TORONTO -- Evan Rachel Wood was the queen of last month's Toronto International Film Festival, a fact she could not legally celebrate with a beer. Wood drew the most attention for "Across the Universe," baring soul and body in Julie Taymor's surreal, Beatles-driven narrative. The 20-year-old Raleigh native also starred in "King of California," playing the daughter of a man who insists treasure is buried beneath a Costco; "In Bloom," where she survives a high school gunman's rampage to live with a world of gui and the animated "Terra," as the alien leader of rebels organized to stop earthlings from colonizing her planet.
The odd thing, she says in a makeshift interview room upstairs in the Roots clothing store, was that she's taken a year off since the last project ended: They're all tumbling out of the hopper at once, but she hasn't acted in 2007 -- unless, of course, you count the Marilyn Manson video "Heart-Shaped Glasses." That made her notorious for performing an intimate scene with new boyfriend Manson and reportedly earning the highest fee paid a music video performer. "This year, I always had it in my head that I'm not going to try to please anybody except myself," she says in a soft voice that betrays no Southern accent.
"The one message I try to preach to people is not to be afraid. People would be shocked to think I was shy and insecure, but I was painfully shy and painfully insecure. Movies were the way to kind of get that out, but now I want to do that every day.
I didn't realize how much I was holding back in my personal life." She's dressed this warm September afternoon in black slacks and a white-and-black blouse that comes halfway down her thin arms, with lace on the neck and sleeves. She's taller than you'd expect, maybe 5-foot-7, and wearing old-fashioned glamour makeup for a photo shoot.
Her handshake is feather-light, her attitude reserved but cordial. It's the manner of someone who, Wood says, "had to grow up quickly. You get older faster (in this industry).
If I was going to handle myself since I was 12 with a steady job and be thrown into adult situations, I had to do it." Wood has been mature beyond her years since elementary school. She grew up around show business in Raleigh, where her dad ran Theatre in the Park and her mom sometimes acted.
She appeared in half a dozen forgettable movies and TV's "American Gothic" before she was 9, moved to Los Angeles with her mother and started to play the daughters of famous actors: Sandra Bullock in "Practical Magic," Al Pacino in "SimOne" and Holly Hunter in "Thirteen." That film encouraged directors to toss her into roles labeled "troubled teen" in "Pretty Persuasion," "Running With Scissors" and "Down in the Valley." "Maturing's often painful," she says.
"Most of the biggest life lessons are usually painful. I don't consider those characters dark; they're just human, growing up in a hard way. That seems more real to me.
I don't have anything against lighthearted teen comedies, but I like a balance." Director Taymor gave Wood an adult role for the first time in "Universe," where Wood's Lucy deals with a boyfriend's death during the Vietnam War and becomes an activist in New York. "I was kind of going through the same thing Lucy was," Wood recalls.
"I turned 18 in the middle of filming, moved to New York for a year on my own, and it was a mind-blowing experience. That was the start of my adulthood. "I could relate to the movie, because most of my favorite music came out of the 1960s: The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Hendrix and Janis and Bowie.
So I started getting curious about the time when the music was so inspired. This was the first time I'd looked into the darker side of it, and I read up on things like the Weather Underground and Kent State. "I can't imagine what a whirlwind it was.
I've been waiting for something to (inspire people) like this again. I long for that passion younger people had then." Plenty of passionate invective has been directed at her through Internet chat rooms since she hooked up with Manson, who's almost 19 years her senior.
"I'm becoming more aware of the pressure, having to block out the negativity, things that don't matter," she admits. "That's the fear I've had to conquer this year. "I really love what I do -- it's something I have to do -- but the heartbreaking thing was dealing with all this other stuff.
It's like being bullied in high school (which she has said she was). I don't care about that bully, that bully doesn't know me, but it's exhausting. I never realized how it can drive you crazy having to explain yourself.
I'm more happy and comfortable now than I ever have been, and people seem the most confused about me." Not her parents, though, or old friends, whom she sees when she takes time off to get home. "I still feel the roots," she says.
"I go back and smell the air, and I realize I've forgotten that lightning bugs even existed, and everything comes back to me. "All the people I grew up with are still there. It hasn't changed, in a good way, and so visiting is like walking back into my childhood -- which is really bizarre.
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