Issue Date: November 28, 2004
Nic Cage meets his match
In the action-comedy "National Treasure," classy Diane Kruger sheds her usual glamour to play a caustic historian.
By Ross Cohen
Diane Kruger is the most beautiful specimen ever to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and deliver the newspaper. Save yourself a vigil by the mailbox, however; that was more than a decade ago, along a sparse route in her native Hildesheim, Germany. Since then, Kruger, 28, has done well on the flip side of periodical distribution, first gracing the covers of fashion magazines as a ballerina-turned-model and then, more recently, creeping onto entertainment pages as the seductive starlet in movies such as "Troy" and "Wicker Park."
Now, in Jerry Bruckheimer's high-octane "National Treasure," about a man (Nicolas Cage) who plots to steal the Declaration of Independence to obtain a treasure map rumored to be on the back, Kruger will, for the first time for American audiences, exchange her tropical blue stare and pirouetting skills for sarcastic wit and a comedic sensibility.
Over a can of Diet Coke (with a straw), Kruger, who lives in Paris, admits the American beauty ideal can still scare this globetrotting cover girl. She gushes over her male leads thus far -- a list that reads like an inventory of the postered walls of teenage girls: Troy's Brad Pitt (he's "like a rock star"), "Wicker Park's" Josh Hartnett ("perfect, like a dream") and now Treasure's Cage ("not necessarily this attractive guy, but he's charismatic").
"Treasure" producer Bruckheimer cast Kruger as historian Abigail Chase, he says, because even in a ponytail and boxy gray suit she could hold her own with Cage, who can be very intense. "She intimidated Nic, I think, although he won't say that," Bruckheimer says. "She had him on his heels."
Still, in her mind, Kruger is more bohemian earth mother than glamour belle. When she's not wrapped in a bathrobe at home, hovering over a pot of her 10-hour lamb stew, she tries to adhere to the European standard of "classy, cultured and graceful" women, she says -- which suits her husband, French actor-director Guillaume Canet. "But if you ask [most] men, they'd prefer a [Pamela] Anderson type, someone who looks good in a bikini," she says.
Determined not to get too cozy in her new movie-star lifestyle, Kruger hopes her less-than-provocative habits keep her out of the gossip columns. "I love to knit," she says coyly. "It's like I'm a 58-year-old woman. But it's therapeutic." She also cherishes the escape of her iPod, mixing Brazilian bossa nova with anything Coldplay. She'll surely make good use of its battery charger, as she's next off to Budapest to shoot "Copying Beethoven" with Ed Harris. And after a recent run-in with airport security, she'll leave her knitting needles at home.
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A treasure map on the Declaration of Independence? Please.
Contrary to the fantastical tale woven in "National Treasure," the keepers of the original, signed Declaration of Independence want to make it clear there is no treasure map on the back of the document and, thus, no reason to steal it.
"No treasure map. No treasure map at all," says Kitty Nicholson, senior conservator at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. See for yourself at www.archives.gov, on a page devoted to the now-famous backside.
The Declaration is written on parchment -- animal skin -- that has aged to a light tan. After wear and tear and water damage, some of its memorable words have all but faded away.
Still, its value is hard to quantify. "It's priceless," says former archivist Milton Gustafson. Surprisingly, no plot to steal the Declaration has ever been uncovered.
But it remains under armed guard in bullet-resistant casing at the Archives.
Original copies printed on July 4, 1776 -- 25 of which are known to still exist -- have sold for up to $7.4 million apiece. A genuine one measures about 14 by 18 inches and has no "John Hancock" or any other signatures. Reese Witherspoon might like one for her wall -- she's a descendant of signer John Witherspoon.
-- Elizabeth Suh
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