TV CLOSE-UP

Olivia Wilde

By Eirik Knutzen
Copley News Service

Nineteen-year-old Olivia Wilde passed her chemistry test in Hollywood during an audition for her very first television role on the new drama series "Skin." Called on to give eventual co-star D.J. Corona a tentative yet passionate kiss, all she could do was close her eyes and hope for the best.

Wilde and Corona spent an intense two minutes alone preparing for the brief romantic scene defining their characters' seminal relationship before auditioning for hard-pressed studio and network executives at Warner Bros. headquarters in Burbank, Calif. It was hard work, but somebody had to do it.

"When they put us in the rehearsal room together, we were so freaked out and excited about the whole thing that we couldn't study the lines," Wilde recalls with a giggle. "The cool thing was that D.J. and I sort of knew each other from this pilot season reading for a bunch of shows we didn't get, including 'The OC.' So we just sat there, whispering 'I can't believe its happening this fast!'"

Their 120 seconds alone together flew by in what seemed to be only two minutes, according to Wilde.

"We probably should have practiced our lines, but instead just talked and connected on a very good, comfortable level. I had never done one of these chemistry tests before, so I just pretended as well as I could."

The very next day - some four days into the production - she was told to report to wardrobe, then head for the Warner Bros. set pronto to portray Jewel Goldman, the beautifully spoiled teenage daughter of successful porn film producer (Ron Silver) who falls in love with Adam (Corona), the handsome son of the zealous district attorney (Kevin Anderson) busting his butt to toss her morally ambiguous father in the slammer.

Yet another contemporary take on Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," the series benefits from film and TV producer Jerry Bruckheimer's involvement (with partner Jim Leonard) in "Skin" on every level. When the day is done, according to the network's propaganda machine, one can only hope that the show has exposed "a world of forbidden love, naked ambition, family betrayals and the business of moral corruption."

The lovely and wildly enthusiastic Wilde still finds it hard to believe that at the last minute she nailed the part of Jewel, partly because she bears a strong family resemblance to Pamela Gidley, who plays her social-climbing mother.

"Let's put it this way, it came down to me against Dominique Swain, a really wonderful, beautiful and talented actress with more experience," she recalls incredulously. "I took one look at her and thought, 'Why am I even here?'"

In fact, the sentiment basically sums up Wilde's entire professional career - which until now consisted of "a really small part" as Whitney Parker, the high school brat in the coming coming-of-age feature film "The Girl Next Door." Only a year or so ago, she graduated from the exclusive boarding school Phillips Academy Andover, in Andover, Mass.

"It seems like most of my friends went off to Harvard, Yale, Cornell or Stanford for training as investment bankers," she says, laughing, "and found it rather strange that I was going to Hollywood. But now that the show is here, after lots of on-air promos, they all sort of understand what I'm doing. Suddenly I'm getting calls from people I haven't heard from since graduation; some have even visited at my apartment in Santa Monica. They are really amazed at my lifestyle here."

The daughter of an author and an investigative journalist (her mother is currently a producer for "60 Minutes;" her father writes for National Geographic) born in New York City and raised in Washington, D.C., basically decided to take a year off before attending New York's Bard College.

"Very independent, I moved out here by myself. My parents are very cool people who always encouraged me - and my brother and sister - to take risks and follow my heart. Actually, my whole family consists of creative intellectuals, mostly writers. Alexander Cockburn, the great left-wing journalist, is my uncle. Claude Cockburn is my grandfather."

By the time Wilde hit Los Angeles to take an unpaid internship for a talent casting agency, she had already benefited from considerable stage training at Andover, several productions at the Studio Theater at the Washington Conservatory's Studio Theater and a summer at The Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin, Ireland.

"The time working in Ireland was magical," she says, "because there is no fame or ego involved at the Gaiety. You're only there because you love it."

After five months of fetching coffee and box lunches at the agency, the director of "The Girl Next Door" walked in and asked if he could put Wilde in his movie. She did not protest too loudly while shooting the feature, her professional acting debut, in January through March 2003. And now she shares top billing in her own series.

"I'm still getting used to recognition for my work," says Wile, who now shares her life with independent filmmaker Tao Ruspoli. "A couple of months ago, I spoke - along with the great actress CCH Pounder - in a film class taught by a friend at the University of California at San Diego. We represented the two sides of acting, the new and the veteran. Pounder was held up as a classic example; I was introduced as an example of what's not supposed to happen in Hollywood. ... Nobody should follow my example."

© Copley News Service