PARK CITY, Utah – Celebrities don’t get yearbook photos. They suffer mugshots. So consider Mischa Barton’s education in the pathology of fame complete.
“I’ve been recently told I’m a public figure, which I didn’t quite realize, which I suppose I should have,” says Barton, who turned 22 on Thursday. “But you figure those things out as you go. There’s a learning curve.”
It’s a lesson the lithe blond, ex of The O.C., was very publicly schooled in last month when she was charged with DUI. Her mugshot – nowhere near as frightful as the celebrated scraggly snapshot of post-arrest Nick Nolte – raced across the Internet, another example of Young Hollywood apparently off the rails. She made the damage control rounds in the days following her bust, dismissing her actions as “stupid.”
Says Barton now, “I’m going to make mistakes. I’m a person. I live life. It’s going to be good, it’s going to be bad, it’s going to be a lot of different things, but at least it’s life … I think the saddest thing is when actors become too insulated.”
Thus, even here at Sundance, where she’s promoting the stylish, satirical mystery The Assassination of a High School President, she plans to ski and shop and not stay holed up in her hotel room. She’s even amused by the hordes of paparazzi lining snow-encrusted Main Street. “It’s pretty comical, them running around in the snow, slipping over everything with their cameras. I’m sure they have some great shots. But I just like being in a town where everyone appreciates how hard it is to make films and get them to this point.”
In Assassination, which co-stars Vancouver’s Reece Thompson and Bruce Willis, Barton embodies the post-modern femme fatale - think Chinatown’s Faye Dunaway for the Clearasil set. Like the cult fave Brick, the movie fuses adolescent angst to an archetypal film noir template. If that sounds odd, the strangeness of it is probably lost on Barton, who hardly had an ordinary childhood herself. Born in London, she and her family moved to New York when she was four. By the time she was 15, she enrolled in a school dedicated to the arts because her acting career was taking off
“Kids are so strange about those things. I was nobody until everyone knew I was in The Sixth Sense and suddenly overnight every kid in school knew who I was and I was forced to leave.”
Once enrolled in her arts school, though, “I found myself. I’m not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but it happened.”
Her star-making role as Marissa Cooper on The O.C. followed at the age of 17. Now five years later, 2008 promises to be a pivotal year for the rising starlet. With three films aside from Assassination in the can – Walled In, You and I (Finding tATu) and Homecoming, which was shot in Saskatchewan - the next several months may decide if Barton can distinguish herself from the ranks of L.A. party girls and establish herself as a film actress.
“The best thing about success is creative freedom … On Homecoming, I had so much of a say in it. It’s so nice not to be the young actor who’s scared of where the next job is going to come from and you’re being yelled at by producers and directors.”
With this work spurt over, Barton next intends to take a hiatus from Hollywood and travel. “I love Ireland. I love London because my sister lives there. I even just like going out to the desert outside of L.A.
“I’m half-Irish, so I have family in Ireland. I’ve been going there since I was a child.”
There may be nowhere to go, though, to reclaim her anonymity. “News reaches Ireland too, believe it or not, even to the smallest towns. They all worry about me.”
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