Interview: Jessica Biel

Jessica Biel appeared classy and intellectual with her hair in a bun, wearing a khaki colored skirt with a blue blouse to her interviews for The Illusionist. The glamorous starlet wasn"t sure of some of the designers, calling herself a "fashion retard," but at least she knows what she likes.

"We tried this on," she explained. "I was into it. I just thought, "Oh, it looks kind of sophisticated, like I should be on a yacht." I just was into it. Sometimes you feel like I want to be casual. I just felt like I want to look like, I don"t know, a Stepford wife."

Perhaps she is paying more attention to fashion after enduring 19th century corsets in her new movie The Illusionist. She plays Princess Sophie, a duchess who falls for Edward Norton's magician character. When Sophie ends up dead, he must use his illusions to draw out the killer. Being in few scenes meant Biel had to endear us to her character early on.

"I just tried to create a woman that you are instantly attracted to, not just because of what she looks like on the outside but because of her brain and because of her wit and because you know that just looking in her eyes, she's got passion and there's something going on under there and she's not just walking around being a duchess. She wants more out of life. That's what I felt about Sophie. She always wanted more. She doesn"t want to be a duchess and she doesn"t want to be somebody's wife. She wants to be in love and she wants to do something with her life. And I felt if I could create that person, then you would remember seeing her on screen and you would think that you see her more than you actually do."

With such a modern feminist outlook, Biel could easily relate to Sophie despite the time difference. "I felt like she could have easily been me, just put back in a time where I was restricted by so many things, society's restrictions and family and all the stuff that you have to not do and not say and everything. I was intrigued with bringing that person to life. I also had only done modern characters, who were very expressive and talk with their hands and this and that and with her, she's just bubbling under the surface at every moment, there's so much going on, but everything's placid and perfect up here. So I was really interested in working with those elements, as well as an accent, which I'd never done before, and dressing up and really creating a person and really stepping into the shoes of someone that I really had no idea or I had no previous experience."

Accents and corsets are hard enough to pull off, but Biel had to turn it on at a moment's notice. "It was really last minute and kind of chaotic. The person who was supposed to be playing the role, I don't know who that was or what happened, but there was an opening and literally at 6 p.m. one night I got a frantic call from my agent, it's like, 'Can you do this audition tomorrow? Can you have an accent? And can you be great?' So I went in and I read with the casting director and we worked it through and she sent it to Neil, who was already in Prague. This was like two weeks before they were going to shoot. And he liked it and Edward hadn't left yet, so they brought me back the next day to read with Edward and I just thought, 'You know, I've got nothing to lose. I've got one opportunity. I'm gonna go for it.' So I bought this crazy outfit, fully decked from head-to-toe. I looked like some crazy person walking down the street. And it worked. I thought 'Either I'm gonna be totally laughed at or they're gonna love it. One or the other. And I have no inhibitions at this moment and put it out there.' And I walked in and I think there was a little shock at first and a little bit like, 'Oh God, no.' And then [producer] Michael London said, 'Oh, thank God. At least we have one costume out of the way.' It put me at ease. I was like, 'Awww. You love it.' And I had a good audition."

Biel must be pretty resourceful. Not many people know where to look for a 19th century princess costume after normal business hours. "Paris 1900 on Main Street in Santa Monica. It was a lifesaver. I bought it. I walked right in there and I said, 'I don't care what it costs. Put it on my credit card. Trust me. I have an hour. Let's go.' I actually went back later with a bouquet of flowers and I said, 'Thank you so much... I got it!'"

This wasn"t the first time Biel pulled out all the fashion stops for an audition. "The only other time that I wore a full costume, but it was still modern, was Ulee's Gold. I walked into Ulee's Gold like totally punk rocked out with like hair and a mini-skirt. I was 14, so I owned that ugly stuff anyway. But I haven't dressed up before. It would be really bad to have a horrible experience."

With Biel entering a more adult, sophisticated, perhaps "girlie" phase of her career, she has not totally closed the door on more action roles. She will appear with Nicolas Cage in the Philip K. Dick thriller Next, but it may be a while before she plays another vampire hunter or stealth jet pilot.

"Nothing really came of The Night Stalkers. I actually thought that maybe we would do an adaptation of that, but I don't know. I just don't think that Blade did so well. It just didn't do as well as everyone hoped, so no one was interested in rethinking those character. But I'm open to it. I'm open to other comic book adaptations. I mean, I like action movies. I like doing action movies. I think they're fun. It's not something that I want to do all the time, but every now and again. I would even dabble in horror again, if it were the right thing, maybe more psychological horror and less gruesome. But I would never say never to anything, because I know how this business works. And you think, 'Oh, I'm going to do this for sure and then you're like weeeeel OK, I'll do that.' Literally, that's how it's gone every time I've done anything, I've said, 'I'm not going to do that' and then, of course, I do it."

Her role in Next is more of the ordinary girl pulled into the crazy adventure of pre-cog Nicolas Cage. "I play a schoolteacher. I'm playing like the most normal, sweet, quiet, strong, kind of sassy woman who falls in love with Nic Cage's character. I fall in love with him, because he's been searching me out because he's a pre-cog and he can see into the future and he's been seeing this woman and he doesn't know why that when he sees this woman, he can see further into the future than he usually can and he finally finds her and he know this is the person he's supposed to be with and he sort of has to hang onto her and she's like, 'Who are you? You're just a creepy guy. Get away from me.' So he's kind of got to woo her and they have this kind of quick romance and the FBI are after them and it's exciting."

It's still a physical role, but not the ass kicker. "I'm not fighting or anything. I do a bit of running and I get kidnapped by terrorists and I get dragged around for a while. Dodging bullets a little bit, but not hardcore action or fighting or anything."

See Jessica Biel in The Illusionist opening Friday.