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Nancy Reagan would be so darned proud of Eliza Dushku.

"You just have to learn to say no," says the dusky Dushku, who orders nothing stronger than tea in the oaky dark of the Townsend Hotel bar in Birmingham. Dushku is not talking about the drugs and other temptations that are everywhere in young Hollywood. She's referring to the directors who would give her a role in their new movie if she would only do a nude scene, or the art directors who would put her on the magazine's cover if she would just take her top off.

"They'll try anything, and I guess, because I've played so many bad girls, they just expect me to go for it. It's like, c'mon, Eliza, just try on the hot pants, OK? But I can't think about what's going to help me in the moment. I'm going to be doing this for a long time; I've got a career to think about."

Dushku -- "rhymes with push-koo; I always say it sounds like a breakfast cereal" -- was spending a day in Detroit last week to promote "The New Guy," a teen comedy in which the former "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" sociopath gets a major makeover: She plays the good girl, of all things.

Dushku says she thought director Ed Decter must have confused her with some other actress when he asked her to play Danielle, the popular girlfriend of a high school jock who finds herself falling for the new kid in school, a skinny geek who is transformed into a cool dude with some help from a career criminal.

"I was stunned they wanted me, because it's the role that usually goes to the blonde who speaks really sweet," says Dushku, whose nicotine habit may contribute to a voice that is already heading toward Brenda Vaccaro territory. "It felt good to be good for a change."

Dushku comes by her screen toughness naturally; raised in Boston by a single mother and three older brothers, she learned early to stand up for herself.

"My mom was the best role model anybody could have. We had some hard times growing up, and she never took her eyes off what she wanted. She's a Mormon, but she was also this hard-core feminist, if you can imagine that combination, and she made it clear to me as a little girl I would have to fight to get what I deserved. Of course, living in a house with three guys has its effect, too. I wore their clothes, played football with them. The only time I was girly was when I was acting."

Getting her start
Dushku started acting at age 10; tagging along with an older brother auditioning for a commercial, she upstaged him by falling down and breaking her nose. Her screaming and bleeding attracted the attention of the casting agent, who offered a job to her instead of her brother.

Shortly after, she got her first movie role, in 1992's little-seen "That Night," playing a 10-year-old who idolizes the free-spirited teenager (Juliette Lewis) living across the street. (The film features Dushku's only semi-nude scene -- one in which she and two preteen friends apply a bust-enhancing cream to their chests.)

The next year, she was cast in "This Boy's Life" as the daughter of Robert De Niro and the stepsister of young Leonardo DiCaprio. Also appearing in the film was Tobey Maguire, who's now a friend and for whom she recently did a large favor: When he was being considered for his leading role in the new "Spider-Man" movie, "the people at Sony wanted to be sure I could pull off the action scenes," Maguire recalled in an earlier interview. "So I put together this audition tape and asked Eliza if she would do it with me. She made me look better than I was, actually."

'Buffy' and beyond
Having specialized in playing daughters -- Arnold Schwarzenegger's in 1994's "True Lies" and Paul Reiser's in 1995's "Bye Bye Love," Dushku figured her encroaching adulthood would put an end to her acting hobby. So she decided to follow in the footsteps of her mother, a socially active college professor, by becoming a political-science major. But, after enrolling at Suffolk University in Boston, she was offered the role of Faith, the tough new girl in Sunnydale who forms an alliance with Buff on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

"It was just supposed to be for a couple of shows, but then I went bad and hooked up with the evil mayor and became Buffy's enemy. The next thing I know, I'm a regular."

Dushku stayed with the show for two seasons, then reprised the character in three episodes of the spinoff "Angel."

"But I'll live with it forever," says Dushku. "Everywhere I go, people say, 'When are you going to be back on "Buffy"? ' The loyalty level is amazing."

Dushku moved from "Buffy" to the hip teen movie "Bring It On," playing the Goth gymnast recruited by Kirsten Dunst for the cheerleading squad. From there, it was on to "The New Guy," another teen flick, for which she makes no apologies.

"Hey, I just turned 21; I'm not that far away from these characters. I'm not that interested in the gross stuff, but I'm up for a few more teen roles while I can still do them."

After finishing "The New Guy," whose Friday opening comes more than a year after its originally scheduled release, she parodied her butt-kicking image in last year's "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" for director Kevin Smith. In between, she was reunited with De Niro in a thriller based on a true story, called "City by the Sea," originally set for release last year and now scheduled to open in September. She plays the junkie girlfriend of cop De Niro's estranged son, played by James Franco, on the run after being accused of a murder.

After shooting three films back to back, Dushku says she's ready for a break. She wants to go along on one of the field trips her mother leads for her college classes (the most recent was to Cuba). And she was recently invited to visit Albania, where she has become something of a national symbol, being the most famous American Albanian -- or at least half-Albanian since her mother's heritage is Danish -- actor since John Belushi.

"The president even invited me to stay in the palace, but I had to take a rain check to promote the film. But I'm going for sure. Don't worry, Albania, Eliza's coming home."