I have also added a behind the scene video to our video archive and captures have been added to the gallery. You can read a part of the magazine interview too under the cut, enjoy!

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While the older generations might have their Audreys and their Marilyns, these days, the true litmus test of an actress’s broader youth-culture currency is not whether she’s commonly referred to by her first name only—it’s whether she has been deemed worthy of a moniker that’s an amalgam of her first and last names, like ScarJo and K-Stew and LiLo (not to mention K-Stew’s boyfriend, R-Patz). But collapsing one’s name isn’t a badge of approval so much as a mark of obsession. It doesn’t mean that you’re better at what you do than anyone else. It doesn’t mean that you’re unconditionally beloved. Rather, it signifies that you’ve become an object of fixation, which is usually preceded by some sort of professional watershed, or an association with an overwhelming cultural phenomenon, or because you’re frequently photographed looking shiny and heavy-lidded while straddling a banquet at Trousdale in a short skirt and stilettos, an unlit cigarette wedged backwards into the corner of your mouth.

So if you’ve seen the trailer for the new film Red Riding Hood—original Twilight (2008) director Catherine Hardwicke’s new gothic pastiche reimagining of the children’s fairy tale and other “My, what big teeth you have!” source material—then you understand why 25-year-old Amanda Seyfried is now perfectly positioned to become “AmSey” or “AmaSe” or, our personal favorite around the Interview offices, “MandaFried.” Appropriately, Red Riding Hood features a conspicuously Twilight-esque setup, set in a medieval village that has been engaged for decades in a mysterious arrangement with a homicidal entity known only as The Wolf (they bring the wolf periodic offerings of goats and other livestock; in exchange, he doesn’t kill anyone). The story is centered around Valerie (Seyfried), a young woman with a soft spot for red-hooded outerwear, who finds herself at the center of a love triangle, torn between her fiancée, Henry (Max Irons), and Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), her childhood best friend who has just returned to the village after a decade away. As Valerie and Peter discover their new, more adult feelings for one another, they plot to run away together. Simultaneously, The Wolf, whose identity remains elusive to the villagers, decides to break the détente, as Team Henry and Team Peter begin to form. Hyper-real, supernatural, grey-skied teen terror-love—the key elements of that rare clean-energy source that seems to fuel youth-culture mania in its most extreme forms—ensues.

Seyfried’s spiked wholesome charm has never been difficult to grasp. Blonde and blue-eyed, with a kind of at once earthy and otherworldly beauty, she has embarked on a career that has been a model of cross-gender appeal, earning her plenty of female fans, but just as many male ones, as she has moved with relative ease between softer, more mainstream projects in which she plays lovelorn young women and innocents adrift, and less traditional, occasionally risky fare in which she works to both reinforce aspects of that image and unceremoniously debunk it. She hails from the post-industrial city of Allentown, Pennsylvania (of Billy Joel fame) and trained as a classical vocalist. She first entered the cultural consciousness at 18 in Mean Girls (2004) as Karen, the most hilariously neoprene of the so-called Plastics, who claims to be able to forecast the weather with her breasts. She’s gotten to flex her musical muscles as an ABBA-infatuated dreamer in 2008’s Mamma Mia! (in which she got to sing), show off her darker side as a teenage assassin of a possessed cheerleader in 2009’s Diablo Cody–scripted Jennifer’s Body (in which she got to make out with Megan Fox), and as a hooker with a heart of coal in Atom Egoyan’s angular erotic thriller Chloe the same year (in which she was required to do nude scenes). Since then, she’s demonstrated her ability to drive the masses to puddles as an all-American heartbreaker in films like the Nicholas Sparks–based tearjerker Dear John (2010) and the high-romance drama Letters to Juliet (2010), and develop a character across five seasons as a polygamist’s daughter on the just-concluding HBO series Big Love. This fall, Seyfried will venture even further afield, starring alongside Justin Timberlake (and playing a redhead) in Andrew Niccol’s new futuristic, dystopian thriller Now, on which she recently wrapped principal photography. Timberlake and Seyfried connected by telephone between shoot days as they were winding down production on the film.
JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE: Let’s talk about this new movie you’ve done, Red Riding Hood, which is a retelling or reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood. Obviously, everyone knows the story, but how did you guys approach it? As you were making that movie, did you feel like you were in a fairy tale? Or did you guys juxtapose the more playful aspects of the story with something a little more grounded?

AMANDA SEYFRIED: Well, aside from the major supernatural element to it, like the wolf speaking, it felt pretty grounded. [Timberlake laughs] We applied modern-day relationship dynamics to the story. It’s a thriller, it’s a whodunit, and it could have taken place during any period in history. But our version is set in medieval times, which were really romantic and gothic, so it’s a bit darker.

TIMBERLAKE: The film looks beautiful. It looks sort of whimsical. Did you have a favorite fairy tale as a child?

SEYFRIED: I really liked The Stinky Cheese Man [and Other Fairly Stupid Tales] book.

TIMBERLAKE: The Stinky Cheese Man?

SEYFRIED: Do you remember that?

TIMBERLAKE: I don’t. I don’t think I was lucky enough to have heard of it. What is that?

SEYFRIED: They’re parodies of every fairy tale that we hear as kids. Like, it’s the Stinky Cheese Man instead of the Gingerbread Man.

TIMBERLAKE: Ah-ha. Okay, I get it.

SEYFRIED: I got into those books because I didn’t like fairy tales when I was younger. I found a lot of fairy tales scary. They really didn’t sit well with me. But I’ve always loved movies that have that kind of fantastical element to them. I was obsessed with Romeo + Juliet [1996]. I was, like, 11 when it came out.

TIMBERLAKE: You mean the Baz Luhrmann version?

SEYFRIED: Yeah. I watched it all the time. I couldn’t stop watching it. Leonardo DiCaprio was my absolute favorite. I was just so inspired by that movie, for whatever reason. It’s beautiful. It’s bright. It’s vivid and intense. And then the love story and the soundtrack . . . I probably shouldn’t have seen it as young I did, but I did and I loved it.

TIMBERLAKE: What was the first R-rated movie that you saw?

SEYFRIED: I think it was Hideaway [1995], that movie with Alicia Silverstone and Jeremy Sisto where he plays the second coming of Satan. Things weren’t good for a few months after that. I couldn’t sleep. I had insomnia for, like, three months. I love Jeff Goldblum, who is also in that movie. But that’s another story. [laughs]

TIMBERLAKE: It seems like a lot of people are comparing Red Riding Hood to the Twilight series. How does that make you feel?

SEYFRIED: I think it’s hard not to compare Red Riding Hood because Catherine [Hardwicke] directed the first Twilight. But Red Riding Hood is a very different film. I mean, yeah, there’s a love triangle, and people can easily compare the relationship between Kristen Stewart and those two guys in Twilight to the Valerie, Henry, and Peter characters in this movie, but we have so many elements that make it completely different. Nobody knows who the wolf is in our movie. And we’ve modernized the story and added so many levels to it and created our own story around the iconic center, which is the girl in the woods who talks to the wolf, and has a great relationship with her grandmother, and all those symbols. But we obviously had to take the story to a whole other level in order to make it a full-length film, so that’s what we did.

TIMBERLAKE: But I would imagine that it’s hard to do something like a Little Red Riding Hood adaptation because that story could be interpreted in so many different ways.

SEYFRIED: I know, and what we’ve done is just one way. We’re just telling a story—our version of the story. It’s not everybody’s version of the story, but it’s the way we wanted to make it, and therefore, there it is. If you don’t like it, then tough. [laughs] Plus, Twilight doesn’t have Gary Oldman, now does it?

TIMBERLAKE: No, it doesn’t. I sort of wish Gary Oldman could live in my house and we could cook breakfast together and he could just tell me how to be better at everything, because I feel like he would know.

SEYFRIED: He might be up for that. He knows how to act and how to be funny.

TIMBERLAKE: Maybe he could just teach me how to cook. Even that would be enough.

SEYFRIED: [laughs] I think I should mention that I’m not wearing any clothes.

TIMBERLAKE: Well, if that’s how you’d like to be interviewed, then that’s totally fine.

SEYFRIED: I’m most comfortable in my birthday suit.

TIMBERLAKE: It’s a free country—from what I’m told. But maybe this is a good opportunity then for us to go back to the beginning. You grew up in Pennsylvania?

SEYFRIED: In Allentown, yes.

TIMBERLAKE: How big is Allentown?

SEYFRIED: It’s close to Philly. It’s the third largest city in Pennsylvania.

TIMBERLAKE: Were you always into the arts? Or was that something that you got into as a teenager?

SEYFRIED: I went to art school when I was little. I took ballet lessons. I played a little kick ball. I was sort of into everything because I had too much energy and I didn’t know where to put it. When I was a preteen, I got into singing, and became really obsessed with it. But then, of course, that didn’t work out.

TIMBERLAKE: It sort of did. I mean, you’re getting opportunities to sing on film now in movies like Mamma Mia!

SEYFRIED: That’s true.

TIMBERLAKE: It’s funny to me that the industry is so split up now when it comes to acting and singing. I mean, if you look back to the entertainers of another era—the era of showmanship—all of those people, male and female, were skilled at both acting and singing. It was more about performing. It has probably had an effect on the way popular music has gone because a lot of the music that was from that era came from movies.

SEYFRIED: I think my singing background has actually helped me tremendously. It certainly has something to do with why I am doing what I am doing today. So, obviously, it means something. But people just don’t seem to feel like it’s as important to have a variety of skills as a performer like that anymore.

TIMBERLAKE: Obviously, I was always into performing when I was a kid because I started really young. You started young, too. But were your parents always supportive of your interest in being creative or performing?

SEYFRIED: Oh, yeah. They loved it. I honestly think they were as cool as parents get. They loved me being happy. They both worked, but they both had enough time to spend with me. So I didn’t really go into the arts for any specific reason. It was just to find a vessel for all of my energy. And also because I’m not good at anything else. I’m just really not equipped for, say, academics or sports.

TIMBERLAKE: Well, you’re a hell of a knitter.

SEYFRIED: I am. That’s kind of a fact.

TIMBERLAKE: Do you think your parents liked that you were interested in performing because you were a hyper kid and they felt like that focused you more? Because I wasn’t a hyper kid. I was actually really shy. My mom makes a joke that she is shocked that I know what she looks like now because for the first eight or nine years of my life, all I did was walk around with my head down, looking at my feet. I was really shy until I found the stage.

SEYFRIED: I’m glad you don’t have a neck problem.

TIMBERLAKE: I do, actually. But that’s mostly because my head’s too big for my neck. [Seyfried laughs] I read somewhere that your sister plays in a band.

SEYFRIED: She was in one before she moved to L.A. to become my slave.

TIMBERLAKE: Really?

SEYFRIED: Yeah. She’s in a punk band in Philly called Love City. I saw them perform once. They’re not bad, if you like punk.

TIMBERLAKE: Spoken like a true sister. But the musical talent runs in your family.

SEYFRIED: Music was just something that we did. Like a lot of kids, we were forced to take piano lessons when we were younger. Mind you, it was the only thing that my parents forced us to do, because we wanted to quit and they said, “No, you keep going.”

TIMBERLAKE: I actually ask a lot of musically inclined actors about this, but could you see yourself ever recording an album or trying on music for size in a bigger way?

SEYFRIED: I have, in a way. I actually wrote a song with Damien Rice for Dear John. Damien never finished it—I mean, he might have, but he hasn’t sent it to me. It was about a year ago. It was a cool song. I was proud of it. I’m hoping to hear it someday.

TIMBERLAKE: He’s brilliant. So it’s not just singing that you’re into, but actually writing music as well?

SEYFRIED: I do enjoy the writing. I have written some songs, but I would really call what I’ve done poetry at the end of the day, because I’ll sit with my guitar for hours and hours on end for, like, a week and then I won’t touch it for a month. I also just have no confidence. And you know what? I don’t have time, because I’d rather be doing other things, like knitting.

TIMBERLAKE: Do you play any other instruments? Or just guitar?

SEYFRIED: Guitar. I have a piano and I have a viola. I’m not going to tell you whether or not I can play it, but I do have one.

TIMBERLAKE: Fair enough. Just owning one is a commitment. I am, though, curious about how actors who are into music relate to that kind of performing. I find it such a different experience to be on stage playing music and having that type of connection with an audience.

SEYFRIED: Well, when you’re on stage as a musician, it’s just you, isn’t it? You’re in your own world. You control it. You decide how far you go. You decide everything. It must be hard for you, especially when you’re so used to performing in that kind of situation, to come into the situation of working on a film and lose all of that control that you’re used to having.

TIMBERLAKE: I actually find it liberating to give up control. It’s nice for me. What’s been more of a battle for me throughout the process of moving into acting is that I feel like I have to keep reassuring people that I’m not an asshole. [both laugh] There is a stigma that comes from being on stage and being a musician.

SEYFRIED: It’s true. I understand your struggle. But I think you’re past that at this point. [laughs] Besides, what’s wrong with being an asshole?

TIMBERLAKE: Oh, right. Yeah, well, it’s a shitty job. [both laugh] But while we’re still in the general zone of music, what kind of music do you like to listen to?

SEYFRIED: Probably singer-songwriter music. I like a Damien Rice or a Ray LaMontagne or a Willy Mason. I just love slow music. I mean, people can say that it’s boring and makes you want to kill yourself, but at the end of the day . . .

TIMBERLAKE: I think all the people you’ve mentioned are genius. I am a huge Ray LaMontagne fan. I’ve been to probably every single show he has ever played in Los Angeles.

SEYFRIED: I can’t say that myself, but he did autograph something for me once. The thing with Ray is that he’s gotten a little more pop-y over the years, but he always had a little bit of that in him and he doesn’t care. I find that so many people are afraid to go mainstream. I have a bunch of friends who are musicians, and I’m constantly challenging them to sell out a little. Because what are you making music for if you don’t want people to hear it?

TIMBERLAKE: Whatever you do as a musician, no matter how good it is, somebody somewhere is going to shit on it. You put your heart on your sleeve, and what will happen will happen. But it’s like that for any artist. You do a painting, you take a photograph, it’s the same. That’s how artistry works.

SEYFRIED: But isn’t that the thrill of it? You put it out there and you really don’t give a shit. I thought that doing Chloe was going to be a risk and I was wondering what people were going to think, but then I was like, “You know what? The experience I’ll have making this film is way too important to me.” That can be fulfilling to the point where you just don’t really care about how the work is going to be received. It’s thrilling to just not care—unless, of course, you’d hurt somebody.

This is an excerpt of the cover story. To read the full Amanda Seyfried interview pick up a copy of the March issue of Interview.

Source: Interview Magazine

” ‘Red Riding Hood’ is a classic fairy tale that we all know, and what fans can expect from this version of the story is that it’s basically just a jumping-off point. Catherine Hardwicke has just completely turned this story into something edgy and gothic and dark, and she’s clearly somebody that’s very capable of turning something, everything into an extraordinary world, as we’ve seen before,” Seyfried said about the film in an interview with “The Seven,” which premiered a trailer for the flick Tuesday (November 16).

“And also there’s a romance aspect to the film, which isn’t in the fairy tale … a lot of romance and a lot of danger,” she continued. “There’s a wolf at the center of the story, and it’s exciting ’cause it’s a whodunit.”

Sure, the fairy tale that the flick is based on is plenty scary, but Seyfried reveals that whatever frightening elements were there to begin with have gotten much more frightening under Hardwicke’s supervision, and thanks to a cast that includes Gary Oldman and Julie Christie.

“Fans will be surprised by the tone of the film,” she explained. “Catherine just completely throws it into this dark world, and it’s a little scarier than it was meant to be when it was written. We had this freedom to go far with it, so whatever preconceptions the audience has, they should throw it out the door.”

It’s 3 p.m. on a gorgeous sunny day in Los Angeles, and Amanda Seyfried is sitting at an outdoor café, wearing a light-blue long-sleeve button-down and shorts, her signature glamorously wavy blond hair peeking out from a mustard-yellow cable-knit cap that she made herself. In a bag on the table is a DIY dog-collar kit for Finn, her blue-eyed Australian shepherd who lies lazily at her feet. The actress isn’t hiding under huge sunglasses, sitting in a dark corner, or ignoring the passersby who stop to pet her adorable pup. (In fact, she’s chatting them up, making it difficult for anyone to get a word in edgewise.)

Amanda is the rare young star who has managed to continue to thrive in Hollywood despite having no background in anything remotely Disney or Nickelodeon, and in case you haven’t noticed, she’s having a moment. In the past year, the 24-year-old actress from Allentown, Pennsylvania, has hit a movie genre trifecta—Dear John, a Nicholas Sparks tearjerker; Chloe, an indie thriller; and this month’s rom-com Letters to Juliet. And beyond the occasional red carpet and the Oscars, where she presented alongside Miley Cyrus, the paparazzi have generally left her alone. The closest they’ve gotten are a few snaps of the actress with beau (and Mamma Mia! costar) Dominic Cooper, although one guy was daring enough to follow Amanda and Finn on a recent six-mile hike.

“I don’t really care about paparazzi—like, I’m not wearing makeup right now and I should be—but when someone follows me around on a day like that, a really wonderful, beautiful day . . .” she trails off. “Had I known he was there, I would have been really upset.” Amanda’s going to have to get used to it.

A breakout role as Sophie in 2008′s Mamma Mia!, alongside Meryl Streep, launched the career of the actress, who got her start on daytime soaps As the World Turns and All My Children, but it was her big-screen debut as the ditzy Karen in Mean Girls that first made audiences take notice. “People still come up to me and say, ‘You were really funny in that,’ and I’m like, It’s not me. Tina Fey wrote everything I said!” she says, laughing. “I think I impressed a lot of people in Mean Girls. I don’t know how I pulled that off.”

Proving that her comedy chops weren’t just a fluke (or a gift from Tina Fey), Amanda shined as the nerdy Needy in last year’s Diablo Cody–written horror-com, Jennifer’s Body. Though it didn’t exactly blow up the box office, the film catapulted her into the spotlight. At the end of 2009, she announced that this past season of the HBO drama Big Love would be her last. And after Dear John made over $30 million in its opening weekend, Amanda moved from actress to star. Letters to Juliet is sure to make her a bona fide celebrity.

In it, Amanda plays Sophie, a young woman who travels to Verona, Italy, the home of fiction’s most well-known tragic couple, Romeo and Juliet. Sophie finds an unanswered love letter and chases down it’s owner, Claire (played by Vanessa Redgrave), in an attempt to make things right.

One would think that starring in two heartstring-tugging films in a year would turn even the most unemotional realist into a romantic. For Amanda, whose parents have been together for almost 30 years, that’s simply not the case. “It’s fun to play characters who have these ideals that you don’t have. Like, in Dear John, Channing [Tatum] and I had such a good time because we were pretending to be in love,” she says, but even though Letters to Juliet was “very romantically shot in a very romantic place,” it didn’t change her perspective. “A lot of people ask me, ‘Is Dominic the one?’ I don’t know, and I’m fine with that. Too much planning can lead to heartbreak. Love is great and possible, always, but it’s very rare to have the feeling that ‘I want to be with this person forever.’”

Lest we peg Amanda as a stone-cold cynic and revoke her membership in Hallmark’s card of the month club, she does melt a little when she talks about her past relationships. “I can’t remember if he said I love you first, or if I did,” she says of her first serious boyfriend, Micah Alberti from All My Children, at age seventeen. “But I do remember when my ex Jesse said it to me. It took my breath away.”

Her passion is most evident, though, when she talks about her craft, especially the process of deciding whether or not to sign on to a movie. For her next two films, Albert Nobbs and The Girl With the Red Riding Hood, Amanda fell head over heels for the directors (Rodrigo García and Twilight’s Catherine Hardwicke, respectively) and said yes to both projects almost immediately. This impulsive creativity might make life hard for her agent, whom Amanda has been with since day one, but it’s a good demonstration of the driving force that makes her performances so vibrant.

“I had no idea if I wanted to do Red Riding Hood, but I sat with Catherine for, like, two and a half hours that first day, and she was amazing,” Amanda remembers. “She is who should be a big Hollywood director, making cool-ass movies. She has such an imagination. I was like, OK, I’m doing it. Done.” And that was before Amanda had even read the script.

When she’s not filming, Amanda spends a lot of time at her piano, a gift from Letters to Juliet director Gary Winick, which has inspired the classically trained singer—who has written a song with Damien Rice and contributed songs to the Mamma Mia! and Dear John soundtracks— to return to her musical roots.

These days she’s listening to a lot of A.A. Bondy and Deer Tick.

After a chance meeting with singer/songwriter Joshua Radin at the Soho Hotel in London a few months ago, Amanda agreed to record a duet with him, but she has no intention of making this her full-time, or even part-time, career. “I love being the background voice,” she says. “But I’m not interested in being in the spotlight.” The actress, who lists Miu Miu, Stella McCartney, and Alexander Wang as some of her favorite designers, is equally as chill about her personal style, describing it as “comfortable and simple with a little edge.”

That’s pretty much Amanda’s M.O. There was some drama earlier this year when the blogs (falsely) reported that she was being difficult about committing to a Mamma Mia! sequel, holding out for more money, but in reality, she is as low maintenance as it gets. And she has a strict “no expectations” philosophy that keeps her grounded and has solidified her reputation as one of Hollywood’s most down-to-earth glamour girls: “I am successful now, and it’s wonderful. But the reason it is so wonderful is because I didn’t expect it to happen.”

Edited for teenvogue.com. For the complete story pick up the June/July 2010 issue of Teen Vogue, on newsstands May 25!

You hear about the pressure in Hollywood to be young and skinny. Do you feel that?
Hell yeah! From myself. When I see a scene in a movie where my belly sticks out, I’m like, that doesn’t look good, I’m not going to do that for the next movie. And then I never get there for the next movie; I still have a pudgy belly. The reality is, I look back and has my body every been that drastically different? No! So what are the chances of my having a six-pack for the next movie? Slim to non. So why live and breathe exercise when I know I’m just going to eat crap? Moderation is key. You can change your body to an extent, but if it’s taking all the time out of your day and taking up all your thoughts, what’s the point? The point is, it should be that important.

What’s the hardest diet you’ve ever tried?
A five-day raw food diet I’ll never do again. I go to this raw foods place everyday, and they do super-cleanses every month for 5 days. I was like, oh, I have to go on a press tour in six days, so I’ll try it! It’s really hard! I’d get really, really tired and hungry at three p.m. everyday because there was nothing to eat. Dinner would be cucumbers and kale and dressing. In the morning, you feel great, you’re doing a liver cleanse and eating raw oatmeal and blueberries and drinking great shakes. But at the end of the day, if you can’t have girl scout cookie and piece of cheese, what is life all about?

So do you just eat whatever you want now?
Yea, I want the raw stuff in the morning. I want the shot of chlorophyll or the ginger lemon drink or the asahi and hemp granola drink. But for lunch, I want a piece of pizza.

What do you do to work out?
Running a half hour four to five days a week keeps me alright–five days, because I feel guilty when I don’t. I also go to Harley Pasternak’s three times a week, and I love it. He’s fun and we do different things every time. It’s 45 minutes, and he kicks my ass! My legs are really strong, and I feel really great. And I go to my pilates teacher, Nikiko, on the weekends–she’s all about stretching and toning and being long and lean.

Did you work out like a maniac for your nude scene last year in Chloe?
No, I was running for a half hour on the treadmill every day but I didn’t have a trainer. I think people like to see a little bit of excess. I think women love that, and I don’t think men care. I feel better when I’m toned and not soft, but it’s hard to get rid of the soft parts. I’ve proven to myself it’s probably never going to go away, but I’m still trying to maintain.

You’ve had such a big year –do you feel like you’ve finally “arrived”?
I’ve been an up-and comer for so long that I do finally feel like I’ve established myself. I don’t quite know where yet, but I do feel like I’ve had enough under my belt for people to be able to trust me. I mean, I’m really insecure! I’ve always been. But at least I feel a little more confident now.

What are you insecure about? Your acting? Your looks?
Both. It’s very hard for me to watch a movie anymore with me in it. I used to not care. But recently I’ve been playing the romantic lead, and in order to be a romantic lead, you’ve kind of got to be pretty in my opinion. Clearly, some people think I can play the attractive girl. That is still a mystery to me. It’s a face thing–I pick apart my face. I guess we’re naturally inclined to want to change things about ourselves, and that gets heightened when I’m watching on a big screen. And it’s OK. Sometimes you wake up and you like it and sometimes you don’t. As comfortable as I am with myself day to day, watching it? It’s just strange.

How do you get over that insecurity?
If we’re so busy trying to change ourselves, especially aesthetically, we’re going to miss out on more important things. I used to live and eat and sleep by an exercise schedule, and I just couldn’t enjoy myself if I didn’t exercise. And then I realized, what a waste of time! Just praying I’d wake up a little fitter, a little more toned. It’s important in the grand scheme of things to keep in shape, but if you’re always worrying about imperfections and how you look, these things aren’t going to change for the most part. The thing you can change is the way you perceive.

What’s the best advice you’d give to a woman struggling to keep a positive body image?
I’d say, it’s not as bad as you think. You are your harshest critic. If you don’t like your body, you can do something about it. It’s in your control and that should be a positive feeling. Put more time into the exercising. You’ll feel better about yourself for actually doing it, not just for how it makes you look. Endorphins are a godsend. And stop looking in the mirror. I try not to look in the mirror very much–you can’t wake up and expect your body to be different than it was last night. You’ve got to realize that you’re living for yourself, not for other people. Nobody’s perfect. Only in Hollywood are people perfect and that’s because they spend thousands of dollars on trainers and diets and surgeries. That’s what we’re made to feel like we’re supposed to look like but if you put it in perspective, there’s nothing realistic about it!

QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

On accepting her imperfections
“The main thing you can change is how you perceive yourself. Stop looking in the mirror and realize you’re living for yourself, not other people. If we’re so busy trying to change ourselves, especially aesthetically, we’re going to miss out on other, bigger things.”

Her secret to sexy, shiny hair
“That’s easy! Never dye it. My hair is shiny because it is virginal. I dyed it once, but it’s all grown out since then. I also use shampoos that have shea butter and moisturizer in them. Sometimes after i shampoo I comb conditioner through it and put it up in a bun and never rinse it out.” Her shampoo picks: Sally Hershberger, Bumble and Bumble, and Frederic Fekkai.

Why she does not exercise compulsively
“Three times days a week I train with Harley Pasternak, who kicks my ass for 45 minutes. My legs are super stong. I love it! I used to live, eat, and sleep by an exercise schedule and I couldn’t enjoy myself if I didn’t exercise. And then I realized, “What a waste of time!” My soft parts are probably never going away.”

On areas in her own life where she can most use guidance
“I think it’s really just about love. That’s where a lot of my worry and fear comes from. I’ve had long-term relationships and it’s hard to define what they are when they’re over. People have given so much and taught me so much and vice versa, you don’t want them out of your life, so you maintain certain relationships.”

Why she’ll never go raw again
“I just did a five-day raw-food diet, but I’ll never do that again. It’s really hard! I’d wake up in the morning feeling great and go to bed feeling miserable, because dinner would be cucumbers, kale, and dressing. I mean, at the end of the day, if you can’t have a Girl Scout cookie and a piece of cheese, what it life all about?”

In “Letters to Juliet,” opening May 14, Amanda Seyfried’s Sophie is torn between two guys: the multifaceted Brit hottie Charlie (Aussie newcomer Christopher Egan) and her fiancé, the equally hot but clueless chef Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal). Call it Sophie’s choice — she eventually does choose between the two.

Although Seyfried’s co-stars, Egan and Bernal, promise plenty of eye candy in “Juliet,” the beautiful Italian countryside in the city of Verona (home of Shakespeare’s Juliet), where the movie is partly set, is also eye-catching. As part of our Summer Movie Preview, MTV News spoke to Seyfried, who admitted she’s still smitten with the flick’s gorgeous backdrop.

MTV: For a movie that’s basing itself on “Romeo and Juliet,” it’s not too heavy-handed about playing up that aspect.

Amanda Seyfried: Yeah, if “Romeo & Juliet” didn’t exist, the movie wouldn’t exist, but otherwise it’s its own story. Absolutely.

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There is nothing director Catherine Hardwicke likes more than casting new talent. The woman responsible for propelling Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson’s careers into the stratosphere has now cast two unknowns in her upcoming project for Warner Bros., Red Riding Hood starring Amanda Seyfried. Shiloh Fernandez (pictured, top) will play Peter, the edgy bad boy from the wrong side of town who attracts Seyfried’s character, and Max Irons (pictured, bottom) will play Henry, the refined son of the wealthy blacksmithing family who is engaged to marry Seyfried. The final decision to cast the two teenagers competing for Seyfried’s affection came after Hardwicke held a two-day “smack-down” where she brought eight young actors to a Hollywood sound stage and had them compete for the part. “It was wild,” says the director, reminiscing about the 21 hours of tape she culled from the intense two-day try-out. “We had eight guys all competing with each other for two parts. They all read with Amanda and they also had to do fight scenes with each other. It was kinda good to get their aggression out.”

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All of a sudden, Amanda Seyfried is everywhere, and ahead of her next film, which involves working with Glenn Close adn John Banville, she discusses picking roles, long-distance relationships and writing songs with Damien Rice

FOR SOME LUCKY young Hollywood actors, there comes a moment when they become suddenly ubiquitous: out of nowhere, it seems, they’re constantly in the cinemas, on magazine covers, in gossip columns – everywhere they are supposed to be, essentially, and all at once. The speed with which this can happen is a mystifying part of the star-making process, so who better to ask about how it occurs than the suddenly ubiquitous 24-year-old actor Amanda Seyfried, who in short order has appeared in the steamy thriller Chloe , this week’s weepy Dear John , and another romance, Letters to Juliet , due later this summer, as well as the recent Vanity Fair Young Hollywood spread. Surely she can shed light on how a star is born?

“The only reason people say I’m having a moment is because all these movies are coming out at the same time,” she says, twirling a finger through her long blonde hair as she considers how she has reached this point. “But that wasn’t my doing at all. I did these movies separately, there were two and three months between all these films, but they’re all coming out in a short window. It’s dumb luck in the beginning, picking these parts, then it has to become calculated – you have to establish yourself a bit, and then you have to get quite strategic, which can be a pain in the ass, choosing between projects. It’s nice people are recognising me, though.”

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She was more dippy than mean in her 2004 film debut, Mean Girls, announcing vacantly that her breasts could predict the weather. But it took a most unlikely confection—the movie musical Mamma Mia!—for the world to see Amanda Seyfried in her full, dewy, wide-eyed loveliness. Since then she has become the go-to girl for modern fairy tales, including Lasse Hallström’s Dear John and the forthcoming Letters to Juliet. But watch for a 180-degree turn in this month’s Chloe, Atom Egoyan’s artsy sexual thriller, in which 24-year-old Seyfried plays the alluring, troubled complication in a failing marriage.

Articles
- Access Atlanta
Q&A Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried from Dear John
- She Knows
Amanda Seyfried’s romantic romp
- Parade.com
A Lot of Girls Are Probably Really Jealous of Me

Videos
- Jessi Cruickshank Interview
- HitFlix Interview
- Jake The Movie Guy Interview
- My News 2 Interview (Charleston Premiere)
- Feel Fit & Fabulous Interview (Charleston Premiere)
- Amanda Speaking French Breifly
- Thomas Leupp Interview
- Chio In The Morning Interview (Radio Show)
- Talk Philly Interview (Talk Show)