Amy Smart seems too good to be true. Sitting in her Hollywood Hills garden, she sounds like Snow White as she rhapsodizes about her surroundings: “I have a beautiful garden with lavender and mint, and a beautiful bird feeder with colorful jays dropping by, and a beauuutiful little bench where I sit and watch my animals play…” You can almost imagine sparrows flitting around, braiding her blonde hair, while her dogs sing a lullaby. “I just feel like this world is magnificent and such a blessing,” the actress says in a dreamy voice that has a touch of gravelly surfer twang. She gushes about environmentally friendly notions like buying grass-fed meat and carrying around reusable nylon shopping bags (“I have three on me at all times”). Her unfettered optimism even extends to the lost girls of young Hollywood, of whom she says, “I just think those people need a little bit more love.”
Oh, brother. There must be something that riles up this happy spirit. Some little bee in her bonnet. “Well…I was brought up to always put people and causes before myself,” she says. “But I’ve found it’s important to do some things for yourself every now and then. So this year I am trying to be a little more of a diva.”
Hey, she’s earned it. With nearly 30 movies (including Varsity Blues, Road Trip and Just Friends), half a dozen TV shows (most notably her role as pregnant college student Ruby on Felicity) and countless modeling jobs under her belt, the 32-year-old has been working for 17 years. Amy grew up in the Los Angeles free-spirit community of Topanga Canyon, where, she says, “I had the ideal ’70s hippie-ish upbringing. My mother didn’t grow out her armpit hair, but I did feel very free to do whatever I wanted. I hiked and ran through valleys.” After studying ballet intensely for 10 years, she was discovered by a model scout in a local grocery store at age 13. Soon she was posing for teen magazines such as Seventeen and Sassy as well as fashion campaigns for the likes of Dolce & Gabbana. “The pay was amazing. It was exciting for a while—who doesn’t dream of being on the cover of magazines as a little girl and having people tell you that you’re beautiful all the time?” Amy says. “I could have continued on as a model indefinitely, but it wasn’t something I felt that I wanted to do for my whole life. I missed the thrill of performing that I felt with ballet.”
That thrill inspired Amy to take her first acting class at age 15, which led to a job “pretending to be a coked-out model and snorting milk powder” for a 1995 MTV Rock the Vote promo alongside Giovanni Ribisi. Four years later, her first notable film role was in Varsity Blues. The movie made Amy the go-to all-American crush for teenage (and grown-up) boys, but didn’t necessarily have the impact she thought it would. “[The cast] all thought Varsity Blues was going to make us stars!” she laughs. “But it came and went, and I had to get up the next day and just keep working for it. It wasn’t as easy as everyone said it would be.”
After eight years scoring roles in slapstick comedies, elliptical thrillers and romantic romps, in 2006 Amy landed a turn in the full-throttle Jason Statham action movie, Crank, in which she was required to have sex (well, at least act as if she was having sex) in a public square, while being watched by scores of bewildered onlookers. As for Hollywood’s habit of casting her as the “supportive girlfriend,” Amy just shrugs. “To be honest, I like playing that part. If you’re typecast, at least it means you’ve made it. It’s like you have a mold to break out from.”
It’s also a role that’s close to her heart. Amy has been with her boyfriend, actor Branden Williams (Mean Creek), for 15 years, since they met at an L.A. skateboard park in 1993. The two moved in together in 2005, but “we aren’t engaged,” she says. “That is a rumor that has been around for a while, but it isn’t true. We just feel that things are working so well just as they are, and we wouldn’t want to change the dynamic at all. But I understand that change is good and natural, so we will see. I really want to start figuring out when I will have kids. That is a major priority for the next year.”
But Amy has other plans up her sleeve too. “I really think there is truth to The Secret,” she says of the popular book which preaches that if you really, really want something, you can will it to happen. “I think that it works, 100 percent,” she says. “Lately I have been really trying to take my career a step beyond. I felt ready to carry a movie, ready to have a show. Then I focused really hard on those things and they happened.”
Indeed, Amy is expanding her resume with this month’s psychological thriller Mirrors, as well as the upcoming Love N’ Dancing, in which she plays a swing-dance competitor (particularly timely, considering the public’s fascination with So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With the Stars). She has also filmed a television pilot (which is being shopped around to networks), The Meant to Be’s, about an angel who descends from heaven to help people with their problems.
And with the mention of that project she’s back into Zen-girl territory. “I was raised Christian but couldn’t stand the thought of having been born a sinner,” she says. “After a spiritual quest I started when I was 18, I ended up reading The Autobiography of a Yogi and visiting the Lake Shrine Temple [in Pacific Palisades, Calif.]. When I went to that place, they preached love. That was something I could stand behind. Meditation helps me greatly. It starts me off on my day trusting the world, rather than thinking someone is out to get me. I recommend it to anyone.”
In an industry filled with people who do nothing but think about themselves all day, Amy has to remind herself to feel like a celebrity. Smart girl.
From the August 10, 2008 issue of Page Six Magazine.
