Anna Faris Playboy Interview
Playboy Interview
Anna Faris: 20Q
The best Bunny in the house talks about raunchy humor, those gawky teen years and what it’s really like hanging with Hef and the girls
Q1
PLAYBOY: You’re best known to movie audiences for your role as the hilariously clueless, adorable Cindy Campbell in the four raunchy Scary Movie flicks, as well as for playing an airhead movie star in Lost in Translation. If we’d known you in high school, would we be surprised you get cast so often that way?
FARIS: I was maybe a little eccentric in high school. I felt unattractive, short and self-conscious about my body, and I would purposely emphasize that by doing odd things. I wore glasses, braces, odd hairdos and dumpy clothes. I was clumsy and awkward. When I was a freshman I wore a Christmas-tree skirt as a cape. I couldn’t get any dates until senior year, and I remember the first time I heard a couple of guys commenting that I had a nice body, it was such a huge shock. It felt really good.
Q2
PLAYBOY: When was your family most shocked by your behavior?
FARIS: As a high school junior I wanted to hang out with the cooler kids, who were going to parties. My brother is three years older, and both of us went through our partying, drinking phases in high school. I would sneak out and stay out late. I got caught with a fake ID when I was 20. I had to go to court. I was terrified of what my parents were going to do, but they thought it was hysterically funny. It was like, Wait, what happened to the parents I used to know, who would’ve been furious?
Q3
PLAYBOY: We all know, thanks to your recurring role last season on Entourage, that your first name is pronounced “Ahnuh.” Have you spent a lot of time schooling people in that pronunciation?
FARIS: All my life. I worry that people think I’m being pretentious, but it’s an old family name. I feel inappropriate correcting people, so I’m always grateful when somebody around me says my name correctly, and then usually people catch on. That was one thing on Entourage I was a bit of a stickler about. My boyfriend on the show kept mispronouncing it, and I was like, “Look, I’m really sorry, and normally I wouldn’t do this, but you have to call me Ah-nuh if you’re going to play my boyfriend.” I mean, Anna Kournikova is Ah-nuh, right? I think it has kind of caught on.
Q4
PLAYBOY: Which of your Entourage co-stars would you most want to crash a party or go clubbing with?
FARIS: Oh, Kevin Connolly, for sure. We got along great, and he’s a lovely guy. He treated me with a lot of respect. He was a true professional. I enjoy parties, but I have to say I don’t really go to clubs at all. I’ll go to a dive bar, and I love hanging out at home, drinking wine, watching a movie. I’m pretty low-key. I love to host people at my house, but I tend to start early and crash early. I’ll just sneak away to the bedroom, shut the door and let my friends enjoy themselves for the rest of the night.
Q5
PLAYBOY: You’ve said you always wanted to be an actress. Why did you bother to get a degree in English literature from the University of Washington?
FARIS: When I was in college I decided to quit acting. I had a job prospect at an ad agency in London, and I was going to go live there. My parents were disappointed that I was throwing in the towel, but I just didn’t want a life of struggle. If I was able to get a day of work doing voice-over stuff for a commercial or if I was hired to do a training video or something, I just saw it as great college money.
Q6
PLAYBOY: What jobs did you end up getting?
FARIS: When I was young I was a babysitter, I cleaned houses, and I was a camp counselor. I was pretty bad at all my jobs. My heart wasn’t in it. Someone told me recently that they work for the burger chain Red Robin, and it still uses a training video I filmed in which I play the perfect hostess. At one point the phone rings, and I answer, “Thank you for calling Red Robin. We’re here for any special event you might want,” or whatever; then I put down the phone and say, “Here at Red Robin we always give good phone.” Oh God, can you imagine? It’s mortifying.
Q7
PLAYBOY: How did you go from giving good phone to giving good screen?
FARIS: I was about to graduate, and I auditioned for this really bad horror movie, Lovers Lane. I mean, most horror movies are pretty bad, but I got inspired, thinking, Maybe I’ve been a bit of a coward; maybe I can do this. So I moved to Los Angeles and auditioned for Scary Movie. That movie was perfect for me. I’m not offended by anything. I love crude humor. I have a lot of guy friends—I love hanging out with guys. Maybe because I was a little sister I can be really forgiving of guys. I just want them to be exactly who they are around me. So Scary Movie couldn’t have been a better job.
Q8
PLAYBOY: The Scary Movie franchise is famous for its raunchiness. Did anything about it ever offend you?
FARIS: I was willing to do anything. There was no scene I felt nervous about. I felt, They hired me, so I’ve got to deliver. When I went with my parents and brother to see Scary Movie at a Seattle strip mall the opening weekend, I was like, “Mom, there’s going to be a couple of points when I’m going to need you to go to the bathroom or get me popcorn. Just obey me.” Now I’ve totally broken them in.
Q9
PLAYBOY: So you’ve never refused to do anything they’ve asked you to do in a Scary Movie?
FARIS: In the first Scary Movie, at the last minute they were going to add a scene after this incredibly romantic love scene. Cindy’s boyfriend, Bobby, calls his friends and brags about having sex while his bodily fluids are all over the bed. I wanted to do it and not let Keenen Ivory Wayans, the director, down, but then I started to think about my parents seeing it, and it made me feel sad. So I said, “You know what? I’m not going to do this.” It was a crude and cruel scene, and that’s why it didn’t make it into the movie. But that was the last time I said no.
Q10
PLAYBOY: Action-film stars get to brag about the injuries they sustain doing risky stunts. Have you taken any hits in the name of comedy?
FARIS: In the second Scary Movie they cut a whole scene in which I’m paralyzed in a bathtub, the water is rising higher and higher, and I’m trying to pull the drain chain with my toe. In part of the scene I’m completely underwater. We did that in a pool, but I kept just naturally floating to the top, so I actually let them tie me down to the bottom of the pool. Now I would never do that. Those movies were such a great training ground, but they certainly didn’t pamper me or anything.
Q11
PLAYBOY: Hopefully you had more clout in your new comedy, The House Bunny, in which your character lives at the Playboy Mansion as part of Hef’s entourage but gets tossed out and is forced to work as housemother to a sorority of socially inept women.
FARIS: About three years ago I was thinking, What happens when a Bunny gets a little too old and it’s time for her to move on and adjust to a different reality? I had a dark version, with the character becoming a drug addict and returning to her small Christian Alabama town, but that wasn’t very commercial. I pitched the character to the screenwriters of Legally Blonde. They wrote a treatment, and I pitched it with them all around town, dressed as the character and saying the lines we’d created. Adam Sandler’s company, Happy Madison, and Sony said yes, and three months later we were shooting the movie. It has been a weirdly positive experience.
Q12
PLAYBOY: Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson appear in Scary Movie 4, and now all three, as well as Hef, appear in The House Bunny. What do you now know about the Girls Next Door that others don’t?
FARIS: Of course they’re physically fit and attractive—gorgeous—and maintain their physical appearance, but I also think they’re the friendliest and most welcoming people I’ve ever met. There’s such an accessibility about the Girls Next Door, and they were all so friendly and sweet and cool. I was in awe. There didn’t seem to be any competitiveness. You don’t find that kind of generosity much among women in Hollywood. I kept thinking, I can’t believe this is my movie and we’re filming here at the Playboy Mansion, and Hef is in our movie.
Q13
PLAYBOY: As the movie’s executive producer, co-creator and star, were you tempted to indulge in stereotypical male-producer behavior like screaming at underlings and ogling hot potential co-stars?
FARIS: I lost my temper only once, and that was about people not being punctual. It just drove me crazy. I feel it’s an indication that someone is taking the work for granted, so in general that annoyed me. When we had great-looking guys come in to be considered for the role Colin Hanks plays in the movie, I thought, This is fun! Colin was perfect because he’s great looking and charming, but he doesn’t seem as if he hangs out at the Mansion all the time. We had a great time together.
Q14
PLAYBOY: What was your first-ever experience with Playboy magazine?
FARIS: I was nine, probably, and it was in the forest with a neighbor’s dad’s magazines. They were totally erotic. It was amazing. I hadn’t really seen women like that, and I wanted to be like those girls. That’s why it’s amazing today, especially with The Girls Next Door, how accessible the Mansion and the Playboy idea have become.
Q15
PLAYBOY: You look so sexy and toned in The House Bunny, it wouldn’t surprise us if Hef and the girls invited you to stick around the Mansion for a while.
FARIS: I haven’t got the nails for it. Also, the amount of maintenance it takes isn’t for me. But yeah, they kept inviting me over. At the time I was too tired, but now I can’t wait to go back. I like hanging out with really imaginative, dramatic and flamboyant people.
Q16
PLAYBOY: What kind of guys turn you on?
FARIS: A lot of them. [laughs] I like a guy who is confident, charming and intelligent without being pretentious. There are a lot of smaller, slighter guys in the movie industry, but I like sort of bigger dudes. When I was young I adored pretty boys, but now I don’t want somebody who cares about his hair or his clothes. I want a guy to feel like a man and a dude.
Q17
PLAYBOY: You deserved all the praise you got for playing a shallow blonde actress in Lost in Translation. Many believe you were parodying Cameron Diaz. Were you?
FARIS: That’s been really hard. Even some of my friends say, “Come on, tell us the truth. What was going on?” I auditioned, without having read the script, pretty much exactly the way I played it in the movie. I filmed for only about a week, so I didn’t even get that much one-on-one time with writer-director Sofia Coppola. When the movie came out eight or nine months later and these questions started coming, I felt blindsided. I felt defensive at first, because I would know if I was knocking somebody. I felt so terrible about the whole thing, I asked my agent, “Should I write her a letter to try to explain?” She said no. It’s like being in a store when you’re a teenager and people watch you even though you’re not stealing anything. People are suspicious even though you’re innocent.
Q18
PLAYBOY: In a scene in The House Bunny you pay homage to Marilyn Monroe, one of the few beautiful women Hollywood acknowledged as being funny and sexy. How often do you run into the thinking that “funny” cancels out “sexy”?
FARIS: I think it’s still an issue. In comedy there’s a certain degree of self-deprecation that can be unattractive to either sex. In my movies I’m always humiliating myself in one way or another, whether it’s playing an off-the-wall character in Just Friends or playing Cindy Campbell, who falls down all the time and is not the brightest girl. We’ve been able to suspend our disbelief in “guy comedies” for years, though. It started with all those teen movies with these poor high school guys figuring out how they could be with Shannon Elizabeth, and somehow that’s supposed to be believable. It does a disservice to us all.
Q19
PLAYBOY: What are you most likely to be doing when you’re feeling truly sexual and alive?
FARIS: Although it scares me, swimming in the ocean is really sensual and makes me feel alive. I love being in the water with somebody I’m comfortable with and really adore. I also love sharing a great meal, though when I’m first dating somebody I get scared to eat. Actually, I’m not very good at dating at all. I was in a relationship for eight and a half years, and when I got out of that it was like I had to relearn everything. I didn’t know the dance or the nuances of dating, so it was an eye-opening experience.
Q20
PLAYBOY: You talked about having once been self-conscious about your body. How does it feel to have made The House Bunny, let alone be on the cover of Playboy?
FARIS: It’s such an iconic magazine. What I love so much about Playboy and the idea of Playboy is that it injects that playful, innocent sexuality I think girls and guys can now appreciate and love. It releases that old sexual guilt a lot of women can feel. So to be in the magazine is truly a thrill and an honor. I am so happy and proud. I’m as proud of this as anything else I’ve ever accomplished. It’s a badge of honor. Everybody in my life is really happy for me too. My friends back home are thrilled, and my parents have told everybody I’m on the cover.
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