NW - Australia - July 2001

"Look, in real life, I have the sexuality of a small peanut," laughs Hewitt, who is self-depreciating to a fault. "Eventually, I had to find my sexuality, and feel good about it. But I think most guys consider me a best-friend type. I don't think they consider me hot."

Maybe so, but her fans could well be saying good by to her movie more familiar on-screen girl-next-door image in her up coming comedy HEARTBREAKERS. She stars opposite Sigourney Weaver, playing a sexy mother-and-daughter team who con unsuspecting millionaires.

And in seducing these rich men, Hewitt wears the kind of micro-sized outfits which would make Courtney Love blush. "I was really worried how I was going to pull this sexy girl thing off. I'd try poses in the mirror, but I looked really stupid," Hewitt says.

Fans may well do a double-take when they see her in a scene with Ray Liotta (Hannibal) in which her hair gets stuck in the zipper of his pants. "Ray and I had to stay in that position for a long time while they were setting up the shots. He'd be sitting in a chair, and, of course, I was kneeling on the ground, because I had to be near his crotch. But I have to say, if you have to jump on someone, wrap your legs around them and shove your tongue down their throat, Ray is a great guy to do it with," she laughs. "My mom and grandmother came to the set that day, because they didn't know what scene I was shooting. So there I was, under the desk. My mom goes, 'Hi. Grandma wants to know what you're doing under the desk'. So I quickly organized my grandma to go to lunch, and to this day she still has no idea while I was under the desk.

Hewitt may be more comfortable with her sexuality, but, when it comes to nudity, she has different ideas. "Look, I don't really want to see myself naked, so I am not going to push that on other people. I wouldn't wish that on anyone," she jokes. "In my next movie, THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER (in which she plays the Devil), you see all of my back right to the crack. But I was fine with that, because I'm completely covered everywhere else. What I look like naked I would like to keep to me, you know what I mean?" she says. "well, me and maybe one other person, and that's about it. I'd like that to be sacred."

Hewitt, a public figure since a child, has had her share of weird fan mail. "I've had stalker incidents that I don't really like to talk about, because they are just creepy. People show up at your house...just weird stuff like that. Probably the most unusual thing I have ever gotten from somebody is a letter from a guy who wrote to me 30 seconds before he died on death row. It's one of my most prized possessions. It's a beautiful letter of how I made him smiled. I was the last person he wanted to say thank you to before his life ended. And it said, 'Oh, they just called, goodbye.' And it was like this weird, creepy letter, but it was special and kind of cool, in a weird way, that somebody would want to share a moment like that with me."

Currently writing an album, she says, "I'm still not sure how it's going to be. I think people's initial reaction is that they are going to assume I'm going to want to be the next Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera. Well, that's not the case. I love them, listen to them, but that's not what I want to do," she says. "When Britney became famous, I thought, 'Great, there's another good girl in the bunch!' She was like, my homegirl! And then, like everyone else, I was watching the MTV Awards and thought, 'Holy moly! Oh My God!' And since then I have felt really left out---like everyone's doing but me!"

"To me, sexiness isn't about how much you show, it's about how much you allude to and don't show. But more power to them. They're young girls. Brtiney and Christina; they're beautiful and they have beautiful bodies. They're going to be 80 one day, and they're not going to be able to do that, so why not?" she says. "But I'm not going to roll around on a beach with a guy to touch myself. I mean, please! Why sing a song if no-one's going to hear it because you're having sex with yourself? I want people to look at my video and think, 'There's a pretty girl'."