A LOVE SUPREME

A LOVE SUPREME

Release Date:

September 15, 2005
(September 2005 Issue)

Press Release:

Giant Magazine

There are a few things you need to know right off the bat about Jennifer Love Hewitt (JLH). The first is that everybody calls her "Love." It's in every article written about her. Right up near the top, in what is professionally known as the lead. Articles about JLH lead with "Love" because she goes by "Love." Such as "Just Love" or "Call Me Love," or "Whole Lotta Love." Every article starts with someone meeting JLH and her telling them to call her "Love." Everyone, that is, except me. I don't get somebody to Love. I can't find somebody to Love. I am un-Love. I am Loveless. Anyway, to tell me, she'll always be Jennifer. As in, "Hi, I'm Jennifer." Yeah, well thanks a lot Love.

The reason why we can forgive her for the whole Love reason incident is, among other things, because she talks about her breasts in the third person. They're referred to as "them" or "these" or "this and that". When JLH was working on "The Tuxedo", she had to tell Jackie Chan what a rack meant. "There was a scene where Jackie was suppose to say, "Nice rack,"" she recalls, "and she was saying it over and over but didn't know what it meant. Finally, he took me aside and asked, "Jennifer, what is rack?" I was like, "Jackie---these are rack." He got the line right on the next take.

The press doesn't refrain from talking about her rack either. Lifetime Magazine went an entire page before nothing that ex-boyfriend, singer/songwriter/Grammy Award winner John Mayer wrote "Your Body Is A Wonderland" (From Jim Mix: "Love was never the inspiration of the song. Just a plan to Love to appear in the music video which never was conceived.") about her, while Cosmopolitan managed a 38 column inches before nothing, "She has a body built for sin." And JLH loves piling on the fun, occasionally calling her biggest movie hit, "I Know What You Did Last Summer."

In person, JLH looks like a cross between the best looking girl from high school and a young Audrey Hepburn. Now, finding oneself alone in a room with the best looking girl from high school crossed with Audrey Hepburn can be alittle disconcerting under the best circumstances----and the best of circumstances do not usually include a tape recorder. To cover my bewilderment I mention that it recently dawned on me that the version of "Party Of Five" shown in Latin America must be known as "Fiesta del Cinco." There is something inherently funny to me about the phrase "Fiesta del Cinco." (If you don't believe me, say it aloud a few times with the same inflection usually reserved for, "We don't need no stinkin badges.") As it turns out, there is also something funny about the phrase to JLH because, fir the rest of the interview, she refers to her earliest television hit by its Spanish name, as in, "There was a time when I was working on "Fiesta del Cinco...""

When now speaking Spanish, JLH has a penchant for sending strangers gifts. When Gwyneth Paltrow won her Oscar, JLH sent roses. And it hasn't ended there."I sent Matt Damon a bed," she said excitedly. He was filming "The Bourne Identity" in France and I read an interview where he said he felt like he didn't have a bed on his own because he was always sleeping in hotels. So I went out, bought an AeroBed---a really, nice, super comfortable, blow-up bed. I bought sheets, a comforter, pillows and pillowcases and I wrote him a letter. It said I was a huge fan and I hope that you can travel with this and feel like you have a bed. I never heard anything back (from him). Some time later, I saw him at a party and he kind of looked at me strange like, "That's the girl who sent me the bed." Matt, where's the letter?

The horror, the horror.....JLH is scared of many things: snakes, spiders, heights, answering the door late at night and speaking in public. Plus she's claustrophobic and has what might be best described as a mortal fear of tanning beds. "I'm also scared of some of the outfits I've worn in the past," she admits. "I'm scared of some of the outfits other people have worn and I'm scared of hot pants and latex." In addition, she's frighten of horror movies. "To get over my fears of horror movies I did "I Know What You Did Last Summer." And I was the one who didn't die!" she states proudly. (I didn't get around to asking, but I'm assuming she did "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" to squelch her fears of sequels.)

JLH explains: "On the show, earthbound spirits are the ghosts of dead folks who , for whatever reason, haven't found their way to the light. My character's life is constantly being invaded by confused ghosts who are in need of help. The character is based of a real-life woman named MARY ANN WINKOWSKI who lives near Cleveland and makes a living as a real ghostbuster.

One night after she had been filming the show for a little while, JLH was at home and in bed watching television. Suddenly, the TV turned off. "Then I heard footsteps," she remembers. "My bedroom light switched off. It didn't switch off like the power cut out, it switched off like someone turned the light switch from up to down. I was like, "Okay, Mr. Ghost, can we turn the lights back on now?" I then heard more footsteps and the same light flipped from down to up and the lights came back on."

Not quite knowing what else to do, she called one of the show's producers and asked him if he had any suggestions. He recommended she called Mary Ann. So she did, and the next time Mary Ann was out in Hollywood, she came and spent sometime with JLH. "She came over and cleared me of two spirits. Apparently, I lived in a haunted house....built by (1920s schlock horror pioneer) LON CHANEY," reveals JLH. Mary Ann also took the cast of "Ghost Whisperer" on a ghostbustering tour of Hollywood. "The most haunted place we visited was Disney animation building," says JLH.

JLH took part in "Ghost Whisperer" because, like her ethereal "costars," she is trying to cross over herself. First she crossed over from child star to teen star, and is now trying to make the transition from teen star to adult star. "I think there's lots of easy ways to prove to people that you're an adult," she says. "Take your clothes off, play a severe drug addict---or become one real life. Just mess yourself from head to toe. There are lots of ways that people have done it that are not the ways I want to do it. I think the shock factor is where people go wrong. I don't think being an adult is about shocking people. Real gown-ups don't wake up one day and go, "I'm an adult." You don't turn 30 and take all of your clothes off and walk down a street in real life, so why would you do it in the movies?"

JLH's RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

JLH is not your typical celebrity. That is, she's willing to laugh at herself and at her past. She understands that much of her life has been paved with luck. It is a lesson that celebrities usually don't take notice of until it's too late. "I carry a few ideas about my career around my head," says the actress. "I like to think of (my career) as this dream toy I got as a kid. When you first get it, your instinct is to throw it around the room and smash it into little bitty pieces, but the problem with that is then you don't have the toy anymore. So I've always thought of my career as the thing I wanted more than anything else in the world. Now that I have it I think about how stupid it would be to abuse it.

"I also think about my life the same way. I'm just this girl from Waco, Texas who likes hamburgers. Anytime I get to do something, like a new job or a cover of a magazine, it's daunting. I always imagine thousands of other girls in Middle America who look like me, if not 50 times better, who could do what I do, but will never get the opportunity. When I get up in the morning, I know that I have to take really good care of my career and do it for all the people who will never get a chance. Hollywood is made up of a group of people who are not only really talented, but also really lucky---and I always need to remember that."

And that is why starlets and trends will come and go, but JLH will be left standing. Appreciation, luck, a sense of humor and, as Jackie Chan put it, a nice rack. Unbeatable.

JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT'S
10 SCARIEST THINGS ABOUT HOLLYWOOD

1) Actors who shoot Botox into their armpits so they don't sweat at awards shows.

2) The bed sheets at the Chateau Marmont Hotel on Sunset Boulevard.

3) Vintage underwear. "It's a thing now. People are buying underwear and garters and whatever from the '40s. Isn't anyone wondering who's worn this stuff and what kinds of things have been done in this underwear?"

4) The fact that you can buy different types of "pocket hoohahs" (JLH's way of saying "latex pussy") at sex shops.

5) Fight scenes with actors who get too into it. "I had one scene with a guy who got so into knife fighting that he switched out the fake knife for the real one. He got alittle too excited.

6) Public break ups.

7) Airbrushing.

8) Fake tans. "Actually, fake anything for that matter."

9) Too many actresses on set at one time.

10) Fake Kabbalah bracelets. "Forget the real ones. You can now go into a store and buy a fake piece of string so you look like you're wearing the real thing."