to be an actress while Johnny (her boyfriend played by "Friday Night Lights" Zach Gilford) seems like just the jock and untouchable but you realize he's actually the loneliest boy in school. Even though he seems the strongest, Alexa actually becomes the aggressor.

TeenHollywood: You have friends becoming more in the movie. Teens are struggling with this. Do you actually think there can be such a thing as "friends with benefits"? Does that actually work in the long run?

Emmy: No way.  But, in this film, I think these characters are more exploring who they are and who they're not and what their sexuality is (than trying to set up a friends with benefits situation)l.  There are moments of awkward funniness as there are with sex when you are young but I think, more than anything, it becomes this game of who can win and these two loners who are best friends, are fighting over this ultimate, what seems to be the bad boy who is so vulnerable and fragile that they hurt him in the end. He was actually the weakest.

TeenHollywood: Alexa, trying to play Blanche DuBois in "Streetcar", is just ripped apart by Alan Cumming's actor character in the film. She's told to basically get some lovelife or just a life in general experience before she tries to act. Now, very young actors are probably looking up to you to give them advice. Did the scene really resonate with you?

Emmy: Yeah.  I really love that scene. I've had experiences with people who have done that to me. There are two approaches to trying to coach or help someone; break you down to build you up, which I don't believe ever works. Undermining somebody's confidence or hurting them or telling them they are no good, I don't think anything good ever comes of that. He kind of messes with her. It's the first knife in her stomach that really hurts her. He causes her to go about everything in the wrong way. I would never do that to somebody. The other way is to be encouraging because I know that's how I deal best.

TeenHollywood: Wasn't that a hard scene for you though, to listen to that kind of negative stuff from him?

Emmy: It's not that hard for me to go there emotionally. It's harder for me to watch somebody else or to be aggressive. The last scene where we are kind of being aggressive to Johnny and he's breaking down, that was harder for me, to watch somebody else in pain than it is for me to be in pain.  I'm generally somebody who wants to comfort, put a Bandaid on it and make it all better. It's harder for me to watch another a actor in pain and be aggressive to them than it is to have aggression come towards me. It was funny actually, shooting that scene with Alan Cumming. Between takes he was going 'I'm sorry I'm being so mean to you.  It's not me being mean to you, Emmy'. I was like 'Alan, I know. We're actors. It's fine.'

TeenHollywood: Who were you as a teen? Were you homeschooled?

Emmy: I went to school until seventh grade and then I was already singing and working at the Metropolitan Opera so I homeschooled on the internet through Stanford University's Epgy program and graduated and briefly went to Columbia before I got Mystic River and Day After Tomorrow and Phantom and then kind of ceased my education.  

TeenHollywood: But were you anything like Alexa?

Emmy: I guess I was definitely a creative geek. I was short and kind of pudgy (we say "no way!")  No one believes that but it's true. And I loved music and musicals and I just walked around singing all the time and pretended to play drums on my desk. I think that's why my second grade teacher sent me to the opera to audition. It was like 'you have way too much energy. You can not sit still in a classroom'.  I really loved learning and I was kind of a kiss ass to my teacher. I always wanted to be perfect when I was younger.  I believed that, if I could be perfect, then everything would be fine.

TeenHollywood: So you were you a good student like Alexa?

Emmy: Well, I remember one time I'd hadn't studied enough for a test and I really wanted to do well so I wrote all the answers that I thought she would ask on my hand and totally aced the pop quiz.  Later on in the class, being the kiss-ass that I was, when she asked a question, I raised my hand real high and she said 'what is that on your hand?' That would be the only time I tried to get away with cheating in school.  It really didn't work.  That's just indicative of who I was.  I always wanted to be perfect and thought that everyone would like me if I was. Not true.

TeenHollywood: You are an amazing singer. Are you still working on your music?

Emmy: I'm between album cycles now so I'm still writing and thinking and dreaming and trying to figure out what kind of tone I would want in my next record.

TeenHollywood: How has going on the road with your music or recording in the studio?

Emmy: I think sometimes it's actually easier to share things in a live setting with thousands of people, in a less intimate way than it is with just a few people in the room.

TeenHollywood: Back to the film. Do you think this subject of searching for who you are including your sexuality is going to ring true with high school teens?

Emmy: What was interesting to me about the way the sex is depicted in the movie, first, there is no nudity and even though it feels very sexy, it feels more like we're trying to get to know the characters emotionally and how they function through sex.  It's a very emotional thing for them as it is when you are younger.  It's very awkward. There's all this 'how do I do this?' And that comes across in the film so yes. The scene with Johnny was the first sex scene I'd ever done so it becomes difficult when you are shooting it over and over again and there are 30 crewmembers watching. But, by the time we had shot those scenes, we were so far into shooting the movie that we had all become so close and were shooting quickly, we were hanging out on set together and we had become friends. We are all friends and we talk almost every day. We love each other like brothers and sisters. Half of them are staying at my house right now.

TeenHollywood: Alexa is really taking charge in that scene whereas, earlier she was so inhibited.

Emmy: She's approaching loosening up in the same kind of deliberate way she approaches everything so, for me, it's almost as if Johnny doesn't really exist to her in that scene.  She doesn't think she can effect him in any way. This is something she needs to do to get to where she wants to be as an actress. It's like she is forcing herself.  It's very bizarre and unnatural.

TeenHollywood: Do you think that people, in general, are not what they seem on the surface or is it just that teens are still searching for who they are?

Emmy: A combination. When you are young you try a bunch of different approaches and see which one fits you or a combination of a few.  I also think people aren't as easily categorizable as you would think.

TeenHollywood: You can still believably play a teenager but you are in your 20's now. You are bringing the young adult approach. Are you going to say 'no more teenaged roles'?

Emmy: Yes and no.  I think it's completely dependant upon the project and also the time period that you are playing. I think an 18-year-old now is completely different than an 18-year-old in the 1800's when they were getting married and had probably already popped out four kids. It's just if I can connect to the role and think I can believably play it. In a few years, when I start having crow's feet, we'll talk about it.

TeenHollywood: You avoid the young Hollywood party scene. Was that a conscious choice?

Emmy: I think it's easy to become a workaholic.  I think I'm definitely prone to it. I love to work.  I love to be on set.  I love the family environment that I really didn't have growing up because I don't have a big family at all. It's a conscious decision to only work on projects that mean something to me and are fun to make and to also not to burn myself out fast.  

TeenHollywood: Has Alexa come full circle at the end of the film?

Emmy:  I think, in the end, she's realized that she hurt someone and she needs to take a step back in life and not push herself so fast and just be a real person and figure out who she really is. The last line in the movie is 'are you in the ensemble (meaning a group of actors)?' and she says 'no' and he says 'well then who are you supposed to be?' It's a question that all the characters have to ask themselves at the end and I think everyone in the audience might too. It's the last thing you are left with 'who are you supposed to be'?