Entertainment

July 22, 2008

Allentown actress hits high note with major role

AMY LONGSDORF For The Times Leader

As Amanda Seyfried was preparing for her starring role in “Mamma Mia!,” the big-screen version of Abba’s “Money, Money, Money”-making musical, she spent several days holed up at her parents’ Allentown home.

At least one member of the family was not happy to see her. Sigmund, one of the Seyfrieds’ five cats, ran and hid every time she crossed the threshold.

“He wouldn’t let me get near him,” Seyfried recalls from her apartment in L.A.’s Beechwood Canyon. “I guess he didn’t like me hitting those high notes.”

Sigmund is in the minority. Last year, Seyfried beat out a handful of bigger names, including Anne Hathaway, Mandy Moore, Rachel McAdams and Amanda Bynes, for the role of Meryl Streep’s daughter in “Mamma Mia!,” which opens today in area theaters.

Landing the role instantly turned the 22-year-old Seyfried into a young Hollywood hotshot. This month, the Allentown-born actress graces the covers of Teen Vogue and Vanity Fair, where alongside Blake Lively, Kristen Stewart and Emma Roberts, she’s being hailed as one of Hollywood’s “New Wave” elite.

And there are more movies to come, too. While continuing to shoot HBO’s “Big Love,” which airs its third season in January, Seyfried completed two 2009 films: “Boogie Woogie” with Joanna Lumley and Stellan Skarsgard, and “Jennifer’s Body,” a horror comedy that marks screenwriter Diablo Cody’s follow-up to “Juno.”

“Amanda is an extremely talented girl,” says “Mamma Mia!” costume designer – and Bangor, Pa., resident -- Ann Roth, who’s dressed everyone from Jane Fonda (“Klute”) to Nicole Kidman (“The Hours.”) “She’s very skilled. All of us on the movie felt that she had a sense of timing way beyond her years. She’s extremely prepared to be a real actress, and she has the back-up skills to make it last.”

Things are happening so fast for Seyfried that, she admits, it’s a challenge to keep herself on an even keel. “It’s just so ridiculous,” she says. “But I’m happy and positive for the first time in my life.”

In her first major role, she stars as Sophie, a bride-to-be who’s on a mission to discover the identity of her father before she marries long-time boyfriend Sky. Without her mom Donna’s knowledge, Sophie sends out invitations to three of Donna’s former lovers in hopes they can attend her Greek Isle wedding.

For Seyfried, landing the starring role in such a hotly anticipated project was a grueling process.

There were auditions with director Phyllida Lloyd as well as Abba architects Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulvaeus and the Tom-Hanks-run Playtone Productions (which also produces TV’s “Big Love.”)

Lloyd says it was Seyfried’s “astonishing” vocals that distinguished her from the pack. Producer Judy Craymer adds Sophie “had to be impish but innocent at the same time. She had to be fun, and she needed to sing really well, of course. Amanda ticked every box; she is our ideal Sophie.”

While Seyfried gets to share songs – and dances – with almost all of the cast members, her most memorable moments are with Streep.

Despite getting along swell with the older actress during shooting, Seyfried says, she never got over the intimidation factor. “I’m even more intimidated now that I’ve seen the movie,” she says, laughing. “She’s so good she’s like a creature from another planet.”

During filming in London and, later, Greece, Seyfried was accompanied by her older sister Jennifer. Both her mother Ann and Ann’s 87-year-old mother, Janet Sander, came over for extended visits. And Seyfried bonded with costume designer Roth and Roth’s assistant Michelle Matland, who owns a summer home outside Milford, Pa.

“We definitely compared notes on being from the Lehigh Valley,” Seyfried says. “It was great having Ann on the set; she gave the film a family atmosphere.”

Family is a big deal for the actress. Asked what she misses most about Allentown, she mentions walks in Trexler Park, summer thunderstorms and spending time with her parents and grandmothers (Allentown’s Sander and Whitehall’s Barbara Seyfried).

To hear Ann Seyfried tell it, her daughter was far from a natural-born performer. Ann, an occupational therapist at Muhlenberg Hospital in Bethlehem, remembers that as a youngster Amanda was so shy she’d hide behind her mom’s legs every time she had to meet someone new.

Still, at 11, she was hellbent on auditioning for a Broadway revival of “Annie” after she noticed an advertisement for applicants at the Lehigh Valley Mall.

In preparation, Seyfried began taking voice lessons. She didn’t get the “Annie” job, but she did get hooked on the buzz of bursting into song.

It was modeling – first via Pennsylvania operations and then for the renowned Wilhelmina Agency – that gave Seyfried her first foray into show business.

After acing a handful of commercials, Wilhelmina began sending Seyfried out on acting auditions. Ever since she was teenager, the young actress spent a good chunk of her free time aboard a Manhattan-bound bus, accompanied by her mom or her dad Jack, a pharmacist, also at Muhlenberg Hospital.

Seyfried was 14 when she landed the role of an extra on “Guiding Light.” More substantial parts in “As the World Turns” and “All My Children” followed.

After graduating from Allen High School in 2003, Seyfried briefly put her acting career on the back burner. She got an apartment in New York and enrolled at Fordham University. Then, the first week of classes, she landed “Mean Girls.”

The movie, a surprise hit that went on to pull down $125 million at the box office, gave Seyfried’s career a rocket boost. Her portrayal of the dim bulb Karen Smith led to a raft of other roles, including parts in “Veronica Mars,” “Alpha Dog” and HBO’s “Big Love.”

On a roll, Seyfried dropped out of college and moved to the West Coast.

As joyous a time as it is, she has gone through a rough patch lately. Her voice saddens when she discusses the death of her manager Harding Jones and the dissolution of a two-year romance with musician/actor Jesse Marchant.

Jones died during the filming of “Mamma Mia!”

Losing Marchant stung, too. “Maybe we’ll get back together again,” she says wistfully, while still declaring herself “very single” at the moment.

Seyfried has mostly avoided the gaze of the paparazzi, but a friendly get-together with her “Alpha Dog” co-star Justin Timberlake in January landed her a spot in the gossip columns.

“I was actually very excited about that rumor,” she says, laughing. “I was obsessed with Justin when I was 14. Obsessed! My friend Maureen (Murphy) and I went to five different ‘N Sync concerts and collected everything Justin.

“When I found out that I was working with him on ‘Alpha Dog,’ I called Maureen, and we screamed together on the phone for what seemed like an hour.”

Seyfried’s career is bound to get another big boost from “Jennifer’s Body,” due in spring 2009. In the film, she plays the best friend of the title character (Megan Fox), a demon-possessed cheerleader who decides to exact revenge on the town bullies.

Last month, she met with “Chocolat” and “The Cider House Rules” director Lasse Hallstrom about an upcoming project she hopes to film after “Big Love” wraps in October.

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