Maggie Grace breaks the mold of cookie-cutter blonde actress with her lust for literature.

By Josh Gajewski

Sitting in the rear garden of a Hollywood teahouse, Maggie Grace is looking very, well, "Hollywood." She's long-legged, hazel-eyed and blond-haired, and she has ordered an iced tonic to go with a plate of carrot and celery sticks, as if trying to improve an already dynamite figure. All that's missing from this picture is a pair of J. Lo shades and a Chihuahua in a designer handbag.

"I blend in pretty well," Grace muses, as she picks at the carrot sticks. "Being 21 and blonde in L.A. is like, well, you might as well match me with grass. We're all the same here."

She always carries a book, she tested out of high school at 16, and she's up at 6 a.m. most days simply to enjoy the stillness of the morning.

Not quite. This particular starlet, who broke away from the pack last year as rich girl Shannon on ABC's megahit "Lost," isn't exactly the L.A. Everyblonde. To the contrary, a near two-hour conversation reveals that she always carries a book (a purse peek uncovers F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender Is the Night"), she tested out of high school at 16, and she's up at 6 a.m. most days simply to enjoy the stillness of the morning -- a steamy cup of tea in one hand and, yes, a good book in the other.

More so than acting, it seems, Grace is a lover of stories. As a kid in Worthington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, she spent recesses reading John Steinbeck and Jane Austen rather than swinging from monkey bars with classmates. She says her parents called her a 60-year-old trapped in a little kid's body, and when asked why she veered toward acting as an adult, her response is suitably bookish: "There's something so beautiful and exciting about really good writing."

Her love of a good story translated into a passion for bringing fictional characters to life. A community theater type since she was 5, Grace moved to Los Angeles at 16 to pursue a film and television career. At 20, she landed her life-altering part on "Lost," and, in February, nabbed her first starring big-screen role in "The Fog," a remake of a 1980 horror flick about revenge-seeking ghosts who engulf a small town with a supernatural, deadly fog. The film, opening this weekend, also stars "Smallville's" Tom Welling.

"The character is very different from the one I play on 'Lost,'" Grace says of her "Fog" role, which Jamie Lee Curtis plays in the original. "She has a nice strength to her."

What "Lost" and "The Fog" do have in common, Grace argues, is good writing. The movie, she explains, is a "morality tale wrapped in a horror film, [which] really grabbed me." And as for "Lost's" success? "It's a show where the story is the star; we [the actors] are not. We are all constantly expendable."

Now, Grace's character is rumored to be the next to go. When that idea is raised, though, Grace just rolls her eyes.

Enter Ian Somerhalder, who played Grace's stepbrother, Boone, before being famously killed off in the first season. Now, Grace's character is rumored to be the next to go. When that idea is raised, though, Grace just rolls her eyes and says, "Every character is the next one to go. ... [Shannon] still has a long way to climb up."

Another big rumor surrounding Grace is that she and Somerhalder have been involved in an off-screen romance. Any truth? "No," she says with a laugh. "I'm 21 and single." (Somerhalder's take? "I would only be so lucky.")

Of course, one gets the feeling that if Grace were dating someone, she wouldn't be the one to tell you. In person, she comes off as shy and speaks with the soft voice of someone who doesn't want to draw attention or reveal too much. "She is very quiet," concedes "Fog" director Rupert Wainwright. "In rehearsals, I was a bit worried for a while [because] she was just sort of sitting there and not getting that involved. But as soon as we began filming, she threw herself into it."

On this day, she's admittedly eager to get back to playing Shannon, because filming "Lost" means spending nine months working in Hawaii. "It's a superior lifestyle, and you appreciate it even more when you come here [to L.A.] for the weekend," she says. "It's just a lot slower and everything has more meaning. I'm entirely a better person there."

But for now, it's back to the streets of Hollywood. Grace leaves the teahouse and walks away along the sidewalk, a pink purse slung over her shoulder and Fitzgerald safely tucked away, soon to be reopened.