http://nymag.com/arts/popmusic/profiles/56728/

If one could really cook emotion into food (or "stir in the love," as Carla of
Top Chef would say), the ball of cheese Mandy Moore is rolling in her hands
would become one timid, self-doubting sheep's-milk ricotta gnudi. "I can make
eggs. I can slice off the cookie dough and make cookies. But beyond that, I've
been petrified of knives," says Moore, explaining her limitations to Spotted Pig
chefs Peter Cho and Nate Smith, who have offered to teach her how to cook—and
specifically their signature dish for butter addicts. (Moore is pals with the
restaurant's owner.)



It is a big year for the 25-year-old—a quiet wedding to alt-country singer Ryan
Adams in March after a monthlong engagement, and a new album, Amanda Leigh (out
May 26), the second she's written on her own, after years of indentured
servitude to bubblegum-pop producers. Now she's determined to add "ace cook" to
her list of accomplishments. But just a few moments of watching Moore's
painfully tentative approach to a saucepan and stove indicate that she's going
to need a hell of a pep talk before her first dinner party. Then again, she
employed a hypnotist to calm her nerves before a recent gig to preview her new
CD in Los Angeles—and she's been in the biz since she was 15. Maybe petrifying
anxiety is part of the package.



Mandy Moore was born Amanda Leigh, and the heartwarming story of her career goes
like this: She saw Guys and Dolls at age 6 and knew she wanted to sing. When she
was a teenager, it was her idea—not her parents'—to record a demo, which
(unbelievable as it sounds) a FedEx guy heard and passed along to Epic Records.
"There was a sense of someone almost too young to have such a realistic vision
of who she was, especially compared to her peers—Britney [Spears], Christina
[Aguilera], and Jessica [Simpson]," says Jon Leshay, who has managed Moore for
her entire career. "It was clear to me there was a very mature person there,
regardless of her age. She already understood she was a different breed."



Moore never knew her fellow nineties pop princesses. "We got grouped together
for obvious reasons, but I was slightly younger than all of them, and I felt
like the nerdy outcast, the little sister, if you will," she says. "Like, 'N
Sync and the Backstreet Boys—I got to open up for them. But still, I was a kid.
I went from watching them on TRL to six months later being on the road opening
up for them in front of, you know, tens of thousands of people. I doubt they
even remember I was on the road with them, seriously!"



Moore and Leshay talk about those early years—when she hosted a giggly eponymous
MTV talk show, starred as a pastor's daughter in the gooey film A Walk to
Remember, and churned out catchy, fluffy hit singles like "Candy" and "Crush"—as
necessary, incremental steps to get her in the position to make a more
ambitious, grown-up album. "I'm not trying to consciously get away from it,"
Moore says of her early work. "I'm just … it was ten years ago. I've grown up.
When I think back on that time, it's like, Ack! I was a kid. I had no say
creatively in anything that was going on. I was just happy to be along for the
ride."



Much to Epic's disappointment, Moore did grow up, some time around 2003. "I
wasn't happy, and I don't think they were particularly happy. I wasn't
interested in going into the studio and singing about shoes and boys and, you
know, dealing with whatever hot producer-of-the-week they wanted to have me work
with," she says. So she used her own money to make her next album, Coverage, a
surprising collection including versions of XTC's "Working Overtime" and Joni
Mitchell's "Help Me" (Moore's dog is named Joni). Epic put out the record, it
sold poorly, and Moore and the label amicably split. She's now the sole artist
on Storefront Records, an independent label started by Leshay.



When I briefly surveyed my friends about Moore, the responses were split between
"She's still around?" and "She was really good on Entourage!" Moore played a
version of herself on the HBO series, the girl the actor Vinny Chase can't get
over. And you could see why: She was unaffected and charming. Her role also
mirrored, not uncoincidentally, Moore's dating history, which featured an array
of L.A. scenesters: actors Wilmer Valderrama and Zach Braff, tennis star Andy
Roddick, and D.J. AM. But, if anything, her unexpected marriage to Adams has
only made her more of a tabloid curiosity, which is understandable: There's the
age difference (he's 34); her squeaky-clean image versus his recent sobriety
after a debauched stretch of doing "speedballs every day for years"; the
contrasting musical pedigrees (her factory-made pop, his critically lauded roots
rock). "I guess I can understand the interest. It's a really exciting time. I
still can't get over it," she says of Adams. "It's lovely. It's just … lovely."

If you can believe celebrity blogs and Twitter feeds, the two have a positively
idyllic relationship: Star Trek double date, long hikes, flea-market shopping,
eating peanut-butter pretzels in bed with their puppy at their house in L.A. "My
husband put so many jalapeños on his burger that he is literally sweating from a
few bites. Nerd!! :) love him," reads one of her tweets. "My wife, my
hero—halfway across the world saving lives—XOXOXO," he wrote of her recent trip
to the Sudan for child-malaria prevention.



Moore, who is now learning to play the bass, says Adams had nothing to do with
Amanda Leigh—sweet, melodic, sixties-nostalgic pop about lost love and searching
for home, laid over piano, acoustic guitar, French horn, string quartet,
harpsichord, and even Clavinet. One can see the album fitting in nicely on
college radio alongside previous collaborator Rachel Yamagata and current
writing partners Inara George of the Bird and the Bee and the album's producer,
indie rocker Mike Viola. Viola admits he had a hard time pinpointing Moore's
musical raison d'être. "I asked her the day I met her, `Why would anyone want to
buy a Mandy Moore album?' And her answer was, `I don't know,' " he says.
"As an artist, she's in flux. She's just trying things. She doesn't know where
she's going to land."



She does have the goods, however. Viola was immediately struck by her voice.
"It's not the voice on any of her recordings. She's like a soul singer. She
really has it—great pitch, great tone, real range, incredible stamina." It was
Viola's idea to use Moore's birth name as the title, "because it's almost like
starting from scratch. She's trying to make a real artistic record. Good for
her! Good for fucking her!"



In the video for the first single, a fun alt-country track called "I Could Break
Your Heart Any Day of the Week," Moore, a mixed-martial-arts fan, kicks her
friend, UFC star Chuck Liddell, in the nuts. That feisty young woman seems
worlds away from the one bustling around the Spotted Pig kitchen, apologizing
profusely. On lifting up a pan: "This is where I become uncoordinated." On
flipping the gnudi: "I'm not ready for that. I'll burn everyone!" On the
horrifying notion that the waiter is going to serve the deviled eggs she's
prepared: "Oh, no, somebody is going to have to eat this?" (They tasted fine, by
the way.) "Cooking is nerve-racking. It's very vulnerable, because it's just a
matter of people's tastes and what they like and don't like," she says after the
lesson. She might as well be talking about her music. "I'm a timid person, and
I'm also a perfectionist, so I really like to take my time with things," Moore
adds. "But sometimes you've just got to … I don't know, put yourself out there
and be a little bit uncomfortable and get over it. Even if you fall on your
face."