The infamous (and famous) Paris Hilton likely doesn’t need introducing to anyone who clicked on this article, but just in case, we thought we should cover the highlights… Ms. Hilton’s career took off a few years ago when a tape of her having sex entitled One Night in Paris showed up on the Internet and eventually in stores. From there, Paris launched her reality show with fellow party gal Nicole Ritchie. Titled The Simple Life and currently in its third season, the show revolves around the two mocking and tormenting those they deem “lesser” than themselves.
Now Paris wants to be taken more seriously. She’s trying her hand at acting in House of Wax, she’s releasing an album and she even wrote a book. She claims the party days are gone and that she is now working almost around the clock to facilitate the brand name for herself she has dreamed of since she was a little girl.
You can’t discount the fact that Paris has indeed facilitated an impressive career and celebrity status out of her on-tape notoriety and her famous family name. Her handlers have marketed her well and they deserve all the credit in the world for turning her into the often-overexposed media darling she has become.
Interviewing her at the House of Wax was at times a difficult endeavor. Paris’ responses ranged from boredom to confusion, with very little in-between. To start the interview, a publicist lead her into the room announcing, “I have Paris,” almost as if awaiting our unabated awe. She sat and stared out at the table of journalists, giving her best diva smile.
MINOR SPOILER WARNING: If you haven’t been paying attention to the promotion of House of Wax and Paris’ key scene in it, then you might want to skip the next three paragraphs and continue reading after the first big pic of Paris…
Paris’ death is a high point of the film. We asked her if the scene changed once she came aboard. “Yeah, that was all in the script already. I thought that was, like, the coolest death scene in the movie and I liked my character a lot. It was fun to play… It was pretty brutal. It took like two days to shoot and it was night shoots so we were shooting from, like, you know, midnight to nine a.m. So, it was hard and I had to, like, pretend to be scared even though I really wasn’t.”
At the critic screening, there was applause when Paris died. We asked her about this and how she feels about the fact that people seem to love to hate her. “I think they just think it was a good scene, so I don’t think people don’t like me. I think people like me.”
In order to shoot the brutal death scene they had to make a body mold of Paris. “You have to, like, breath through a straw. It was kind of scary because I get, like, claustrophobic, but you have to do it.” Seeing a replica of her own dead body wasn’t nearly as frightening as she might have expected. “I thought it would be but I saw the movie two nights ago and no, because I know, I was there, but I remember the whole time shooting it.”
Paris didn’t have a whole lot of interest in the original horror classic with Vincent Price, mostly because the cast was not as attractive. “Well, the first one was very creepy and scary, but this one I think is definitely scarier and sexier because this is, you know, a really hot cast and the Vincent Price one didn’t really have a hot cast.” (Laughs)
Paris says that she has been preparing for her on-screen debut for some time now. “Yeah, I’ve been taking acting classes for, like, three years now.” When asked if she did special preparation for a horror film she responded, “Screaming classes.” (Laughs) “I’ve been training for a long time and this is what I’ve wanted to do my whole life so I’m just doing what I want.”
Working with more experienced cast members such as Elisa Cuthbert and Chad Michael Murray, Paris says that she didn’t seek their advice. “Whatever… We didn’t really talk about it, we’d just rehearse.”
Early in the film, there are some scenes of Paris’ character being shot with a video camera, at one point making out with her boyfriend. We asked if these scenes were meant in any way as a parody of her own notoriety and if she had any hesitation. “No, I didn’t care. That’s just part of the whole movie before I was even attached to the script, that was already in the movie.”
House of Wax is more of a conventional slasher film compared to the self-referential horror of recent years such as Scream. Characters do what they shouldn’t do, such as exploring a large creepy house. “Well, when I was, like, about to get killed, I was in my tent, so I just ran and I’d run to, like, the nearest place I could, which is the sugar mill. So I think with the character that was the only place to go. So, it was written perfectly of how the situation would have happened. I would have done the same thing if I was in that situation, just run to any place to hide.”
With the “R” rating, many of Paris’ younger fans will be unable to witness her screen debut. “I didn’t really think about it. When I was younger I always saw rated ‘R’ movies, so I don’t think it will matter. People will still go.”
Besides acting, Paris has a whole slew of projects currently in the works, including her new album which releases in August. “It’s like, um, it’s kind of like Gwen Stefani-ish, Blondie. Fun dance music, club music…”
After a sticky parting of ways with Nicole Ritchie, Paris promises that Simple Life will strive on without her. “Yeah, it’s my show so I’m just gonna bring in some new people… It’s going to probably be, they’re looking right now all around Hawaii just to see what the best island is. It’s gonna be bikinis and blondes in the sun.”
So who will replace Ritchie? “I don’t know yet. We’re looking with Kim and just, my sister, trying to see if a lot of people, my friends, want to come down and check it out.”
Paris also has some other reality shows in mind for the future. “Yeah, I’m going to produce some reality shows that I won’t even be on, I’m just going to produce them.” Mum’s the word on the details for these shows. “I can’t say yet because I don’t want anyone to steal my ideas, but we’re developing them right now.”
Although Paris seems to personify the party girl image, she says those days are all in the past. “You know, I was 16 years old when I lived in New York. If anyone else was invited to all those parties they would go to. I don’t see anything wrong with it. I was a teenager. Everyone has fun, but me, for me, I would get to go to more things because I got invited to more things so, whatever, I had a great time and now I’m just too busy.”
These days, Paris says she’s too tired to party. She walks us through an average day in the life of Paris: “Well, I get up and I have meetings or I have to go to a… It’s always different. It could be a photo shoot, it could be a movie set, it could be working in the studio or in a meeting for my design for my clothing line. I don’t know, I fly all around the world doing different things every single day. It’s always a different thing, it’s never the same thing.”
Various parodies of Paris have popped up recently, including a terrific episode of South Park. “I haven’t seen it, but when people copy you, that’s like the most flattering thing, so whatever people can say, I just laugh about it. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Besides all the self promotion, Paris says that she is also trying to do some good with her celebrity. “I do many charities. I work with children, animals, people with AIDS, cancer… Multiple sclerosis and breast cancer. I’m really involved with those charities. I just lost both my grandmothers to those diseases… So, I’ve been doing charity work since I was a child, but that’s something the media never talks about…”
Paris has her next few film roles all lined up. “Uh, I just finished a movie called Bottom’s Up, which is like a romantic comedy, and then I have a lot of projects lined up right now that I’m attached to star in, but I can’t really talk about them all yet.
“The last movie was a romantic comedy and the next one is drama, so I probably won’t do a horror for a couple more films later.”
IGN, 2005.
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