Cover starlet Michelle Williams graduates from TV (Dawson's Creek) to movies (Dick). Michelle Williams blinks sleep from her hazel eyes, runs a hand through her tousled blond hair and softly asks what we'd like for breakfast. Unfortunately, this scenerio isn't occurring after a night of sheet-twisting passion-we just rang her doorbell, at an ungodly early hour, so we could shoot the shit before she has to go rehearse for an off-Broadway play. Most people know Michelle from the hit television show Dawson's Creek, on which she plays slightly slutty Jen Lindley. At age 18, she's also giving a formidable launch to her film career, starring this summer as a White House flunky with a -yeck!-crush on President Nixon, in the Watergate-revisionist comedy Dick. Like the characters she plays, Michelle is sexy and funny, though she freely admits she'd like nothing more right now than to crawl back under the covers. Us too-as long as we can bring the bagels. Maxim: What did you think when you first got handed a script with DICK on the front? Michelle Williams: For a while I just told people it didn't have a title yet because I got tired of explaining that no, I'm not doing a porno-it's a satire about Watergate. But we learned to have fun with the name. We even had caps on the set that said I DID DICK THIS SUMMER AND GOT PAID FOR IT. And T-shirts that said I LOVE DICK, with a little heart symbol. I wear mine proudly. M: So how does your character get tangled up in the Watergate scandal? MW: Well, Arlene (Michelle's character) and her friend (played by Kirsten Dunst) are official White House dog-walkers during the investigation. I, um, sort of fall in love with Nixon and don't want to get him in trouble. In trying to help out and cover things up for him, we accidentally become the mysterious Deep Throat informer without realizing it. M: So then... you're playing Deep Throat in a movie called Dick? MW: I know. I know... M: How much did you know about Watergate, considering that you weren't even born until Reagan was president? MW: When I was growing up in Montana, my dad ran for the senate twice. I was surrounded by politics, and Dad wanted me to have a good grasp on history, so actually I knew a lot about Watergate already. M: What was growing up in Montana like? MW: I lived there until I was about nine, in a town called Kalispell. It had a Diary Queen, a Burger King, a crusing strip, a copule of bars. What more do you need? M: A blowtorch maybe? I'd guess it gets real damned cold there. MW: So cold that my family decided to move to San Diego. We'd get snowbound for days at a time. It was just too fucking freezing to leave the house, and even if you did, the cars wouldn't start. So the kids would be trapped inside and Dad would be outside shoveling snow. M: Is that what makes folks like Ted Kaczynski and those militia nuts go off the rails there? MW: Well, Montana is a fairly unconquered place-like no man's land. It doesn't surprise me that it attracts renegades. It's a very free, unfettered way of living. I mean, a speeding ticket only costs you about five dollars. M: Have you ever gotten a speeding ticket? MW: I've been pulled over six times but only gotten one ticket. There are ways to get out of it. The best one was one time when I was road-tripping from L.A. to North Carolina with a friend and we got pulled over going really fast. I grabbed a water bottle, poured some in my lap and worked up some tears. The trooper was like "Whoa, what's wrong?" We told him I had a bladder infection and we were trying to make it to the next rest stop. He said, "Go, Just Go." Embarassing girl stuff almost always works. M: Dawson's Creek has a very loyal, possibly obsessive, audience. Do you ever meet fans who think you are Jen? MW: My character is not real loved, so 15-year-old girls come up to me and call me "bitch" They yell, "I can't believe you did that to Joey. Don't you know she belongs with Dawson?" I try to explain that I don't write the stuff-I just say it-but they don't seem to quite get the whole distinction between TV and reality. M: How do you convince the Dawson's casting people that you were right for the part of the town's bad girl? MW: When I auditioned two and a half years ago, I was a bad girl. Simple typecasting. M: How bad were you? MW: Let's just say that I was no angel. M: Maybe that's because you moved to L.A. on your own when you were 15. How did you convince your parents that was a good idea? MW: My dad is a liberal guy in terms of raising kids, so he took less convincing. But my mom had a really hard time with it. In retrospect, if I was in her position and my 15-year-old daughter wanted to move, I would have been the same way. But I'm glad I did it. M: So you were in L.A., pretty much doing as you pleased. How did you celebrate your Sweet 16 birthday? MW: I didn't have many friends then, so I was probably by myself...except for a six-pack. M: You're appearing in an off-Broadway play, Killer Joe, this summer. I understand there's some nudity in it. MW: Yes, there is. I'm all kinds of naked. M: (nearly choking on a half-chewed chunk of bagel) You actually take your clothes off? MW: I'm a large contributor to the nudity. M: Well, I hear it's a great play, but you know people are going to buy tickets just to see the Dawson's Creek girl in the buff. MW: Oh, I know. And I'm prepared to be standing there completely naked and see a camera flash go off. There's going to be some asshole who's going to take a picture because he can sell it. Of course, that person is going to get dragged out of the theater. M: We'll consider that a warning. I hear you're a boxing fan-what do you like about it? MW: I really don't understand people who golf. Boxing just seems like the very definition of sport-so visceral and primal. There's something cool about two guys just hitting each other and getting paid $20 million. It also takes a lot of soul. Your teeth are falling out, your nose is on the other side of your face, but you're coming out of the corner when that bell rings. M: Have you ever been in a fight yourself? MW: Yes, I have. M: How'd you do? MW: Very well. I was at the ice-skating rink in San Diego a few years ago, and this girl who didn't like me threw my jacket in the drinking fountain. That just set me off. She had these press-on nails that kept flying every which way. And we were both on skates, which takes a little extra maneuvering. M: An ice skate would make a good weapon. MW: I'm not that mean. M: Do you prefer guys your own age, or older? MW: Older. I've just been that comfortable around people my own age, so I've always dated older men. M: So how do you let this older guy know that you're interested? MW: The last guy I told in my sleep. I talk in my sleep all the time, and apparently one night I said, "I love you." The next morning he's like, "So-o-o, you love me?" I was like, " Well, fuck, you busted me-yeah I do." M: What food do you like better than sex? MW: Just any old sex or really good sex? M: For our purposes-really good sex. MW: Actually, I don't see why I can't do both. You know, have my cake and eat it, too. Class of '99 Michelle Williams Age: 18 (Born September 9, 1980 in Montana) I.D. please: Our coquetish cover star (whose CB handle is "Little Duckie")plays a high-school hussy not trying too hard to live down her tawdry past on Dawson's Creek, and has fleshed out her schoolgirl resume with last year's Halloween H20 and this summer's Dick. Off-camera, Michelle has been living on her own since she was 15, earned her diploma through correspondence school, and confesses a weakness for older guys. "I don't mean like geriatric, I mean like mid-'30s" Thank God-we'd hate for Grandpa to have a hotter date at the family reunion than we do.