On a fast road less travelled

Thursday 11 October 2012

Kristen Bell is simply not an actress easily pigeonholed.

SMOOTH DRIVE: Kirsten Bell, left, and with Hit & Run co-star and fiance Dax Shephard above, says her latest movie has taught her a lot about the film-making process.

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In new movie Hit & Run, Kristen Bell took a few unusual directions, discovers James Mottram

You'll know her as the heartbreaker who hooks up with Russell Brand in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Or the super-conductor superhero Elle Bishop in sci-fi hit Heroes. Or, for that matter, the student who moonlights as a private eye in Veronica Mars. "I don't wear the same set of clothes every day," she grins. "I like to change it up. I'm not interested in doing the same thing over and over again."

Her latest foray sees her slip into yet another gear. Hit & Run is an action-comedy-romance that harks back to the days of such Burt Reynolds classics as Smokey and the Bandit and The Cannonball Run. It's the brainchild of Bell's real-life fiance, Dax Shepard, who writes, directs and co-stars with Bell. She plays Annie, a sweet-and-innocent girl who discovers her partner Yul (Shepard) is not only in a witness protection programme, but is also a former gang member. With Annie and Yul trying to outrun his erstwhile criminal cohorts in his customised 1967 Lincoln Continental, it's a relentlessly paced comedy that mirrors the film's remarkably rapid gestation. From conception to execution, Hit & Run took just three months – which must be some kind of record. Shepard was toying with the idea of a car chase movie when he was suddenly presented with a willing financier. "He wrote the script in three weeks, we prepped in under four and we shot it in six," reports Bell.The result was about as guerrilla film-making as Hollywood gets. "We were up against everything," she says. "We strapped the camera to the hood of that Lincoln and we drove around town until we felt we got the scene how we wanted it. There was maybe one light in the car, there were no camera guys, and it was just Dax and I. "I was working the sound equipment and everyone else was at our base camp. We had very specific amounts of time to get each scene and I think that pressure definitely helped us more than hurt us."While she's uncredited, Bell, 32, also worked behind-the-scenes on the film with the producers – a further testament to her desire not to be boxed in as just another sunny-looking Hollywood blonde. "I basically just learned a boat-load about what goes into making a movie before the actors show up. And I'm so grateful to have that knowledge now. I considered myself a well-behaved actor prior to this project, but it will affect my behaviour in future for sure. I know the domino effect of the tiniest decision."Of course, while it's rather pushing it to claim Shepard and Bell are like the modern-day Burt Reynolds and Sally Fields, they certainly make for a dynamic couple. They met at a dinner party, then a hockey game "and have been dating ever since", she says. Bell sounds exactly what Shepard needed by his side during the shoot. "I, as a significant other, monitored his fatalistic outlook sometimes!" she laughs. "He can get very pessimistic and I am eternally optimistic. And I would remind him the only thing he can really control is having a good time on set."Born and raised in a Michigan suburb – her mother is a nurse, her father a TV news director – Bell was a regular in school plays, but when it came to choosing acting as a career "it was never really an epiphany," she notes. A kindly counsellor gently ushered her towards the musical theatre programme at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, though she left before graduating to take a role in a Broadway production of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. A year later she was on stage with Liam Neeson and Laura Linney in The Crucible – but a move to Los Angeles, initially winning a role in David Mamet's kidnap thriller Spartan, truly kickstarted her career. "I never thought much about a back-up because I felt that if I did, I'd probably fall back," she admits. "Granted, I know what has happened to me is a huge bundle of luck. I have plenty of friends I went to college with who studied theatre who aren't working and are much more talented than I am."If this sounds rather disingenuous, it's not meant to. Bell is genuinely aware of her good fortune and has no desire to play the spoilt diva. "I'm not really that kind of actor. I'm very happy to keep working. I don't like to give people any excuse to fire me." Like a chess player, she also thinks several moves ahead. Already, there are a stack of new films in the can – including an adaptation of Neil LaBute's play Some Girl(s) and coming-of-age drama The Lifeguard, which she promises will be "rife with a lot of controversy". Bell is also about to start work voicing the lead character in the currently-being-animated Disney fairytale Frozen, but she and Shepard hope to reconvene on another script he's written, Send Lawyers, Guns and Money, which she promises will take things up a notch from Hit & Run. It seems the only thing he won't let her do is go behind the wheel. "I'm a terrible driver, so I'm not allowed to drive Dax's cars," she smiles. "But I don't really care! He's not allowed to use my handbags!"Hit & Run opens tomorrow

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