Amber Valletta is a loving wife's worst nightmare. If her haunting emerald eyes should mysteriously appear, as they did in the 2000 thriller What Lies Beneath, it means the wife is a minor misstep away from insanity and there's a good chance the mister won't make it home for dinner. Ever again.
Valletta has perfected the role of the other woman on-screen, as she now shows in Premonition, a psycho-thriller costarring Sandra Bullock (poor wife) and Julian McMahon (soon-to-be-unlucky husband) due out in March. But things couldn't be more different in the real world. Catching up with the Oklahoma native at Shutters Hotel on the Beach in Santa Monica, her adopted hometown of the past six years, it becomes apparent that her life revolves around her husband, Chip McCaw, the former professional volleyball player whom she married in 2003, and their six-year-old son, Auden. I can't help but ask if Chip was starstruck when they first met. "He didn't even know who I was," she tells me. "He was like, 'We knew Cindy Crawford, but not really you.' Thanks!" Valletta lets loose her easy, seductively goofy laugh.
It looks like 2007 will be a big year for Valletta. In addition to Premonition, she has roles in the supernatural drama Dead Silence, in which she plays, improbably, someone's mother-in-law, and in My Sexiest Year, as a kindly model who inspires abiding love in a teenager (Frankie Muniz). This time around, not a single home is wrecked on her account.
It was in the 2005 hit romantic comedy Hitch that Valletta firmly established herself as a supermodel who was also an actress—not merely a supermodel who was trying to act. Describing the most difficult part of shooting Premonition, Valletta marvels at "trying to keep up with Sandra. She was so damn funny. One minute we're cracking up and the next we're basically in tears."
But all is not totally perfect for Valletta and her surging acting career. "I hate waiting," she answers before the question is even finished. "I fought my way to get out of the trailers in Oklahoma, and I go all the way to Hollywood and I spend all my time in trailers." Again, her laugh—as striking as those eyes—fills the room.
If there's one thing Valletta is ultraserious about, though, it's the environment. Having been committed to various organizations, including Oceana's Stop Seafood Contamination campaign, for years, she says she would "love to go back to school for environmental studies. We're being raped of our born rights to clean air, water, and food." But if Valletta can't drum up the time for school, she'll settle for a starring role that, for such a dynamo, might seem like typecasting—as a woman warrior. "I have a big physical side I have to get out. I do weights, pull-ups, push-ups. I'd love to put 10 or 15 pounds of muscle on and be riding a horse and carrying a sword. Arrrrggh!" The former face of Versace and Prada narrows her eyes and grits her teeth. "It'd be so much fun!" —MICHAEL MRAZ
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