"THERE'S
SOMETHING ABOUT REBECCA" by Larissa Phillips
taken from jan.2000 issue
of 101 Hairstyles
But what is it? Certainly,
it could be that mass of auburn locks framing her face. Those tumbling
Raphaelite tresses would have a 17th Century wigmaker swooning and reaching
for his smelling salts. And though they might be tamed and straightened
in her current role on ABC's Wasteland, we're anything but fooled.
This girl's got hair. Then there's her stunning presence, well noted ever
since she created a minor phenomenon in her modeling days as a fresh-faced
"Noxzema Girl."
Combine a sparkling skin
tone with those eyebrows, which couldn't be more arched and dramatic and
fabulous if Isaac Mizrahi had drawn them on himself! Oh yeah, she does
have a penchant for acting--a talent that wowed L.A. critics in her theatre
debut last year in The Last Days of Ballyhoo. But then again, there's
still her amazing hair. Whatever it is (and as much as we love her hair,
we think it just might be the whole package), the buzz on Rebecca Gayheart
just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
Anyone who saw her in Scream
2 will understand. And although her role in the feature was small,
she did leave a specific and memorable mark on the film written by the
same scribe who recruited her talents for her new series. And who doesn't
remember her turn as Dylan's ill-fated-love interest on Beverly Hills
90210 several years ago? The gangster's daughter? That missing cat?
The bullet meant for Dylan? It was like the small screen version of "Romeo
and Juliet."
After came her turn on the
well-publicized teenaged flick Urban Legend, the movie that really
put Rebecca on the under-twenty-something map to fame. Nevermind the fact
that Wasteland looks like another version of Friends--one
of the best things that it's got going for it, or on which everyone seems
to agree, anyway, is Rebecca Gayheart.
Rebecca plays Sam, the southern
belle desperate to be taken seriously. In the first episode her character
was a homicide detective. Since the pilot episode, however, the producers
have toned it down a little and now she's a social worker--a slightly more
believable profession of her knock-out of a Kentucky girl character with
perfectly blow-dried hair. Slightly. Well, who can blame Sam for wanting
to be taken seriously, surrounded by those confused roommates (the soapstar,the
bartender, the virgin..) all of them struggling with life in the Big Apple?
Whatever happens to the
show, we're pretty sure Rebecca will survive unfazed. For someone who has
inhabited the glittery world of show business for over 10 years, she seems
amazingly grounded. Even her beauty secrets are rustic and earthy, to say
the least.
"I drink at least five bottles
of water a day and always get eight hours of sleep," she says. And she
swears be her MAC lip gloss. Lip gloss, sleep and water? Um, can we package
that and sell it? If that's all it takes, we could all be that gorgeous!
It wouldn't hurt to have
her kind of drive, either. This Kentucky native moved to New York City
at the tender age of 15 , and enrolled in the Professional Children's School.
Unaccustomed to the hectic pace (not to mention the black-on-black uniform)
of the average New Yorker, she claims she was in a nerdy clique at first.
But it didn't take her long to get herself some Doc Martens and get into
the swing of things. First there was modeling, and a contract with Noxzema.
(the "Noxzema Girl" nickname follows her to this day; she says she doesn't
mind). From there she landed a daytime soap (Loving). And
soon after that she moved to nighttime soaps (Beverly Hills 90210).
Naturally, a movie role was not far behind (Nothing to Lose).
Suddenly, her career took
a turn and she became the next sci-fi scream queen. There was Scream
2 followed by Urban Legend and an appearance on the TV show
Sliders.
She was also in the darkly
comic Jawbreaker, a scathing look at high school hierarchies, a
la that 80's classic, Heathers. And she has yet another movie forthcoming,
From
Dusk to Dawn III in early 2000.
You'd think all this success
would go to her head but Rebecca insists she's still the same down home
southern gal. She and her fiancee, Brett Ratner (he directed Jackie Chan's
action-comedy, Rush Hour) have been together for more than 10 years.
And she still loves remembering her New York Life pre-fame--like the time
she and her roommate, both of them struggling actresses, dressed up in
their most glamorous clothes, went to a five-star restaurant and spent
their last $60 on dessert and cappuccino! At least her attitude towards
her hair has changed. Believe it or not, she used to hate her curls.
"I think everyone with curly
hair goes through a period of wishing it were straight," she says. Once
she even tried cutting it off, a decision she now remembers as a disaster:
"I looked like I had big bushy helmet on my head!"
Now that she's learned to
love her gorgeous locks she knows how to handle them, too. Even though
she says she's of the "wash n go" school of haircare, every now and then
she has to do damage control on the frizzies--if you've got curly hair
or have ever spent time in the south, you can probably relate. Want to
know her secret? "Lots of conditioner!" Sometimes she says she just wets
her hair and combs in conditioner; either that or she'll use Kiehl's Silk
Groom followed by a liberal dose of gel.
While Wasteland may
have completely straightened her locks (her character on the show sports
a face-framing blow out that eliminates all evidence of curl), we all know
the gorgeous truth behind the blow drier: like her driven ambition, her
curls, whether straightened or free-spirited, will not be kept down. END
"Accent
on Success"by Charles Salzberg
taken from fall 99 issue
of Flair
These are busy times for
Rebecca Gayheart. Four straight days of rising at 4:30 in the morning
would probably do most of us in, making us a little testy, on edge, short-tempered.
Add this that she's got to lose her Southern accent all over again, and
you might think you'd want to steer clear of this striking young actress,
who made her mark at 18 with legendary Noxzema commercials that still elicits
looks of recognition and admiration from strangers--primarily men, of course.
But Rebecca Gayheart is not complaining.
Six hours after getting
up and putting in a half day's work on the set shooting Kevin Williamson's
new ABC-TV series, Wasteland, she has not a hint of fatigue
in her unaccented, lilting voice as she talks about her role as Sam, a
fledgling assistant district attorney from North Carolina now living and
working in New York City. As Sam, for instance, she says: "My boss
has just told me that in order to be taken seriously as a D.A., I've got
o lose the North Carolina accent and those little sayings, like when I
have to go to the bathroom I say, "I've got to tinkle,' Can't you just
say "pee"?' he says."
This dilemma strikes close
to home. At 15, Gayheart, who is a mix of Italian, Irish, German and Cherokee,
packed her belongings and moved--alone--to New York City from her hometown
of Pinetop, Kentucky ("It's got a population of around 800 now," she says),
to fulfill her childhood dream (and probably every other young girl's in
America to become a model and eventually an actress.
Not long after she had arrived
in New York, a casting agent told her to "lose the accent, honey"- which
she did. Even now, though, a dozen years later, she can turn it on at a
moment's notice-think Dolly Parton without the attitude. "The agent said,
with the accent, I'd never make it as an actress. At first, I was
resistant. I thought of all these successful actresses who spoke with accents.
But she said that the difference was, they could speak without one.
So I decided to go to a diction teacher to lose mine. But when you
lose your accent, you lose a part of yourself, and that's something you
really don't want to do,"she says softly.
Somehow, you get the feeling
that if Gayheart ever did lose a part of herself, she'd find it pretty
quick. The words competent, self-assured, focused and ambitions come to
mind. After all, how many 15-year olds head off to the big, bad city
to make to way in the world? And make it she has. From modeling to TV commercials
(the aforementioned Noxzema and Clairol's "glintz girl"),
to soaps (Loving), to film (Scream 2, Urban Legend
and Jawbreaker), to stage (the L.A. production of Alfred Uhry's
Tony Award-winning play the Last Night of Ballyhoo) and to
TV (Beverly Hills 9020 and Earth 2).
And to think, it all started
a local mall. "I was 14, and with my mom, when this guy came up to us and
said that I ought to be a model. At first, I was embarrassed. I didn't
think I was very pretty,"says Gayheart. At the time, she was 5'7", just
half an inch shorter than she is today. But the guy was legit, working
with the Elite modeling agency in New York. A year later Gayheart called
and asked if she could come up for the summer and try to find work as a
model. "My mother was very nervous. But 'can't' was a dirty word
in our house. My parents had instilled in us the idea that we could
do anything , that we should follow our dreams, so it was hard for them
not
to let me go."
And Gayheart's dreams did
not include staying in Pinetop, Kentucky. Even though she had "a
very happy, very normal childhood. I had such a grounded family--my
mom and dad were middle-class, working people. My mom sold Mary
Kay cosmetics, and my father was a coal miner. I have two sisters
and a brother--and I was living in the South and having a wonderful time.
Cookouts, dinners together--it was bliss as a child, even though we were
'financially challenged,' which is a nice way of putting it.
But all that's helped me in my adult years. Because of the unconditional
love I had from my family, whatever happens to me now, I feel loved."
At the end of the summer
, when it was time to return to Pinetop, Gayheart, who had just turned
16, had other ideas. "there was no way I was going home. I got a taste
of all the opportunities there were in New York, none of which I could
have if I went home to Pinetop." But try telling this to your parents
when you're 16. She did. And they did what any parents would do:
flew to New York to bring her back. Fat chance. First, Gayheart used
reason--she lined up a restaurant job and arranged to enroll in high school.
When they didn't go for that, she pulled out her ace-in-the-hole. "I threatened
them, " she said. If they didn't let her stay in New York, she'd join the
rolls of the world's oldest profession and bring shame to the family name.
Needless to say, that did the trick--so to speak.
Gayheart enrolled in Professional
Children's School, where her classmates included Uma Thurman, Jerry O'
Connell and Sarah Michelle Gellar; got a job in Canastel's, a trendy Manhattan
restaurant; and moved into a "model's" apartment provided by Elite, which
she shared with several other aspiring Cindy Crawfords. "Those first
few years in New York were the best years of my life, because I was completely
fearless. On the other hand, it was also completely frightening--the girl
from the wrong side of the tracks in New York City," she jokes. "I wasn't
savvy or worldly, and financially, it was really tough." She recalls
that she ate lots of peanut butter sandwiches and even jumped subway turnstiles.
"It was a hard time, but a fun time. I was an outsider because of my accent
and being from the South. I stood out and kept pretty much to myself,
bu I learned so much."
The day she moved into the
model's apartment was also the day she met Bret Ratner, a college film
student who, it turns out, was to play a significant role in her life.
"My bags were literally on the living room floor when he camr in to visit
one of the other girls. He was 18, going to film school at NYU, and
I knew right away he was going to be my boyfriend."
At first, Gayheart was a
third wheel, accompanying Ratner and her friend out on the town, but eventually
they began to date. Today, 12 years later, with only one brief period
apart, Ratner, who directed Jackie Chan in Rush Hour, and Gayheart
are still together. "We're grounded in our relationship, probably because
of my family life. Monogamy is hard for everyone," she admits, "but
it does have its unique problems when a couple is in the entertainment
business, because of the long hours and the long periods apart. But
no matter where we are, we try to touch base a couple of times a day by
phone."
What Gayheart really is
excited about these days is her role in Wasteland which follows
a group of people in their second coming of age--finding themselves professionally
and personally, about to turn 30 but resisting," she explains. When
Williamson sent Gayheart the script, which includes three female roles,
she chose the part of Sam--a Southern debutante trying to be taken seriously
in New York. She's a bit of an overachiever, and you're going to
see her journey, her hardships in the city." Sound familiar? END
Rebecca
Vision by Brantley Bardin
taken from Details magazine
99
If television is the opiate of
masses, Rebecca Gayheart - star of Kevin Wiliamson's
new twentysomething angst
fest Wasteland - is one addiction we can really get behind
Ah, the plight of a beautiful woman.
Take Rebecca Gayheart. As nubile Noxzema girl, she buffed her
face all the way to a Wayne's
World schwing award. She died for love as a Mafia princess on Beverly
Hills 90210. She even
save mankind from an alien invasion in, yep, Robin Cook's Invasion.
Still, something was
missing. "I didn't give a damn what it
was," Gayheart says, "But I knew I needed something outrageous so
people would stop with the whole girl-next-door, good skin thing."
That something came in the
form of an ax-wielding psychopath, which she played in 1998's slash fest
Urban Legend, and then again
as an accomplice to a nasty murder in this year's Jawbreaker. You
might
think, now that she's hooked up
with Scream king Kevin Williamson for his new TV series, Wasteland,
that Gayheart is into something even bloodier... and more acne-oriented.
But no. In this ensemble comedy-drama
about six friends struggling to find themselves, she's called upon
to play a wannabe actress turned
assistant in the New York City district attorney's office. While she's
not
exactly the girl next door, her
skin is clear and smooth. Says Williamson, "Rebecca's the essence of Sam,
a Southern debutante who seems as
if she's gotten everywhere in life on her beauty alone. Her character's
journey is going to dispel the myth at every turn."
Williamson's Dawson's
Creek put cool teen sex on the TV map. In Wasteland,
he puts a group of
postcollegiate
types under the microscope to examine what he calls their "second coming
of age."
Gayheart, 27, counts herself among
them. "Before, it was a given that you'd get married and start a family
at a certain age," she says, "but my generation
avoids it. We still act like we're 20. I mean, it's a great thing
to be young at heart and all, but when do we step up to the plate?"
She's sincere, even though
the implicit comparison to these slackers doesn't seem quite apt. After
all,
Gayheart's a coal-miner's daughter
who left the hills of Pine Top, Ky., for New York City - alone - at age
15; she has been committed
to the same man, film and video director Brett Ratner, for more than 10
years; and sweetest
of all, she wishes for nothing more than to make enough money to "whisk"
her
parents away from Appalachia. "When
I start to complain about being tired and have a call time at five in
the morning," she confesses, " I
just say to myself, Okay, girl, reality check. I mean, my father does for
a
living is the hardest work in the world."
Williamson calls her "a remarkable
actress who's been completely underrated about what she's really
capable of doing." Still, Gayheart humbly claims to be a bit shell-shocked
by her Holly
Golightly-in-Hollywood status:
"Sometimes I wake up and think, How did I get here?" Nevertheless,
sometimes a beautiful woman just
likes to be told that she's beautiful. "Not long ago I was in New York,"
she says, " and this homeless guy
asked me for some money. I said sorry and kept on walking, but then
he yelled out, 'Hey,
you look like Michelle Pfeiffer!' I swear I stopped in my tracks, turned
around,
opened my wallet, and handed
the guy a $20 bill." She adds, with a laugh, "See? All women want is a
compliment!" END
Monday, September 21, 1998
Taken
to Gayheart
By LOUIS B. HOBSON -- Calgary Sun
Rebecca Gayheart just debunked that enduring
Hollywood urban legend that actresses
don't greet
the day before noon.
When Gayheart called from her Los Angeles
home
at 8 a.m., she'd already been doing interviews
for an hour.
"I'm pleased to say I'm too busy these
days to
sleep in. I'm doing interviews for Urban
Legend in
the mornings and then rehearsing for the
rest of the
day," explained Gayheart, who opens next
month
opposite Rhea Perlman in the L.A. premier
of the
hit Broadway play, The Last Night of Ballyhoo.
In the teen horror film Urban Legends,
opening
Friday, Gayheart plays a college student
and the
potential victim of a serial killer who
dispatches his
victims in the manner of famous urban
legends.
That means babysitters had better watch
out when
the phone rings and anyone driving down
a lonely
road had better not look in the back seat
of their car.
Last year, Gayheart was one of the few
college
students who survived the slaughter in
Scream 2.
"In Scream 2, I was basically the comic
relief. I
was an obnoxious sorority girl. The Scream
movies
are spoofs of the teen slasher movies.
Urban
Legends is horror-suspense. This time
the thrills are for real."
Making Urban Legends forced Gayheart to
face
the one irrational urban legend fear she
had.
"When I was a preschooler, friends at school
said
they had heard that the kid Mikey on the
TV
commercials had exploded because he washed
down a box of Pop Rocks with a bottle
of Pepsi.
"My best friend dared me to try it but
I was too
frightened. In the movie, my character
does try this lethal combination."
Gayheart is not at liberty to reveal what
happens
when her character combines Pop Rocks
and Pepsi.
Urban Legends turned out to be a scary
project but
not because of the material.
"(Co-stars) Jared (Leto), Joshua (Jackson)
and
Michael (Rosenbaum) spent most of their
energy
trying to scare us girls. They'd hide
behind doors
and jump out or phone us and make weird
noises
"After a while, it makes you really paranoid
of
every noise and every sudden movement."
When Urban Legends finished filming in
Toronto
last year, Gayheart barely had time to
unpack and
repack her suitcases before heading off
to South
Africa to film Hangman's Daughter, the
prequel to
Quentin Tarantino's From Dusk to Dawn.
"I play a young Christian missionary who
gets bitten
by a vampire and turns into a really nasty
bloodsucker."
For Gayheart, making the movie was nothing
compared to being in Africa.
"I went on a safari and it was astonishing.
When
you're out there, you realize just how
insignificant
we really are. I can hardly wait to return
to Africa
on my own for an extended vacation."
For someone born and raised in Pinetop,
Kentucky, Gayheart says she always knew
she wanted to be an actress.
"I knew there would be absolutely no opportunities
if I stayed in Pinetop, so at 15 I left
home and
moved to New York. I waited on tables,
found
myself an agent, got some modelling work
and
studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute."
Gayheart's big break came when she was
17. She
was chosen to be the Noxzema Girl.
"I made money and it got me in to auditions.
The
following year, I was cast as the bad
girl Hanna
Mayberry on the (now defunct) soap opera
Loving."
After 18 months on Loving, Gayheart relocated
to L.A.
It was a big move that paid off big time.
In a few
months, she was starring in the NBC miniseries
Invasion which led to a
recurring role on the
short-lived Earth 2 and
a 10-episode stint on
Beverly Hills 90210 playing Luke
Perry's ill-fated
wife.
"Beverly Hills 90210 opened the doors for
feature
films. I got to play the girl who tries
to seduce Tim
Robbins in a hotel elevator in Nothing
To Lose.
"Tim is one of the tallest people I've
ever met. They
had to put me in really high high-heels.
I almost got
whiplash trying to kiss him."
Then came roles in the independent films
Somebody is Waiting with Natassja
Kinski,
Hairshirt with Neve Campbell and
Jawbreaker with
Pam Grier, all of which are scheduled
for release
before the end of the year.END
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