Nikki Reed battles vampires and rabid fans with the release of twilight

*From: zinkmagazine

About an hour before I meet Nikki Reed at L.A.’s famed Chateau Marmont, I get a text message: “Hey, it’s Nikki. Do you want to meet somewhere else?” After she picks a mom and pop coffeehouse on Melrose, blocks away from the trendy stores of Sunset Boulevard, she explains, “I know I should go through my publicist… but the Chateau is just so formal.” For an actress who just turned 20 and is about to appear in one of the most hyped movies of the year, Twilight, Reed is decidedly un-Hollywood. Wearing a flannel shirt and faded jeans, she is the antithesis of the Emmy party scene that has gone on all weekend. Did she go to any of the soirees? “No. I’m not on a show, so it feels wrong,” she says, though she did go to another event a few days earlier. “I went with Kristen [Stewart, her Twilight co-star], who happens to be, like, my best friend now. But once you’re in there, what do you do? You go, and it feels like, ‘Alright, let’s eat some hors d’oeuvres and chat.’ But why didn’t we just stay home and chat?” If Reed’s head is refreshingly screwed on straight, perhaps it’s because this isn’t her first go-round with being a young It Girl. In 2003, the actress catapulted onto the scene with the critically acclaimed Thirteen, a movie that she not only co-starred in with Evan Rachel Wood but also co-wrote with director Catherine Hardwicke. Since that time, Reed has starred in many films, including Mini’s First Time with Alec Baldwin and Cherry Crush, and she also did a stint on The O.C. But Twilight, her third teaming with Hardwicke (Reed also appeared in the director’s criminally underrated Lords of Dogtown), is unquestionably her biggest project to date. Based on the popular vampire novels by Stephenie Meyer, the movie is being counted on as a franchise, with Reed and her co-stars signing onto three movies before ever shooting. She felt the immensity of the Twilight experience almost as soon as it was announced that she would play Rosalie. “This is by far the most terrifying thing I’ve ever attempted,” she says. “I got the first taste of what it was like to not please everybody when they released the first set of cast photos, which weren’t supposed to be released. In the book, Rosalie is like 6 feet tall and fair-skinned with blonde hair and light eyes, like a Swedish bikini model, not exactly me on paper. And when they released those photos, there was this huge uproar, like this big frenzy.” It was an abrupt transition back into Hollywood-land for Reed. At the time she got the call for Twilight, she was working on the island of Kauai in a clothing store as part of a bet with her brother. “He brought up a very valid point, which is that I’d never worked a normal job. I’ve worked hard; I’ve been living on my own since I was 14. But I didn’t know what it was like to make minimum wage,” she says. It was a humbling experience. “I walked around, and I was giving my resumé, which had nothing on it, to department stores just because my brother sort of bet me to see how long it would take me to get a job. And it was really difficult. I was pulling the whole, ‘But I’m an actor, and maybe you would’ve seen something I’ve done.’” The job quest and subsequent work was cake compared to the intensity of being in Twilight. “Some people are really supportive, and some people are so quick to pick everything apart and not understand that we’re actors playing characters in a book and that’s it, full stop, period,” she says. “And I’m definitely far away from [Rosalie], but I’ve never had people ask me questions as a character. Even when I’m going to lunch or going to dinner, people come up to the table and go, ‘Hey, Rosalie, my name is such and such. Do you really hate Bella?’” The surreality of that aside, Reed says, “I acknowledge what a phenomenon this series is; I think there’s a lot of subtext to these books. Kids like to feel like they’re reading more adult material, and this is the first book in a long time where things are softened in a way that makes it acceptable for a younger audience to read, whereas if you really get into it, it’s clear that it’s for a more adult audience. This book just cannot be categorized at all.” STEVE BALTIN Photographed by JEANEEN LUND