GQ Magazine - United Kingdom

"So let me get this straight," she says. "Maggie, you're married to Denny; and Becky, you and Blake are going out, but you're not married. Is that right?"

"You got it," says Blake.

"Well why the hell not?" she asks, fixing Blake with a stern look.

"Never got around to asking, I guess" says Blake sheepishly.

"Well now's your chance," Jennifer replies, winking at Becky. "Take her to the Empire State Building this afternoon, go up to the observation platform, get down on one knee and pop the goddam question."

For a second, Blake looks stunned. 'Am I really being lectured by Jennifer Love Hewitt?' Then he breaks into a broad grin.

"I just might do that," he chuckles.

By the time we get up to go to our table, Maggie, Denny, Becky and Blake are glowing with pleasure. Meeting Love Hewitt has clearly been the highlight of their trip. Who knows, maybe Blake and Becky will hop in a cab after lunch and head for the Empire State Building. At least they'll have a good story to tell at the wedding.

Just before we leave, Jennifer calls over the barman. "Could I pick up their tab?" she whispers, in dictating her new friends. "Whatever they have, stick it on my bill, OK?"

At first, I can't work out why she wanted to meet in the WWF Cafe. We'd originally arranged to have lunch at Shun Lee, an expensive Chinese restaurant on the Upper West Side, but at the last minute she'd changed her mind. Gradually, thought the penny drops. The fact of the matter is she just interacting with her fans. At Shun lee, social etiquette would have prevented the restaurant's patrons from approaching her, but no such qualms inhibit our fellow diners at the WWF Cafe. Within minutes of our sitting down, two people have asked for her autograph.

"I guess I shouldn't enjoy this so much, but I can't help myself," she giggles, signing a menu.

If the exercise is designed to impress me, it works. I'd heard of Jennifer Love Hewitt, obviously, but I have no idea just how famous she is in her native land. In the UK she's best known for her role as Julie James in I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, and for being the girl in the Neutrogena ads, but to Americans she is---and probably always will be---Sarah Reeves in PARTY OF FIVE, a prime time TV series that ran from 1994-2000.

Ten of millions of Americans watched Love Hewitt grown up in their living room, blossoming from a gawky adolescent into the self assured prom queen she is today. In a recent magazine poll, she came joint-first with Brad Pitt in a response to the question: "If you had one condom left, what celebrity you want to use it with?"

Looking at her sitting opposite with me, it's an understandable choice. It's as if a normal-sized woman has been shrunk by 25%, giving her a doll-like quality. She's extremely pretty, but in a wholesome, girl next door, kind of way, less like a movie star than a very hot cheerleader. You want to pick her up and put her in your pocket. Then there are her breasts.

Howard Stern, the infamous New York Shock Jock, has devoted hours of Jennifer's breasts and, now that I'm less than three feet away from them, it's not hard to see why. In addition to being seriously perky, they're 100% natural. At one point during her world wide tour to promote I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER she wore a T-shirt that said: "Silicone Free".

It's funny that that's what people focus on," she laughs. Actually, it's not that funny because throughout the film she appears in flimsier and flimsier tops. Indeed, the principal source of the suspense in I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER is not whether his rusty hook, but whether, in the course of fighting him off, her breasts will pop out. The fact that they don't may well account for why the sequel was a disappointment at the box office.

"I think the imagination can do much sexier things," she says, by way of explanation. "It's much sexier to allude to what's under the tight T-shirt than to show it, don't you think?"

She thrusts out her chest and looks at me expectantly. It takes a super human effort of will to stop my eyes wandering in a southerly direction. So, er, is nudity a total no-no then?"

"I don't like the word, 'never', but I don't see it in my future," she sighs. "I can't et up on the screen and do something I really don't believe in because it shows. I wouldn't be comfortable with it."

Perhaps she feels that to do a nude scene would be too much of a shock to the American media, which appears to have pigeonholed her as a "good" girl. People Magazine voted her one of the ten worst dressed stars in 2000, largely because of her penchant for "inappropriate" figure-hugging outfits. "When she wears skimpy clothes, I just want to throw a blanket over her and yell. 'No, you can't look at her!'" Mia Tyler (sister of Liv) was quoted as saying.

Still, male fans of Love Hewitt's shouldn't abandon hope. In her latest movie, which she is making at this moment with, among others, Anthony Hopkins, she';s been cast as Beelzebub in a boob tube. It's a remake of a 1941 film called THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER, in which the Prince (or in this case, "Princess")of Darkness persuades a struggling author to sell his soul in return for making his book a best seller. Alec Baldwin, who plays the part of the author, is also the director and if anyone can persuade Love Hewitt to take her clothes off, he can.

Whatever's happening in her private life, Jennifer Love Hewitt has a reputation for being a consummate professional, someone who gives "no percent" to whatever project she's working on.

Her first date, appropriately enough, was with Fed Savage, star of THE WONDER YEARS when she was 14 years-old. "We went to a comedy club, then we went to a restaurant, then he drove me home then hugged me, and that was it," she says, sounding a little disappointed. According to her, the reason he never called again is because when he came to pick her up her brother's Vietnamese pot-bellied pig ran into the room and scared the shit out of him. "it really freaked him out" she laughs.

Her big break came when she got the part of Sarah on PARTY OF FIVE, a coup she attributes to the fact that, in spite of her showbiz lifestyle, she was just a normal teenager at heart. "The character talked like I did," she recalls. "I turned up for the audition and all the other girls looked much older and were really dolled-up. I was just a 16 year-old. I mean, I was dolled-up in my own way, but nothing like the other girls."

Initially, she was cast in only nine episodes, but the produced soon realized she had the makings of a star." As the episodes started to air, the chemistry between Scott Wolf (Love Hewitt's co-star) and I got a strong response, so they asked me to stay for another season and then, when it got picked up, I was just part of the show," she says.

In the late 1990s it all came good for Jennifer. After the unexpected success of I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER in 1997, she emerged in the front rank of a new wave of movie stars, all of whom had got their start on TV. There success coincided with a "youthquake" whereby tens of millions of teenagers who'd been born in the 1980s started filling America's multiplexes and demanding some popcorn of their own. This new generation, sometimes referred to as a "Generation Y", wasn't interesting in the brooding, "edgy" actors who had appealed to their older brothers and sisters; they wanted bright, bubble gum stars. "Attitude", the holy grail of thew early 1990s, was over. Sweetness was the new thing. Jennifer Love Hewitt, with her wide-eyed, kittenish charm, seemed to fit the bill.

Jennifer wasn't slow to capitalize on her new star power. In 2000 she produced a TV movie called THE AUDREY HEPBURN STORY, in which she played the late United Nations Goodwill Ambassador, and she's just completed work on a film called HEARTBREAKERS, an adult melodrama with Sigourney Weaver and Gene Hackman, that should win her some acting laurels. "Sigourney and I play con women, mother and daughter, and we decide that before we go our separate ways we'd like to do one big con," she says. Jennifer Love Hewitt is a young lady well on her way to becoming a A-list movie star.

At the end of out lunch, I've become so afond of Jennifer---of "Love", as she's known to her friends---I don't want to say goodbye. As a long shot, I ask her if she wants to go ice skating in Central Park.

"I can't," she says wistfully, "I had to sign this form when I started making THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER saying I couldn't do any physical activities in case I broke a bone or something."

That rules out hot monkey sex, then. How about this: would she be prepared to accompany me to Barney's, New York's pre-eminent department store, to help me pick out a new suit? To my astonishment, she says yes. I'm going to be spending the afternoon with her!

As we were leaving the WWF Cafe, she asks me whether I have a girlfriend and, reluctantly, I tell her I'm getting married on July 21. This snipper of conversation is overheard by one of the waiters and when Jennifer disappears to retrieve her coat her sidles up to me.

"You're getting married?" he asks. By the look of astonishment on his face it's clear he thinks Love Hewitt is my intended.

"That's right, " I say nonchalantly.

"Congratulations!" he replies, pumping my arm.As far as he's concerned, I've won the lottery.

As we walk down Broadway, looking for a taxi, every third or fourth person we pass says, "Hi, Jennifer," as they might to someone they see every day. She responds graciously, touching each of their arms affectionately.

When we arrived at Barney's, there's a murmur of excitement. I can sense people doing double takes around me---Oh My God! It's Jennifer Love Hewitt!---and I hope they're making the same mistake the waiter did. On our way to the men's floor, Jennifer insists on stopping to look at a couple of dresses and I overhear two camp shop assistants talking about her. One says in a hushed tone: "Jennifer Love Hewitt!"

"Where?" asks the other.

"Right over there!" he replies. Then, having taken a deep breath, he announces that he's going to go and help her. He prances over and within seconds he's clapping his hands and roaring with laughter as she turns on the charm.

I select a $1,000 suit and disappear into the changing rooms.I emerge a few minutes later almost unable to walk, the trousers were so tight.

"Take the jacket off and let's have a look," she says, giving me the once over. I must look anxious because she asks me what the matter is. "I'm afraid these trouser make my bum look big," I confess.

"You do not have a big butt," she protests. "I, on the other hand, have a big butt."

For the record, this is a flat out lie: it's as perky as her breasts, but about half the size. Seeing her there, leading a pack of shop assistants around like a mother hen with her chicks, I suddenly realize why Alec Baldwin has cast her as the Devil.

There's something impish and mischievous about her and she has wicked glint in her eye like a naughty schoolgirl who knows she can get away with anything. She's clearly enjoying herself enormously, a starlet in her power zone, relishing the effect she's having on everyone around her.

This is Jennifer Love Hewitt's moment; she's arrived in the spotlight and she has no intention of stepping out of it any time soon.