L i b r a i r i e . . .

E n t e r t a i n m e n t  T o d a y . . .

N o t  t h e  N e w  G i r l . . .

When she was 14, she fought terrorists with Arnold Schwarzenegger. By age 18, she was slaying vampires with Sarah Michelle Gellar. And two years ago she brought it on with Kirsten Dunst. But today 21-year-old Eliza Dushku is working on an even bigger project. "I’m working on moving right now," she laughs in her characteristic sultry-husky voice. "I was living in a house with roommates and my brother."

And why shouldn’t Dushku move into her own place? It’s the natural progression of things, entirely befitting the eve of her new comedy The New Guy. "Art imitates life and having your life documented on film - a lot of the characters that I’ve played were really realistic for the times that I was in," Dushku begins. "I built up this really tough girl front; it got me through high school basically. I did this whole hard-as-nails, big talker thing. And I tried out for Buffy just after I graduated high school and that really kind of was where I was at that point in my life." Dushku smiles at the memory. "I remember I used to wear my tattoo home from the set. They’d say, ‘We can take that off for you.’ And I was like, ‘No!’"

But in her new teen comedy, Dushku plays a popular nice girl caught up in clique politics who sees DJ Qualls’ successful makeover into the most popular guy in school as a way for social reform. "It’s almost like Can’t Buy Me Love," Dushku explains, referencing the 1987 Patrick Dempsey "Nerd Rents Popular Girl To Gain Popularity" teen romance. "Everybody’s gone through it. I don’t care who you are. Even if you were in a popular clique, everyone’s had the rejection of high school that makes you want to die and makes you feel like you want to be somebody else."

Qualls plays Dizzy Harrison, a loser at one school who, with a little help from a prison inmate played by Eddie Griffin, learns to be cool. Diz transfers to East Highland High under the cooler name of Gil Harris and completely restructures the social order. Dushku is Danielle, the cheerleader with a heart of gold who falls for the new guy. At his core Dizzy is sweet, but he’s tempted by the lure of popularity and thus sets up the third act crisis.

Yes, Dizzy disses his true but "uncool" friends in a moment Dushku says we’ve all been through. "I remember throwing a Popsicle stick into my now best friend’s hair because all the cool girls in high school were like, ‘Throw this Popsicle stick into Alison Mack’s hair!’ And I said, ‘I can’t - she’s my friend.’ I didn’t know what to do and all the cool girls were like ‘Do it, do it, do it.’ [So] I did it. And to this day it makes me want to cry. Alison, I am so, so sorry I did that to you in the lunchroom in seventh grade. But it was just like the moment where I..." her voice trails off wistfully. "High school, man. They compare it to prison in the movie and I’m with them, all the way."

The New Guy isn’t Dushku’s first foray into cheerleader chic. "Bring It On was ‘cheerleading’ and that was something totally onto itself," Dushku explains, complete with air quotes. "This was more a music video. It wasn’t so much cheering, it was more like they wanted sex. Like our hair down. In Bring It On we all had our hair up because it was a distraction [from the cheering moves]. For this they were like, ‘Work the hair.’ And I’d get it caught in my lip gloss and look like a total freak." She laughs and confesses an even greater secret of moviemaking magic. "I was the worst one [as a cheerleader]. I grew up playing tag football with my brothers. I’m not the most graceful [and] I definitely took the most work with the choreographer. I had to have like special ‘Eliza Days’ where all the other girls had gotten it weeks ago."

At the same time she was filming The New Guy, Dushku was also working on the Robert DeNiro-James Franco drama City by the Sea, to be released this fall. "I would go away for a week and go to New York. And I’m going from playing this uppity Danielle cheerleader girl to this junkie living in Jersey with a kid working at the Burger King drive thru window. I’d show up and the director would look at my manicured hands and say, ‘Would you get some dirt under your nails? Grow a zit! We’re trying to make a movie here!’"

During the interview, Dushku is distracted by the monitors set up around the room constantly showing various clips from The New Guy. On multiple screens, Danielle is modeling a Pretty Woman montage of swimwear for Dizzy. Dushku’s hands cover her face. "Ohmigosh... my brothers are going to kill me. I have three older brothers. The Maxim cover came out and they were like, ‘Are you serious? Our friends read that magazine.’ Now they’re going to be like, ‘Please put your clothes on,’" Dushku laughs.

"The (aforementioned) scene itself was just a riot to shoot. They had a different crewmember sitting in the hot seat next to the camera because DJ was unavailable. So every time I had a different thing on, I’d rip the curtain open and it’d be Ed Decter (the director) or our sound guy or some one else. For the most part the guys were just sitting there (sheepishly) and I’d be like, ‘Gordon! You’re next! Get in there!’ He’s blushing and I’m hamming it up trying to make them break," says Dushku. "But then we had this one guy get in the chair and he was like, ‘OK! Come on. Do this right now!’" Reminiscing about the filming as if this were a high school reunion instead of a press day, Dushku smiles brightly. "And obviously we didn’t take ourselves too seriously."