Mary Elizabeth Winstead

All Is VANITIES ... Nothing Is Fair

DECEMBER 2006

AGE: 22. PROVENANCE: Salt Lake City, Utah....BUT DON'T ASSUME SHE'S A MORMON: "I went to school with probably one or two other non-Mormons like myself, and we sort of bonded together. I was also in a special group for advanced-learning kids, so not only was I with Mormons, but they were all extremely intellig and constantly competing for who was the smartest in the class and who was the best at everything. So it was a very high-anxiety place to grow up." BIG BREAK: "I came out to L.A. with my mom when I was 14 for a few auditions, just to see what it was like. One of the auditions was for the soap opera Passions. I just got a scene to do, and they were like, 'You're perfect!' [because] I looked just like the girl they had cast to play my sister." ART IMITATES LIFE IN... Bobby, Emilio Estevez's much-anticipated film about the night of Robert Kennedy's assassination, in which Winstead plays "a woman who has come out to Los Angeles to make it big as an actress. Over the course of the film, my character realizes that her ideals about the Hollywood glamorous life aren't ever going to become a reality for her." BUT NO SUCH BAD NEWS FOR WINSTEAD. . .Whose castmates in the film include Harry Belafonte, William H. Macy, Ashton Kutcher, Helen Hunt, Anthony Hopkins, and Lindsay Lohan. AND NOW COMES THE INDIE CRED...With a role in "Death Proof," one half of the Quentin TarantinoRobert Rodriguez collaboration Grind House, due out next spring. "As Quentin says, it's two movies for the price of one, inspired by the grindhouse cinemas of the 70s. I am such a huge Tarantino fan that I felt like I knew him, and I kind of had a feel for his dialogue—I'm able to say it with a sense of respect for him and the words. I play a young starlet who is basically having the time of her life. We're driving around in a car through most of the film. I'm in a cheerleading outfit. It's never really explained, except for the fact that we know that I'm playing a cheerleader in a film. We don't really know why I'm still in the uniform."

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FOR DETAILS, SEE CREDITS PAGE

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KRISTA SMITH