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Celebrity Interview

Devil or Angel?
Mandy Moore skewers her image with 'Saved!'

By Angela Dawson
Entertainment News Wire

HOLLYWOOD -- Despite her squeaky clean image, actress/singer Mandy
Moore has a naughty side, in a harmless sort of way.

To break the ice at the launch party for her new comedy, "Saved!,"
she instigated a food fight. Well, it wasn't exactly a food fight.
It was more a food-throwing incident. Twenty stories up in a
Vancouver hotel.

"I got these dumplings and they were horrible," recalls Patrick
Fugit, Moore's babyfaced co-star.

"She said, 'They're bad? We should just throw them off the balcony.'
And we did."

Soon other members of the young cast joined in, hurling dumplings,
egg rolls, marshmallows -- you name it -- at various individuals and
objects below.

The story seems like something generated by the studio's publicity
department to hype the movie. That is, until Moore and her cohorts
are spotted on a 15th floor balcony of a Beverly Hills hotel pulling
the same shenanigans during a press junket. Confronted later, Moore
admits that nostalgia combined with restlessness prompted the young
Hollywood hipsters to behave like 13-year-olds on a field trip.

Aside from these occasional outbursts, Moore, 20, is growing up to
be a mature, down-to-earth young lady. In "Saved!," the Orlando,
Fla., native pokes fun at her wholesome image, playing an
overzealous born-again Christian named Hilary Faye. It's her second
movie with a religious theme, but the two couldn't be more different.

In "A Walk to Remember," she played a minister's daughter who always
seemed to know the right thing to do. In the irreverent "Saved!,"
she plays the queen bee at a Christian school who makes life
difficult for those that don't share her narrow interpretation of
the Bible. They include her disabled brother, Roland (Macauley
Culkin), and best friend Mary (Jena Malone).

Moore talked to Entertainment News Wire about "Saved!," her music,
her recent breakup with tennis star Andy Roddick and her hopes for
the future.

Entertainment News Wire: Hilary Faye is kind of a mean girl, don't
you think?

Mandy Moore: No. She's just a little misguided.

ENW: Did you have cliques at your high school?

Moore: Oh, absolutely. There are cliques in Hollywood. There are
cliques in every aspect of life.

ENW: Did you draw from personal experience for this character?

Moore: Not really. A lot of it comes down to the writing. I felt
like with Hilary Faye, I had to walk a fine line where she wasn't
just a complete bitch, that she did have a heart. There had to be
something that grounded her, because she could've easily been over
the top and just a complete caricature. But then how would she have
been the most popular girl in school? So there had to be something
about her that was really likable to people and that people were
able to sort of write off that she's a little crazy sometimes.

ENW: She has a lot of inner rage?

Moore: Yeah.

ENW: How do you deal with anger?

Moore: Through acting. Why not? It's using a little bit of that. I'm
not a very angry person. I do tend to lose my temper about stupid
things, like traffic here in L.A. It makes me crazy. Crazy. I guess
that acting is a great outlet for expressing myself in a way --
being sad about something or being angry. The other day we were
filming a scene where someone had died and we just found out the
news and I was so scared about the scene for the whole shoot. I was
like, "How am I going to be able to burst out into tears?" Then, on
the day I had to shoot the scene, I don't know where I went and what
I thought about, I just started sobbing uncontrollably. It happened
with "Saved!" too. You're just like, "Where did that come from?"

ENW: You wear a fat suit in a flashback. Was that fun?

Moore: Yeah. I had ice cream and cotton candy smeared all over my
face. My hair was all ratted and I had pimples. It was great. I
mean, I loved the idea of really just being able to transform myself
like that for a role.

ENW: Where do you see yourself going?

Moore: I don't know. I think that I'm still trying to figure that
out. I'm trying to take it day by day and project by project. I've
just been so lucky with "Saved!" and the film that I just finished,
John Turturro's "Romance & Cigarettes." It's just about doing stuff
that feels right.

ENW: Was "Saved!" a conscious choice to break out of the good girl
image?

Moore: I don't think by doing this film I'm going to alienate the
Christian fan base that liked me from "A Walk To Remember." You
can't really base your decisions on people's preconceived notions of
who you are. I'm just trying to continue to do stuff that satisfies
me and challenges me. It's not about making those decisions for
other people. In "Romance & Cigarettes," I have this sort of crazy
make-out scene with this actor. And we were laughing because we're
just really going at it. I said to John (Turturro), "maybe people
will finally see that I'm not this sort of wholesome goody-goody."

ENW: It was scary how well you tackled the role of Hilary Faye.

Moore: Maybe there's a lot of Hilary Faye in me and I just don't
know it. Maybe I got that sort of aggression and anger out playing
her.

ENW: Were there personal things you could relate to?

Moore: I went to Catholic high school for, like, half a year. And
religion was almost, like, not necessarily taboo to talk about, but
it wasn't the cool thing to talk about. We had theology class and we
went to Mass every Friday, but it wasn't the sort of thing that you
talk about with your friends. When we were in Canada making this, we
went to this Christian youth rock concert and they had someone kind
of doing a sermon there and this rock group performed. I was looking
around at people my age and going, "This is their life. This is what
grounds them and is important to them." I didn't realize that there
is this sort of underground youth Christian movement. It's pretty
incredible.

ENW: Did you do anything special for your 20th birthday?

Moore: No. I was in New York filming. A bunch of my friends came up.
A bunch? Like two or three of my friends came to New York, and my
parents were there, and they sort of had a bit of a surprise party
for me. I thought that I was just going to go to dinner with four or
five people and it ended up being like 15, and it was really fun.

ENW: Do you feel grown up now?

Moore: Kind of. But I've kind of felt this way for a while. I guess
my age is just kind of catching up with me. I've felt like an adult
for quite some time. I guess that it's just the responsibility that
comes along with everything. It's weird, because most of my friends
are quite a bit older than me. I'll hang out with some of my
girlfriends who are in college and I feel like I don't understand
completely everything that they're going through because I'm not in
college. I just sort of have led a different life than they have.
It's weird because lately I've found myself going, "I can't really
relate in that sense." I wish that I could, but I just don't
understand. I don't go to school and stay up late working on
research papers and waking up to go to class and being tired.

ENW: Would you like to attend college at some point?

Moore: It's not necessarily on my radar right now. That's not to say
that I don't want to get some extended studies in some sort of
curriculum just to keep my mind occupied. I feel like sometimes even
with all of the reading that I do and all the interesting people I
meet, my brain can start to go to mush. I just need my mind to be a
little bit sharper sometimes.

ENW: How would you have time with your busy acting and music career?

Moore: If you want to do something you can always find time for it.
I want to take cooking classes. I want to take flying lessons. I
can't keep procrastinating. I need to be a little more proactive
about stuff.

ENW: Are you getting over your breakup with Andy?

Moore: Yeah. Life is good.

ENW: Your relationship was well-publicized. What did you learn from
that experience?

Moore: I learned that I'm not going to talk about my personal life
anymore.

ENW: You've admitted you're a bit of a shopaholic. What do you buy?

Moore: Clothes, but not just for me. I love shopping for friends and
family and stuff. I'd much rather buy stuff for other people than
for myself. It's so much more fun to see people get stuff. Besides,
I don't go out and spend $10,000 a day on stuff. I'm not frivolous.
I love jeans and T-shirts. I'm eternally shopping for those. I have
a hundred pairs of jeans. I don't buy jewelry, cars or houses.

ENW: Are you going to join the ranks of other celebrities and start
your own clothing line?

Moore: Yeah. It's sort of in the works. It's a line of T-shirts that
have to do with music. There are some quotes from my favorite songs.
I'm involved with the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, so I wanted to make
the shirts and have some of the proceeds go to the society.

ENW: Are you working on another album or movie?

Moore: I'll work on an album this summer and maybe a film will sort
of come about. They're always sort of lying about. It's kind of nice
not knowing exactly what I'm going to do.

ENW: Are you proud of the music you've done?

Moore: I'm proud of the last record, "Coverage," and some of the
songs on the album before that, but anything earlier than that, uh-
uh. No.

ENW: Did you outgrow it?

Moore: No. I didn't even necessarily like it at the time, but being
a young artist and not necessarily having my voice heard -- just
because maybe I was a young person -- I ended up having to sing a
lot of music that I'm not really proud of or passionate about.
That's not a fun feeling. So I'm really glad to be at the age and
with a group of people and a new label that really allows me to be
creative and collaborative, but with my own opinion being heard.
There's nothing worse than schlepping out on the road and singing
and dancing when it wasn't me at all in the beginning. I just want
to make the coolest pop record I can. I feel like I'm in a
completely different place now. I actually have something to say and
something to write about. And I haven't in the past.

ENW: Did you get feedback from any of the artists you covered on the
last album?

Moore: Elton John told me he loved it. He gave me a hug and a kiss.
I've seen him a couple of times, actually. He's so wonderful. He's a
great, generous, lovely man. I've been so flattered that he even
took the time to listen to it. Carole King really liked my version
and so did Carly Simon. Those are three people that I heard from. I
was like, "Oh my God, these people have heard my voice. They know
that I'm a singer and they know that I've sung their songs." That's
just way too much for me to process.