Fabric

Star interview: Amanda Seyfried

For some reason, Amanda Seyfried thinks she looks a bit like a frog. “I was never the cute type,” she says candidly. “I'm still not and I'm pleased about that.”

Off-screen, the 24-year-old is a neat blonde with huge, wide-set blue-grey saucer eyes, gorgeous lips and long perfect legs. She chats easily and has a smile that dazzles.

On this side of the Atlantic, she leapt into our consciousness in 2008 in the lead role of the hit musical
Mamma Mia!.

“I wasn't expecting the film to take off like it did,” she says with a laugh, “but I knew it would be my perfect role when I found out Meryl Streep was cast as my mom. She is so cool.”

ABBA's Benny Andersson – who co-wrote Mamma Mia! – so loved Seyfried's singing that he said he'd write some music for her. However, even though she sang like a bird in the film, she doesn't want to develop as a singer. “Singing was my first love but I don't want anything to get in the way of my acting career. I trained classically from 11 to 17, but then, when I was 15, I got my first acting role (in the daytime soap As the World Turns) and chose the acting path.”

A sudden rush of hit films seems to have catapulted her from child star onto the A-list.

First noticed opposite Lindsay Lohan in the blockbuster Mean Girls in 2004, she was also snapped up for four years as Sarah Henrickson, in HBO's series Big Love – one of America's favourite TV shows.

Then came Mamma Mia!, followed by lead roles in Jennifer's Body with Megan Fox, Chloe for Atom Egoyan opposite Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson, the London-made art comedy Boogie Woogie, and the recent Dear John, an old-school love story from the Nicholas Sparks' bestseller of the same name.

And now there's Letters to Juliet. “When I read the script and realised that I was in every scene, I thought, well, it's going to be a lot of work but I sort of thrive on the interaction with the cast and crew,” she says.

In Letters to Juliet, she plays Sophie, who is on a pre-wedding trip to Verona with her fiancé (Bernal) and chances upon Juliet Capulet's courtyard with its wall full of heartfelt letters that lovesick woman have left for Shakespeare's fictional character. She joins a group of local women who respond to these notes. The response to one letter to Juliet dated 1957, results in its author (Redgrave) arriving in Verona to find her long-lost love (played by Redgrave's real-life husband, Franco Nero). “Nothing is a big deal to Vanessa,” says Seyfried. “You immediately relax in her presence.”

Now billed as one of Hollywood's top 10 actors under 30, Seyfried should be able to stay relaxed for now. So how does it feel? “Suddenly everyone is saying: this is your moment, but to me it's just ‘a moment' in my career. I'd like to be an established actor. Being an up-and-comer is nice and sweet, but it's not everything.”  

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Next issue: Jessica Biel.

Previous Fabric interviews

May – Scarlett Johansson
April – Emilie de Ravin
March – Maggie Gyllenhaal
February – Colin Firth
January – Charlize Theron