Mandy Moore

Interview By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

When Mandy Moore started out as a teenage pop singer, very few people could imagine she'd be anything more than another derivative copy of Britney Spears. While she's never had the success of her teen pop peers, over time she's managed to carve out her own unique niche in the world of music that made her far more than any mere 'flash-in-the-pan' teen starlet.

That distinctiveness transcended itself even more so in her acting career. After making her breakthrough with a rather affecting performance in the film adaptation of author Nicholas Sparks' A Walk To Remember, Mandy has managed to prove herself a consistently engaging performer every time in various films, running the gamut from Chasing Liberty to Saved to American Dreamz.

Her latest role is as Milly, a young girl who tries to find love while having to deal with her overbearing mother in the romantic comedy Because I Said So. When asked if Mandy's relationship with her own mother was any bit like how her character and Diane Keaton's were, she had this to say.

'I don't know if my relationship with my mom is so tumultuous,' Moore says, 'She definitely annoys me as much as Diane's character did in the film. But that's what you love about the mother-daughter dynamic. I know, with my mom, as much as she annoys me, everything she's doing comes from a good place. It comes from love, so I try to keep that in mind.'

One thing that surely may raise a few eyebrows, particularly with older audiences, is the often rather frank discussions about sex between Diane Keaton's mother character and the three daughter characters played by Moore and her co-stars Lauren Graham and Piper Perabo.

'That particular scene was probably the most awkward,' she recollects, 'Not just to be in the scene and be talking about that stuff with Diane, but the whole crew was around me and it was just like, at first, I kind of was just barely dipping my toe in the water and then, you have to go for it, for the sake of the scene. I had fun.'

Mandy, however, says she would not be nearly as comfortable being so frank about her personal life with her family as her character is able to.

'I can't imagine about having that sort of intimate conversation about any of that stuff with my father,' she states, 'I can't even really imagine it with my mom. I mean not so much that it would feel uncomfortable, but I just don't want her knowing about my personal life, you know. That's for me to discuss with my friends. I kind of love the dynamic that my character had with her sisters as well and with my mother on top of it, it's cute.'

Moore adds that the opportunity to play in an all-woman family alongside Perabo, Graham and Keaton, was thrilling for her, as she herself was raised with two brothers and had no sisters.

'I was excited about the prospect of being surrounded by these three really amazing women for two months, getting to gossip and talk about shoes and shopping and boys and all of that stuff,' Mandy gushes, 'We would be having conversations and the camera would have been rolling for 10 to 15 seconds. And we'd have no idea because we were so immersed in our own world. And it's like, 'Oh wait, it's great that we're capturing all this on film, but we have to stick to the script.''

Her biggest thrill of all, however, was sharing the screen with Oscar-winning actress and romantic comedy veteran Diane Keaton. Moore noted that one of her favorite movies is Woody Allen's classic Annie Hall, for which Keaton won a Best Actress Oscar.

'When I went into this experience, Diane was completely on a pedestal and I think she's on a higher pedestal now,' Moore enthuses, 'I just adore her, but it's hard to sort of separate characters and people and when you have such admiration and respect for them. And you're in a scene with them, it's overwhelming, especially at first, but it was the experience.'

'As you continue with the movie and as time goes on, you relax and get a little more comfortable with it,' she adds, 'But it's still a little exciting to be in the same room with her. I've come to know her very well, but she's just Diane. She's this amazing entity of her own. I adore her.'

Mandy Moore has plenty more to offer for the year 2007. She appears in two more movies this year. The first is a comedy with Robin Williams and John Krasinski called License To Wed. The second is an independently-released romantic drama called Dedication playing alongside Billy Crudup, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

She also plans to do music as well this year with an upcoming album Wild Hope that's set for release in April, which she describes as 'cool, fun, organic, folkie-pop'. With so much on already for the talented 22 year-old performer, don't start expecting a Mandy overload.

'I don't have anything on deck right now,' she says, 'I think everything happens for a reason and I'm trying to be picky and find the right thing. I don't want to just jump into anything.'

Like much of her already exciting and unique career, both as a singer and as an actress, Mandy says she plans to continue to chart her own path by continuing to pick the endeavors that best fit her.

'I like indie stuff, but I'm not picky,' she notes, 'Things just tend to happen sometimes at the last minute, too. It's just whatever grabs you. There's no sort of telltale sign like, 'Ah, that's going to be a movie I'm interested in.' It depends on casting and directors and obviously, the script. And is the character a challenge and I feel moved by, passionate about, so every decision, you come to it from every direction.'