Evan Rachel Wood will not be familiar from the pages of Heat, Now, New or any of those single-moniker chroniclers of Hollywood babe lifestyles.
She might have merited a mention or two by dint of the fact she is reportedly dating Jamie Bell but that is as tabloid-worthy as the 18-year-old American southerner gets. Perversely, Wood is famed inHollywood for shocking antics but they are strictly isolated to moments between "action" and "cut", as illustrated in her new film Pretty Persuasion.
Wood's Kimberly Joyce is a sexually precocious, malevolent 15-year-old schoolgirl who apparently will do just about anything to screw people over. "It's not really that I'm going for the shock factor," she says, calling from her trailer between takes on the LA set of her latest film, King Of California. "Maybe it's just that these roles are not shocking to me. None of this stuff is news to me. I definitely know girls like Kimberly. I went to school with a girl just like her and pretty much based the role on her. I've never not got along with somebody so much in my whole life."
Pretty Persuasion is the third and perhaps last of her "shock" roster to date. The first in the trilogy was 2003's Thirteen, which saw her metamorphose from innocent 13-year-old into one adept at oral sex, cutting and drug- taking, having been corrupted by a peer only marginally less pernicious than Pretty Persuasion's Joyce. Second was last month's Down In The Valley, which saw her classic disaffected teen loner Tobe hooking up with a seriously dysfunctional older guy (Edward Norton).
Wannabe actress Joyce spouts an oddly perspicacious line in Pretty Persuasion about there being more to actresses than meets the eye, since they sometimes attend charity events and even make films with social messages. Is there a message in these films Wood wants to impart? "I'm not trying to scare people out of having kids, that's for sure. But I really wanted to scare some people, particularly with Thirteen. I'm not trying to say that every teenager is going to end up like these girls but I like the thought of making people a little more aware."
What's fascinating about Wood authentic teen Californian voice (no cheerleaders on her résumé) when she has never especially aspired to be one. She was born inRaleigh, North Carolina, to anactress mother and theatre- owning, acting-singing father, now divorced, and moved to LA with her mum and one of her older brothers. While admitting that there is a certain inevitability to her career choice - "When I was little I just assumed everybody acted" - Wood insists she knew very early on that acting was her true passion. "I had my first big film role when I was nine, working every day with some pretty big names [Kevin Bacon and Mary Stuart Masterson in Digging To China]. I remember it being so hard that I'd cry sometimes. But I was still having the time of my life and can actually remember thinking, 'Huh, this might be something I never want to stop doing'."
Something she did stop doing less than three years later was attending school, ironic given her masterful turns as a "So-Cal" high schooler. She has been home- schooled since she was 12, a reaction not to social misadventures with her own Kimberly Joyce, but to difficulties with teachers. "I think they just automatically throw a label on you when you're an actor and think you're spoiled. It was almost as if they had to put me in my place."
Most teenage actors who got their start in the business as children are at best frighteningly precocious, at worst imbued with an inflated ego.
Woods, in contrast, seems wise beyond her years sometimes, still imbued with teen awkwardness at others, and not remotely arrogant or actressy. The role she considers most like herself is Lucy in Julie Taymor's Across The Universe, a peripatetic 1960s tale touching down in Liverpool, the US and Vietnam. "She's an old soul, street smart and ahead of her time. That is the one role in my life that I said, 'I'm going to do anything I can to do this'."
Its attraction was, in large part, musical. She loves singing and gets to perform in the film, which is set to a backdrop of songs by one of her favourite groups, the Beatles. "I definitely get my love of them from my parents. I remember seeing home movies of stuff like my first Christmas and the Beatles' White Album was playing in the background. I was like, 'Aha, that's why I love the Beatles'."
Wood is clearly something of an Anglophile. Even before she started dating Bell - they met on the set of a Green Day video last year - she had admitted to something of a perpetual crush on British boys, starting with David Bowie when she was six. She says, giggling, that the biggest perk of her measured fame to date was getting to meet Bowie backstage at one of his LA concerts.
"But I prefer the experience of being in the crowd. It's fun, and there's more energy. I'm going to see Radiohead in a couple of weeks. I'm really excited about that." Mostly, Wood has a vaguely uncomfortable relationship with the trappings that come with being one of the best, most attractive actresses of her generation. When Pretty Persuasion screened at Sundance in 2005, for example, she was not one of the disquietingly rabid celebrity hordes plundering showrooms for freebies.
"I just hate all that," she says with distaste, presumably shuddering at the other end of the phone line. It is not that she disparages those who populate that scene. "I just have to come back to reality a little bit, have a real life. I'm pretty laid-back. I hang out with my friends, read, go to concerts and try and travel as much as I can. I'm not a party girl, I don't eat at the Ivy and I'm not shopping on Rodeo Drive. It's pretty easy to stay out of that if you want to. There are other places. I really like being able to go out anywhere and nobody really cares." She gives interviews as infrequently as she can - "It's nice to have a little bit of mystery" - does not appear on the cover of lads' mags wearing bikinis and, tellingly, names only one actress among actors her age whom she respects (Michelle Williams).
The others include her very good friend Jamie Bell and another friend, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (a former American sitcom regular who recently earned raves for last month's stark indie release Brick). Clearly, she surrounds herself with a small close circle of friends who help her navigate Hollywood's sometimes hostile waters. "You have to deal with that on a daily basis so you find ways to laugh at it. And if you have to be around it, you just have to make sure you're around some cool people. It's kind of fun to poke fun sometimes, otherwise it's just depressing."
She is toying with the idea of further education, in the form of "taking some courses" rather thana full-on live-in sort of commitment. "I don't think I could live in a dorm and handle all those drunk people. I've really been getting into philosophy and religion and I'd love to study some of that a little more."
And what of her philosophy that British boys are best? "They just have a different way about them. They're much more polite. I know that's pretty stereotypical but it's really true. They really know how to treat you. And mums always like them!" .
· Pretty Persuasion is out now