Remember pig-hunter Michael Skupin getting his hands burned to a charred and melted mess in Survivor: The Australian Outback? Colleen Haskell, a survivor of the original Survivor, figures we ain't seen nothin' yet.

Although Haskell didn't make it into the final four in the series that would see Richard Hatch take home the million bucks, she's the first survivor to score a major movie deal. The former Pixie of Pagong appears opposite Rob Schneider in The Animal, opening in theatres today.

Bad feeling about Survivor 3

But while making a movie was fun work, the reality-TV thing is getting a little bit scary, Haskell said. In fact, she's genuinely nervous about something bad befalling the 16 contestants who will head to the Dark Continent this summer to tape Survivor: Africa, the third instalment in the monstrously successful CBS moneymaker.

"I have a feeling with Africa ..." Haskell said, on the phone from her Washington, D.C.-area home. "I get nervous that the third one's in Africa, to be truthful.

"That's not a continent that you mess around with. I think (Survivor executive producer) Mark Burnett is going to keep pushing the envelope, but that's very serious."

Haskell knows of what she speaks. After earning a theatre degree from the University of Georgia in 1998, she joined an environmental group working in strife-ridden Ghana, West Africa. Not exactly a holiday paradise.

"It's really scary. This last one (Survivor: The Australian Outback) had this guy's hands burning off, and I said, 'My God, this is a TV show. You see this on the news every night, why do you need to see people putting themselves in this situation?' "

Not that Haskell saw much of the second Survivor series. "I watched about two in the middle - when the guy burned his hands, and I think one after that. I don't really know how to explain why I didn't watch.

"It's like when you're on a sports team and you injure yourself and you have to sit on the bench ... you get agitated, you can't watch, you think too much about your own participation."

The perpetually perky 24-year-old's role in The Animal came about when producer Adam Sandler, a fan of Survivor, asked her to test for the role of Riann, the animal-loving girlfriend to Schneider's bumbling cop.

She didn't think much of it at the time, until she checked in for messages while on a cross-country trip and found out she'd got the part. A week later, she was on the set.

"People were so supportive and, yes, curious," said Haskell. At first the crew pretended they hadn't watched Survivor, until they got to know Haskell better. Then the usual barrage of questions began.

"Did you eat the rat, how are your legs, all the normal questions," said Haskell. "I was sort of the oddity on the set." (For the record, yes, she ate some rat - it tasted sort of like duck - and yes, her formerly bug-bitten and sore-encrusted legs are fine now.)

Haskell said she keeps in touch with her fellow survivors only infrequently, and the only contact she's had with the Survivor 2 gang were the e-mails she started receiving from Tina Wesson when the show began airing, asking Haskell how she dealt with the aftermath of fame that came with the show. Tina, of course, eventually won the $1-million prize.

"I didn't think much of it, until my mom was like, 'Your friend won!' " Haskell said.

15 minutes of fame

Haskell isn't apologetic about making the most of her 15 minutes of fame. But unlike some of her Survivor co-stars, she cares not a whit if she hangs on to the spotlight.

"The way I look at it, you have athletes parlaying what they do into movies and models and supermodels. Maybe I'm just a reality-show girl. And I might be one of the first, but there's no way I'll be the last."

She's not particularly interested in auditioning for more movie roles at this point, opting instead to pursue graphic design jobs and see what comes along. She's not going to pose for Playboy (yes, she was approached). And she's not dating Survivor host Jeff Probst.

"My opinion of Jeff Probst? I mean, he's got those dimples," Haskell said with a laugh. "I saw him in (People magazine's) 50 most beautiful people. I e-mailed him and said, 'Why are you wearing that scuba outfit?' Maybe when he dresses in something besides the Banana Republic outfit or the scuba outfit, he cleans up pretty well."


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