Issue date: July 11, 1999

ctress Leelee Sobieski, 17, plays opposite Tom Cruise in the highly anticipated Eyes Wide Shut, opening July 16. She's also starred in Never Been Kissed, Deep Impact and the TV movie Joan of Arc. We caught up with her to chat about the top-secret film, her hair collection and what it's like to be a teenager in Hollywood.

Eyes Wide Shut. You play opposite Tom Cruise. I've read that your role involves high heels on either you or Tom. Care to comment?
"How did you know that my role involved high heels? I don't think that I've ever said that. I don't think I can even reveal if I was wearing high heels or if he was wearing them. But I think the high heels came from me. I was wearing high heels at the time, high-heeled clogs. We were just talking. It was before we were ever in costume. It was just Stanley (Kubrick) and I and Tom talking about a specific scene and we ended up talking about my shoes."

So when you were wearing heels, were you a lot taller than he was?
"Not at the time, because it was two and a half years ago, and I was 14 at the time."

If you had one adjective to describe Tom Cruise, what would it be? Physically? Mentally?
"Good. I think he's a good man. And I think he's a very good actor and he seems to be a very good man and he's very good to his children and to his wife. I think you have to be a really good person to sustain a certain level of normality."

Have you worked with anybody who does have a big head?
"I've never worked with any big, colossal heads, no."

How about the way Tom Cruise looks. Did it intimidate you?
"It didn't really intimidate me. At the time, which was two and a half years ago I didn't have a crush on him because I felt that he was very in love with his wife, so I felt sort of guilty if I had a crush on him because I respected the fact that he was in love with his wife, so I didn't want to."

What about Nicole Kidman?
"I've never met her nor worked with her."

Did it seem strange to you that you never met Nicole?
"I wanted to meet her. I was so happy to get to work with Stanley Kubrick because that's such an amazing opportunity to have. That was so exciting for me I think everything else I didn't really realize."

Have you talked to Tom since you finished filming?
"No, I haven't."

How did Tom treat you on the set?
"Sort of like a parental friend."

Did he do anything particularly parental?
"No, not to my knowledge." (laughs)

Who in your peer group will be the next Gwyneth Paltrow?
"I really like Christina Ricci because she chooses different roles and I think she's smart and I like the fact that she has a different appearance than everybody else."

Have you ever met her?
"No. but I like that she seems to be a little different. I like that. I like people that are different, and I haven't really encountered. I don't think she'll be the next Gwyneth because they are too opposite. I really like Christina Ricci. I think she'd have to be the one."

Do you feel uncomfortable that you have done a lot of sexy photo shoots? Does that make you uncomfortable at all?
"No, not at all. If you were 16, wouldn't you be happy to look sexy in a photo? I've never done anything that's been in vulgar taste to my knowledge."

What do your parents think?
"My mother's a writer and my father's a painter, so it's a pretty open family. I've always had an open childhood. I don't think it really bothers them. It's not like I say, 'Oh, I have the most fun getting my photos shot,' because I don't. It sounds strange, but it's sort of boring. I was always allowed at a young age ... I wasn't allowed to go out, but if I wanted to I could wear clothes that were a little bit revealing or a lot of makeup. I wanted to take a form of dance for a sport when I was younger and I chose flamenco dancing when I was about 10 years old. There you have to wear high heels and a long skirt and I remember the teacher saying, 'Clap! You know your boyfriend's in the audience and you have to look pretty for your boyfriend,' and I was, like, you don't have to look pretty for your boyfriend. I don't want to look pretty for my boyfriend. I was exposed to that, so it's not that big of deal."

Do you dance flamenco now?
"No. I had only taken it for three years. But I incorporate it when I'm dancing to different sorts of music. My hands always enter this one position at the end of a song. It's kind of strange."

Do you have any movie-star crushes right now?
"No, not at the moment."

Are you still stuck on Johnny Depp?
"Not so much as before."

Matt Damon or Ben Affleck? Have you met either one? Want to?
I don't know them, but in terms of appearances, the way they look, I like the way Ben Affleck looks. But I go more for darker types. I went to the Vanity Fair Oscar party and I saw Ben Affleck dancing, but I didn't go up to him. But it would be nice to meet them.

How about Prince William?
"I'd like to meet Prince WIlliam. He's in a strange situation now, so there's probably a lot of interesting things going through his mind about his life and he had to go through something very hard. He's going to a very good school, so I'm sure that he's a smart young man, so I'd like to meet him."

Is there anyone else you'd like to meet now that your star is rising?
"I really love Whoopi Goldberg. I'd like to meet Jim Carrey. I think he's really great and really funny. Anjelica Huston and Meryl Streep and Jodie Foster. I really like Will Smith as well. He seems to be a very cool young man to me."

Where did you get your name? Think you'll ever switch back from Leelee to Liliane?
"It comes from my French grandmother. I think my parents just wanted to give me a name that was more fun and energetic. And they came up with Leelee. They invented it."

Do you have a curfew?
"One o'clock on weekends. It's not too late, but also, I get tired."

Do you have to be home for dinner?
"We eat dinner as a family. Dinner's normally pretty late in our house, compared to an American family. We eat dinner at around 8 o'clock. We're always all around the dinner table and we talk about all different things that happened during the day, except for if I have a lot of homework. Then I'm there for about 10 minutes and I run away."

What's the worst part of being a teenager?
"I think for me I'm pretty sure of who I am. The hard part, sometimes you go through being the child and the woman. And sometimes you really want to be the child for a long time and sometimes you really want to be a woman for a long time, but you're not either of them, so sometimes you feel out of place. When you're amongst children, you're not as great, as comfortable. Or if you're with adults, there are certain things that don't match up perfectly for each of the groups. For me, that hardest thing is my friends that aren't so confident in themselves. When they're trying to find themselves, that's the thing that's more hard for me to witness -- when they're going through their troubles -- because I don't have that many problems because I'm very close to my family. They're always right behind me helping me with everything and I'm very close to them. A lot of them aren't very close to their parents, and so they don't have so much guidance. I can't be the only one to give them that. They won't listen to me because I'm just their friend. So that's probably the hardest thing for me to go through as a teenager. And I'm very against drugs, so that drives me crazy."

Do you have friends who are into drugs?
"I have a lot of acquaintances who are, yes."

Has it been hard for you to resist the peer pressure about them?
"No. Not at all. I don't have the need to. You turn on music really loud and you sit in your room and you close your eyes and you can be as free as you'll ever need to be or want to be. But some people don't have the ability to do that and I guess that's why they turn to drugs. Maybe I'm fairly naive, but I just don't understand why you can't just close your eyes and let yourself go. Maybe that's because I have too much confidence."

How old were you when you had your first kiss?
"Third grade. It was in third grade. I went strawberry picking with my boyfriend at the time. It was in New York -- I live in New York -- and it was just outside of New York. He took us to these strawberry vines growing in the mountains. We went hiking up the mountain and we were telling these dirty jokes. In third grade. I went to a school that was very open at the time and they decided to give us sexual education in third grade and tell us everything. The approach then was that if you tell kids everything about everything in third grade then they'll never have the need to try certain things too soon, if they already know about it and it's not as mysterious and forbidden. So we were telling dirty jokes at the time. And he was two years older than me at the time. I was in third grade and he was in fifth grade and we were going through the strawberry mountain and then he pushed me down and he started to French kiss me. I was pushing him off. I was in third grade, 8 years old and then I broke up with him. I was so annoyed. I said I don't want to do that, I'm in third grade. That was the first occasion. But I haven't had a boyfriend for a while, for maybe a year. I've had a lot of crushes, but I haven't had a serious boyfriend for awhile."

Is it hard to have a boyfriend because you're famous now? It's got to be difficult to be a teenager and have fame around you. Do you think that boys are intimidated by you?
"I don't know yet because that's just sort of creeped up now, so that hasn't had enough time to play any roles on it yet. I don't get interested so easily. I get a lot of little crushes all the time, but to be interested for me it would have to be more than just a little crush. It would have to be a whole bunch of things combined. That hasn't happened to me in awhile. I haven't met anybody that I would even consider a boyfriend if the opportunity ever came up or that I would want anything like that to happen. I've met a lot of people that I'd said, 'Oh, I like this person as a friend.' And there are a lot of little crushes. I like to flirt. There's a lot of flirting. But someone that I'd call a boyfriend, for me there has to be a little more. There has to be the perfect one."

What do you shop for? What do you like to wear?
"Right now, I'm wearing a vintage shirt from the '50s. It's a cream-colored shirt with Gibson Girls from the 1890s all over it. And I'm wearing a pair of stretchy denim and I'm wearing my dad's slippers. But I just wear anything. I like a whole range of different things. Sometimes I like to wear a really fancy elegant dress or sometimes I like to wear a really slutty dress. Or I like to go really crazy or I like to wear maybe a pair of khaki pants and a khaki shirt and hide myself. Every day it changes with my mood, with what I wear and with what I want to do."

You were in Never Been Kissed with Drew Barrymore. Is she as wild as people think she is?
"She's not wild in the slightest bit. She's a really great, warm woman. She's so effervescent; she just sparkles and bubbles. She's not wild, but she's really loving and giving. And she's so warm. She'll come up to you and give you the biggest hug in the world and she'll make you feel like you're her bestest friend in the entire world and that you mean the most important thing to her. And maybe you are important to her, but she really makes everyone feel great. And she's very responsible now. She's gone through some really hard times and she's come out to be the sweetest woman. She's amazing."

Did she give you any advice about how to survive as a teenager and a star?
"Not any direct advice, but I think she knows that I'll be fine because of my parents. I have such a tightly knit family. I tell them everything. So if I'm having any problems with anything, they know before anybody knows. So I think I'll be fine."

Have you added anyone's locks to your hair collection lately? Who?
"I have Drew Barrymore's. Lately, I added Maximilian Schell, Shirley MacLaine, Peter O'Toole, Olympia Dukakis and Peter Strauss."

What do you keep them in?
"Whatever package they're packed in at the original place. I don't bring some specific little plastic bag that I have all the hair samples in. Stanley Kubrick's hair is in the envelope that he sealed that I haven't opened yet. So his is remaining in that envelope. Most of the time I have them say this is my hair, or they just sign their autograph on the envelope to authenticate it."

You've worked with Merchant, Ivory, Kubrick, Mimi Leder. Who do you want to work with next?
"I'd like to work with Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, James L. Brooks. John Waters. I really love John Waters. He's one of my favorite directors. I love everything. I love comedy, black comedy, intensively painful drama, things that are very evil, so that at the end of the film you're annoyed. I really like to have a strong emotion at the end of a film."

I read that you collect wigs. How many do you have? Colors? Styles? Length?
"I don't collect them, but I have a couple. I have a bright purple, a green, a yellow, turquoise-and-black, a red wig. The purple and the yellow are short with the bangs, cut right under my chin, and the turquoise and black one as well. And the green one is like really teased in the back à la Diana Ross and the the Supremes. On Halloween, I bought a really huge red one that looks like a Dolly Parton. It's a devilish red and it has two black horns coming out of the sides of it. I was a she-devil for Halloween."

Do you think you'll ever cut your hair?
"I'd like to cut it, but my hair is very fine, very thin. I like having long hair. It's like a feminine asset, long hair. It brings something to you. I find short hair to be more fun and spunky, that's why there's the wigs. Because it's easier to cut your hair than to grow it. You can always cut your hair shorter, so the wigs are in the sense then I can always have long hair if I keep the wigs and it doesn't take that long. Probably if I had short hair I'd have to do all these annoying things. I'd have to blow-dry it every morning and put all of this hairspray in it and all of this stuff that I really don't have time to do. I get really bored with doing my hair. I hate it. I can't stand it. I'd rather look really bad than spend an hour in the bathroom every morning."

Where do you wear those wigs?
"If I want to let myself go or go out and have fun. Different wigs give you a different appearance so you can sort of be a different person that day. In Joan of Arc, I wore two different wigs but it had to look like the wig really wasn't a wig. Some of my wigs look like they're wigs on purpose. The purple one, I wear it out to the movies theaters, walking down the street. The turquoise-and-black one I have a turquoise-and-black dress that I wear it with just outside, just walking around. But I don't wear a really big wig in the movies because that's really annoying to the people sitting behind you. So there is a wig etiquette. You cannot wear a huge crazy wig in a film. It's not nice. It's like wearing a high hat. It's not fair."

What do you do on a bad hair day?
"It doesn't matter. I don't care. I just go out with a bad hair day."

Are your friends into wigs?
"I do a lot of my girlfriends' hair and makeup, just because when you're working on a film or doing the photo shoots you learn all these tricks. So I can do makeup pretty well because of that. So they always come over and I do their hair and makeup and they always look really beautiful and then I go out looking really crappy. That's probably why I put a wig on."

I've read that your parents only let you watch an hour of TV a week when you were growing up. Is that still the rule? What do you watch?
"They did. Now I can really watch whatever I want, but I don't. Mostly I go to the movies. If there's one show on TV that I really want to watch I'll watch it. My little brother has a big tendency to watch Hercules and Xena. So, we were stuck watching that for a little while and that was pretty fun. He gets so hyped up after one of those shows, he runs around the house like a monkey."

What do you think of Lucy Lawless?
"I think she's a fun character. I like the way she has a very Lucy Lawless expression on her face a lot. She's amusing."

Did you get any of Tom Cruise's hair?
"I asked him for his hair and his hair was fairly short, so he was going to give it to me at the end of the film; he was going to send it to me. The hairdresser there was going to take a snip of his hair. He is so handsome that he basically gets no hair or makeup done in the morning, so the hair and makeup people had nothing to do. That's how good-looking he was. But then the film went two years over and I'm sure he's forgotten that a little 14 year old asked him for a tiny snippet of his hair. Or if not so, I always make up all these little stories in my mind, like, oh maybe he thinks I'm going to clone him with other people. Because during that time two years ago, the cloning of the sheep hadn't occurred yet."

Are you going to ask him for his hair at the premiere?
"I think I'll let it pass. I don't think I'll run after him with scissors at the premiere."

-- Interview by Michele Hatty, USA WEEKEND

Photo by Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY