From lustful Lolita to moody Tart, Dominique Swain seems to know how to get a moviegoer's attention.
The Lolita role was Swain making her high-profile debut as the adolescent nymphet in Adrian Lyne's 1996 remake of the controversial Nabokov novel.
Her Tart-ness will be available for all to see when Tart, the Christina Wayne-directed film being shot here, gets released next year.
"It's different from most teen movies," promises the 19-year-old, while taking a break from shooting at North Toronto's Graydon Hall mansion, which is passing for a ritzy New York private school.
In the drama, Swain plays a conniving student pretending to be something she's not. Tart also features Bijou Phillips, Brad Renfro and Melanie Griffith, who co-stars as Swain's wrong-side-of-the-tracks mother.
On this day, Swain is the lone focus, doing a scene in the school's library surrounded by a few of her colleagues portraying some of her snooty classmates. "I'm reading a magazine article, spreading gossip," explains Swain, looking mischievous but innocent in her sweater-and-skirt school uniform.
She's a few steps away from her camera spot where her naughty teen character is spreading the malicious word, trying to get revenge in the process.
Eventually her Tart kid gets ridi-culed, which is a little closer to Swain's experience as a self-confessed oddball A-student at Malibu High.
"In my junior year," recalls the actor, thinking back to five years ago, "I wasn't really trying to change, to fit in like my character does. But I was always made fun of."
That loser feeling evaporated when the inexperienced Swain auditioned for the coveted Lolita part and beat out 2,500 other actors. She did that by sending Lyne a ragged homemade videotape of herself reading from the Lolita novel. Her magnetism shone through anyway.
Despite release problems and some lousy notices when Lolita finally did get distributed a few years ago, Swain got mostly glowing reviews for her "guileful and guileless" portrayal.
After that, she kept a lower profile, playing John Travolta's daughter in Face/Off and a rock groupie in Girl.
Swain's been a lot busier this year, working in five movies, including Tart, Mary Jane's Last Dance and Happy Campers.
"If I wasn't busy I'd be getting up to no good," suggests Swain, grinning. "I'd get nervous and bored, and I'd start going out with my friends, and pretty soon I'd be in no condition to act at all."
She still remembers her four weeks off in October and the transitional confusion just before she had to head east to Toronto.
"I had just moved," says the L.A. resident. "And I lost my passport an hour before I was supposed to come here. I had to dump out every box until I found it, and I didn't have time to clean up."
Messes aside, the actor's life is still for her, she says.
But not forever.
She's being called back for another take, but before she goes she offers a glib parting shot on career options. "The more I learn about movies, the more I want to interfere in every department," admits a smiling Swain.
She looks around at the scurrying grips, the bright lights, the big camera and then Wayne, her casually confident boss sitting in front of a monitor. "So I think maybe one day I'll direct."
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