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A few minutes ago, Leelee Sobieski
was dashing around the patio of this well-turned-out beach-front
hotel in Santa Monica with a Polaroid camera, taking arty
close-ups of the foliage. The blurry photo I had taken
of her a few minutes before that, she busily had altered
with the edge of a fork. "There," she said,
grooving her eyes and mouth with dark lines, "me
with Madonna-fake mendi makeup. Be-yoo-tiful." About
an hour before that, unceremoniously tossed out of a pottery
studio for unknown reasons by it's prickly owner, Leelee
had been doing rather good, albeit unflatteringly funny,
imitations of the woman's unctuously unfriendly noblesse.
But now, for the moment (and Zen masters would tell you
it's all in the moment), she is stock still, sitting on
the edge of her seat, her stubbornly untanned face turned
toward a picture-perfect sand, ocean, and sky on this
beautiful, brisk day. But Leelee's blue eyes are closed
against the scenery, fluttering under tightly closed lids.
She is desperately attempting to remember what day it
is. But, she says, fighting a desire to laugh, "that's
not at all unusual." One could put this synaptic
misfire down to the onslaught of attention due to her
role opposite Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut, the
reportedly phsyco-sexual, paranoically hush-hush Stanley
Kubrick film. Or on her recent four months of religious
fervor in the Czech Republic portraying legendary teen
rebel Joan of Arc in the high stakes CBS television miniseries
of the same name (beating out the Luc Besson-directed,
Milla Jovonovich-starring treatment by a length). Or of
her exponentially expanding status as Hollywood's newest
rising star. But these facts of her life, she says firmly,
have nothing to do with her disorientation. "Ever
since I was little," says Leelee, "I've been
moving around. Sometimes I wake up and I don't know which
way my feet are pointing. So, sometimes when I wake up,
I keep my eyes closed and spin around on my back in circles."
Eyes still closed, she demonstrates by gyrating her upper
torso, her long, wheat colored hair flying around her
shoulders. "I keep turning circles and turning circles
and then I try to guess which way my feet are pointing.
But I never, ever, touch the sides of the bed. That,"
she stresses, "would be cheating." She slowly
opens her eyes. "The thing is," she continues,
by way of elliptical explanation, "I like people
who create things, do funny, weird, strange things, have
fun, but don't get out of control. Me, I can go completely
crazy. If I want to look completely strange and bizarre
and walk around that way in public, I'll do it. I'm letting
myself be silly, having a good time. Creative and unique
people who cannot control themselves, that really scares
me. I like being out of control, in control."
It is this really rare quality of common sense and wonderous
sensibility that sets Leelee apart from the slightly elder
Young Hollywood peerage of Liv, Claire, and Christina.
That indefinable something that projects her heart and
mind through the glittering 2-D veil of illuminated celluloid.
No small triumph that, in this cynical world. And no small
wonder this lanky, 17-year-old force of nature has garnered
the kind of glowing, elegistic reviews that actresses
twice her age and resume have only dreamed of. Even as
sage a source as Ismail Merchant, her producer on her
recent highly praised A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries,
has extolled this newcomer's virtues, saying that to him,
she has the appeal of a young Ingrid Berghan, "a
spontaneity that comes from the inside." But Leelee
prefers not to comment on her swelling fame -- at least
in public. "I don't want to sound like I have a big
head," she says hesitantly. "I'm having a good
time. I like the attention. But, believe me, when I first
started, I was really, really bad at this."
Raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan by fiercely
adoring parents -- her French painter father, Jean, who
acted in Westerns when he was younger (says Leelee in
a Peter Sellers-ish French accent, "he was vury,
vury handsome... hee used to wear zis shirt open to hees
waist and gold chains around his neeck") and American
mother, Elizabeth, a writer who now doubles as her manager
-- the New York City -- born Leelee (her regal first name
is actually Liliane Rudabet Gloria Elsveta) was discovered
at around 11 years old in her school cafeteria by a talent
scout searching for a young vixenette for Interview
with the Vampire. She didn't get the part, but her
interest piqued, she soon began working steadily. First
on TV, then film, in a range of scene stealing roles including
Elijah Wood's plucky young bride in the apocalyptic thriller
Deep Impact, the willfully intelligent daughter
to expat writer Kris Kristofferson in the aforementioned
Soldier's Daughter and most recently as the delectably
geeky nerd who befriends Drew Barrymore in Never Been
Kissed. "I Love Drew!" she shouts. "She
is a great role model. She is so smart! I knew she was
on her way to Japan for the opening of Never Been Kissed,
so I called her and left her an Otis Redding song on her
machine." Leelee begins to sing, "It goes Tramp!"
She warbles a loud, bluesy bass beat, then sings again,
"Tramp! What you call me?...Whoo. I love that song.
But please, please, if you put anything, anything in this
article, please say that I Love Drew!" And
Drew definitely returns the affection in acres of spades.
To her, it's Leelee's passion and enthusiasm, "her
ability to care about everything that goes on in her world
which she so graciously shares with everyone," that
makes this wonder girl so special. "[She has] an
honesty and [a] way of conveying that in life and film."
And a tall one to boot. She is five foot nine inches and
still growing, she says, polishing off a basket of chips,
"and I have awful circulation because I grew too
fast and my blood hasn't caught up yet." The waitress
brings over some more food; a humongous plate that contains
hefty servings of chocolate pudding, chocolate cake, and
praline cream as well as a separate plate of fruit. The
server issues a few warning words about the amount of
sugar about to be ingested. Leelee thanks her politely
for her concern, but as soon as the women slips back inside
she shoves the fruit to the other end of the table and
hands me a spoon. "No. This first," she instructs,
her utensil poised aggressively over the sweats, "and
then the healthy stuff." She dives into the chocolate.
"Anyway, that's probably why I have so little blood
in my brain," she says while swallowing a hefty chunk.
"It's why I'm a wacko!" A well-educated wacko
who admits to soaking up painting, dancing, and theater
around the world since she was three. She is also fluent
in French due to her father, summers in the South of France
on her grandfather's farm, and her French academy whose
thespian alumni includes Jodie Foster and Clair Danes.
That being said, she has been impressing me with her linguistic
talents by teaching me useless phrases and curse words
in Chinese, French, and Czech. "The funny thing is,
I don't know any Polish, even though my great, great,
great, great uncle was king of Poland. Look that up on
the internet bambini! I'm serious. King Sobieski. And
a Jewish baker invented the bagel for him." She licks
the chocolate off her spoon and pronounces, "I, Leelee,
am a direct decendant of the last king of Poland. And
this chocolate is really, really good."
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Leelee
also confesses that she cries and awful lot. "It's
good for me. I hadn't cried in three weeks, so I just
made myself cry in my room by pretending I was in jail."
She lifts her clasped hands above her head and wails,
"Please, please, please, let me out let me out! but
after Joan, I couldn't cry for a week...that women,
she took away my tears." And as for saying that this
is the first time that a virgin will actually be playing
a virgin? She winces slightly. "I'm sorry I said
that so publicly. Now it's going to be strange when I
do lose my virginity. But I feel fine with it. In my life
I already feel like I've good through all these experiences.
But it's not happening any time soon. It doesn't make
sense to me. I used to say, 'When I'm 18, I'm going to
to be with Johnny Depp and we're going to travel around
Italy.' He wouldn't be able to refuse me because he's
going to be an old geezer by that time. And he would go,
'Whooohooo, young flesh!' I've seen Cry Baby like
300 times...I was so in love with him. But I would take
a pass now." She adds pointedly, "Especially
now that he's impregnated Vanessa Paradis. But, Jonathan
Rhys Meyers [Velvet Goldmine]...if I had to lose my virginity
to a man..." Leelee trails off, waggling her eyebrows.
"But isn't he with some older woman? Why must smart
guys always go with older women? What about a nice younger
girl. Hint! Hint!"
A couple of months ago, Leelee tells me, not only was
she burnt at the stake, she had her hand set on fire.
She stretches them out to show me. Although the tips of
the nails have the remnants of yellow paint chips on them,
recent relics of a painting experiment, they seem to be
relatively unscathed. "I did it for Joan of Arc,"
she explains. "It was because Joan goes and meets
this victim of the plague and then has to cleanse herself
of the disease. The way they did it is you put them in
an ice bucket of water so they become numb. Then you pour
thick alcohol all over them. Then you put a torch to them
and it goes shshWwooosh! It burns the alcohol,
but the alcohol is on your skin so you do feel the burning
sensation. I was freaking out...I'm looking at my hands,
they're on fire! They were burning in front of me and
it really hurt. All the hair on my skin is still there,
so it doesn't really burn, I know," she says warily,
"but you still feel the burning. And we did three
takes."
Less hair-raising, so to speak, is her tradition of asking
coworkers for snippets of their tresses, "because
unlike somebody's autograph, hair has DNA, it can't be
faked." She hasn't quite gotten around to keeping
a solid count, but on Joan she did get Peter O'Toole's.
But says Leelee guiltily, "I think his assistant
was mad at him because he took this huge chunk, which
he couldn't really afford to lose. Peter was like, 'omigod
that's alot of hair!' And Stanley's? "I have Stanley's!
I also have the envelope he put it in, which he licked
and sealed with his own saliva. I used to make jokes about
it before the 'Dolly the sheep' thing, that I was going
to clone him."
Although her initial two-week work stint in England stretched
to two months on Eyes Wide Shut, Leelee says it
was certainly no problem. Neither was keeping her mouth
zipped shut as to the content of the film, as per the
confidentiality agreements that she and her parents had
to sign. "What I can tell you is that my scenes are
only with Tom, and the hair and makeup were bored because
they had nothing to do on him; he only got gel on his
hair, that's how handsome he is. But the most handsome
thing about him is his waist. Don't ask me why, but he
has a very sexy waist. He was wearing a suit with this
close-fitting vest with silk on the back. It was very
soft." As for the legendary auteur: "I was only
14 when I met Stanley. He was very gentle on the set.
People always ask me why he chose me. It drives me crazy.
I wish my mom could answer it because I feel like I'm
giving myself a compliment. I want to tell you, but it
sounds so corny...Oh, God, I hate myself! But it makes
me feel good to say it! Okay, if I say that it balances
each other out and then everything goes back to normal.
Okay." She takes a deep breathe. "Stanley said,
'Leelee, you're a very smart and great actress and it's
not often you meet one of those. I chose you because all
the other actresses weren't thinking. They didn't know
what they were talking about and you knew.' Good, huh?
Anyway," she moves on, trying not to look pleased
or embarrassed, "here's a funny story. Remember that
man who was pretending to be Stanely for a while, who
was going to bars and picking up young men? Finally this
man was caught, and I thought Stanley must be flattered
because this man was a good 25 years younger." (Leelee's
thought being that genius people, such as Stanley, who
had achieved such a level of the mind, don't care about
physical appearance anymore.) "But Stanley, he looked
at the magazine and the photo of this man, and he says,
'but, but he's so ugly! How can people think this
is me?' I laughed so hard...I would never had expected
him to say that. But I'll tell you something I think is
really weird. In high school, when I graduate," she
says, "I'll be graduating class of 2001."
This summer, Leelee will be on her way to the Midwest
to star in director Lee David Zloftoff's (Spitfire
Grill) Here on Earth, a drama that takes place
in a small town in Minnesota. "It's a great script
because it has good morals, good values, and it's fun.
And I lose my virginity in this one. And the director
is a very cool guy. But still," she shrugs, already
the sanguine pro, "you never know how it's going
to turn out." But, Leelee says, as always, it comes
down to relying on the moment, on your instincts and beliefs.
Like Joan, for instance? "She heard voices. She believed
them. I don't know if they were from God because I don't
whether I believe in God or not, but she did. At the time,
everything that happened, natural disaster, rain...it
was God's will because they were so bad. Whether or not
they were her own manifestations I don't know. But the
point is," she offers understandingly, "she
was really trying to follow something honest. It was pure
impulse." She then adds. "You want to see a
really bad impulse? Here it is. The voice says, I believe
I'm going to order a big cup of hot chocolate. Waitress!"
she laughs, lifting her hands to the sky. "Sugar!
More sugar!"
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