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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Playing teens, 20-something Bell has that ring of truth


Kristen Bell
 (The Spokesman-Review)
Frazier Moore Associated Press

At 24, Kristen Bell looks young even for a 17-year-old – which is the age of the sleuthing title character she plays on UPN’s “Veronica Mars.”

“I’m carded for R-rated movies,” she says. “And I get talked down to a lot. When I try to go rent a car or buy an airplane ticket or other stuff adults do, I get, ‘Okaaay, honey.’ I remember when I was 18, getting crayons in a restaurant.”

But the fine-featured blonde, little more than 5 feet tall, makes a big impression.

She played the president’s problem child kidnapped in the movie thriller “Spartan.” On TV, she was a chaste-looking grifter who was beaten to death on HBO’s frontier drama “Deadwood,” the daughter of a drug addict in the Lifetime movie “Gracie’s Choice,” and a gang member’s girlfriend who was raped and tattooed in the face on “The Shield.”

But she wasn’t so successful landing a regular role in a series until she read for “Veronica Mars,” a hip high-school whodunit that airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m.

“Ten pages in, I knew I would kill to get it,” says Bell.

The series’ sadder-but-wiser heroine has assumed a daunting challenge: getting to the bottom of a squalid crime – the murder of her best friend – that cost her father his job as the sheriff, spurred her mother to leave home and turned Veronica into an outcast.

“She’s a girl who’s not afraid to speak her mind, but she’s not annoying,” says Bell. “She can be really strong, but without being butch. And since my parents split when I was 2, I love the fact that she’s from a single-parent family.”

But more than anything, Bell bonds with her character through their shared loss of a cherished friend.

“When I was 17, my best friend was killed in an automobile accident,” she explains, calling the tragedy “both the best and worst thing that has ever happened to me. I think I’m a happier person because of it, as weird as that is to say, because, once you learn not to take people for granted, you live a lot happier life.”

Growing up in Detroit, Bell was “an outgoing kid” who went on her first community theater audition at 11. Struck by an unexpected case of jitters, she almost quit before she got started.

“My mom took me outside and said, ‘If you do this and you don’t like it, we’ll never have to do it again. We’ll never even have to speak of it.’ So I went back in and did the audition and was cast in a dual role: In the first act, I was a tree, and in the second act, a banana.”

Just out of college, she was on Broadway alongside Liam Neeson and Laura Linney in “The Crucible,” and in the madcap off-Broadway musical “Reefer Madness” (due this season in a Showtime cable TV version featuring Bell).

Her characters continue to dwell in the adolescent age range – which may be apt for a young actress who, while waiting at the airport with her 28-year-old boyfriend, watched a stranger approach him to exclaim: “Your daughter’s beautiful!”

“I like playing teenagers,” Bell insists, but adds: “It’ll be nice when I can start playing girls in their 20s – without their parents around.”

The birthday bunch

Blues musician John Mayall is 71. Actress Diane Ladd is 61. Comedian Garry Shandling is 55. Director Joel Coen is 50. Actor/comedian Howie Mandel is 49. Actress Kim Delaney (“NYPD Blue”) is 43. Actor Tom Sizemore is 43. Actor Andrew McCarthy is 42. Actor Don Cheadle is 40. Singer Jonathan Knight (New Kids on the Block) is 36. Actress Gena Lee Nolin is 33. Actress Anna Faris (“Scary Movie”) is 28.