Director Sollace Mitchell admits he's having no success pointing his star in one direction.

 "This is the irony of Jordan doing this movie. If any movie were going to sour you on romance and engagement and marriage ..." Mitchell said.

 "It so hasn't," said Jordan Ladd, even as she practised filing the name of her character's romantic rival off of a wedding band.

 "I've done my best," Mitchell joked on his way out. "I'm basically an evil person."

 Ladd may have the lead role in the cable TV movie True Romance, but she's been immune to its theme of romantic betrayal in real life. The story, which Mitchell also wrote, is about Janet, an unsophisticated woman with a head full of pop culture fictions about romance --and her dramatic reaction when that perfect ideal doesn't play out. Vincent Spano co-stars as the big city guy who seduces Janet, setting off a chain of events that ends in his wife's murder.

 "I'm not condoning what she ultimately goes through," says Ladd. "But in a strange way, I feel any of us who has ever been lied to and betrayed in a love relationship has felt these feelings before for the person who does that to them."

 Ladd, on the other hand, calls herself "the luckiest girl ever, because I'm engaged to the most incredible man." That'd be singer-songwriter Conor O'Neill, who flew in from L.A. for the weekend. The movie, shooting here until next Wednesday, will air in July on the American cable network Lifetime Television.

 Unlike Romance's Janet, Ladd didn't grow up with stars in her eyes -- she grew up with them in her family. She's the daughter of actress Cheryl Ladd and actor/producer David Ladd; granddaughter of Shane legend Alan Ladd. As a child, her parents scrupulously protected her privacy. Mom Cheryl would throw a coat over her head, telling photographers, "No pictures of the baby."

 "So then I took to saying, before she could even do it, 'No pictures of the baby.' " Jordan remembers, smiling. "Every time I saw a camera, 'No pictures of the baby.' "

 (Ironically, Ladd made her professional acting debut at age two with James Garner in a Polaroid commercial.)

 Her parents' work gave her a realistic look at the struggles of the business as well as its glamour but after considering being a fashion designer as a teen and one year of college, she knew the family business was what she wanted.

 Ladd, an itty-bitty five-feet tall, is 25, but could easily pass for a high schooler, something she did in last year's Drew Barrymore movie Never Been Kissed. She's done three TV movies with her mother: 1990's The Girl Who Came Between Them, 1993's Broken Promises: Take Emily Back and 1998's Every Mother's Worst Fear.

 While she knows her surname may have opened some doors, she firmly believes it was up to her to prove herself once inside.

 "They don't hand out jobs in Hollywood that easily. I don't care who you are," she says.

 Other roles have included poetess Alyssa in Greg Araki's Nowhere and a lead in E! Entertainment network's inside-showbiz film Best Actress. This fall, she'll be alongside Jamie Kennedy and Rob Lowe playing not-so super superheroes in the feature comedy The Specials.

 After True Romance wraps, Ladd is looking forward to some down time with O'Neill and her Jack Russell terrier Earl. They live in a vintage Hollywood apartment that's said to have been built by silent screen star Rudolph Valentino.

 She doesn't know what she'll do next. But she knows what she won't.

 She turned down an audition for the upcoming Charlie's Angels feature film, which is being made by Drew Barrymore's company.

 "You know, I thought about it," she says. "But it's a strange thing. I'm really trying to forge my own career and I feel like it would just be too on the nose, that choice for me. I'm really trying to explore who I am and what I want to do with my career."


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