Who: Amanda Seyfried

Wore: RM by Roland Mouret

Where: Letters to Juliet Premiere

When: May 11, 2010

Check out the list here. What has been your favorite red carpet look?

Gallery Link: 2010: Session 018 (Self Outtakes)

You’ve had such a big year –do you feel like you’ve finally “arrived”?
I’ve been an up-and comer for so long that I do finally feel like I’ve established myself. I don’t quite know where yet, but I do feel like I’ve had enough under my belt for people to be able to trust me. I mean, I’m really insecure! I’ve always been. But at least I feel a little more confident now.

What are you insecure about? Your acting? Your looks?
Both. It’s very hard for me to watch a movie anymore with me in it. I used to not care. But recently I’ve been playing the romantic lead, and in order to be a romantic lead, you’ve kind of got to be pretty in my opinion. Clearly, some people think I can play the attractive girl. That is still a mystery to me. It’s a face thing–I pick apart my face. I guess we’re naturally inclined to want to change things about ourselves, and that gets heightened when I’m watching on a big screen. And it’s OK. Sometimes you wake up and you like it and sometimes you don’t. As comfortable as I am with myself day to day, watching it? It’s just strange.

How do you get over that insecurity?
If we’re so busy trying to change ourselves, especially aesthetically, we’re going to miss out on more important things. I used to live and eat and sleep by an exercise schedule, and I just couldn’t enjoy myself if I didn’t exercise. And then I realized, what a waste of time! Just praying I’d wake up a little fitter, a little more toned. It’s important in the grand scheme of things to keep in shape, but if you’re always worrying about imperfections and how you look, these things aren’t going to change for the most part. The thing you can change is the way you perceive.

What’s the best advice you’d give to a woman struggling to keep a positive body image?
I’d say, it’s not as bad as you think. You are your harshest critic. If you don’t like your body, you can do something about it. It’s in your control and that should be a positive feeling. Put more time into the exercising. You’ll feel better about yourself for actually doing it, not just for how it makes you look. Endorphins are a godsend. And stop looking in the mirror. I try not to look in the mirror very much–you can’t wake up and expect your body to be different than it was last night. You’ve got to realize that you’re living for yourself, not for other people. Nobody’s perfect. Only in Hollywood are people perfect and that’s because they spend thousands of dollars on trainers and diets and surgeries. That’s what we’re made to feel like we’re supposed to look like but if you put it in perspective, there’s nothing realistic about it!

You can also read her “Career Success Secrets” here at Self.com!

Last month, when Allentown native Amanda Seyfried was beating the drum on behalf of her new flick ‘ ‘Letters to Juliet,” she agreed to flash back to her earlier romance ‘ ‘Dear John,” the box office hit that arrives this week on DVD.

”I’m really proud of that movie,” she says. ”It’s about a love that’s real, the kind of love that comes back to you. Even if you’re married for 20 years and have children with someone else, [your first love] can still get under your skin … That’s what ‘Dear John’ is about.”

Directed by Lasse Hallstrom (”Chocolat”) and based on a best-seller by Nicholas Sparks, the old-fashioned weepie revolves around an about-to-be-deployed soldier ( Channing Tatum) who falls in love with an idealistic college student (Seyfried) while on leave in South Carolina. Over seven years, the long-distance lovers discover that illness, family obligations and career obstacles have a way of thwarting romance.

Is it corny? You betcha. But it’s also a surprisingly delicate, mature and sensual study of the ties that bind.

During one sequence in the movie, Seyfried sings a lovely acoustic ballad called ”Little House” to Tatum. The song is just one of a handful she’s penned lately. ”I’m headed into the studio this month to record some things that I’ve written,” says the actress. ”But it’s just for fun.”

After the success of ” Mamma Mia!” Seyfried received record company offers but turned them down. ”I don’t plan to record an album. But who knows? I change my mind about a lot of things all the time. I’m ever evolving.”

Last month, Seyfried ran into singer/songwriter Joshua Radin at a Manhattan hotel and played music with him until 5 in the morning.

”We just met that night and he asked me to sing harmony on [a song called 'Eternity' for his new album],” she says. ”I’m very much into that world so if someone invites me onto their album, I’ll surely take that opportunity because it means so much to me.”

When she was growing up in Allentown, Elton John and Billy Joel were Seyfried’s musical obsessions. Then, while attending Allen High School, she moved on to N’Sync and the Backstreet Boys. Now she’s into a little bit of everything.

”My taste got way better after high school when I started listening to indie music, folk and alt rock,” she says.

”Now, I appreciate most music, even rap music. I don’t listen to it but I respect it. At the moment, I’m listening to Ray LaMontagne. I started listening to Joshua Radin after I met him. And I adore Damien Rice. Singer-songwriters are my favorites.”

1.What got you started with performing?
I saw Les Miserables when I was 11 and I just wanted to be part of that world. I always wanted to make people feel something. I knew how I was feeling when I watched certain performances, so drawn in and inspired that I wanted play pretend in order to make other people feel that way.

2. What’s it like watching yourself on-screen?
It’s very hard for me. I used to not care. But recently I’ve been playing the romantic lead, and in order to be romantic lead, you’ve got to kind of be pretty in my opinion. I mean, the good thing is that I’ve got range. I can look young, maybe my age. I can play 18 to 27 and I can also play the unattractive girl and clearly some people think I can play the attractive girl. That is still a mystery to me. I just don’t like my face. And it’s ok. Sometimes you wake up and you like it and sometimes you don’t. But it’s like you don’t have a choice. You’ve just got to be comfortable with yourself. As comfortable as I am with myself day to day, watching it is different. It’s just strange.

3. You started Fordham in 2004 and left for Mean Girls. Was that hard?
I never saw myself going to college. Even when I was looking at different schools, I was like, this really isn’t right. I didn’t show up to my first class, and English Comp class, because I was doing a screen test for Mean Girls. I got to the building where the class was, I was already 15 minutes late and just looked at the elevators, called my parents, and went home.

4. Your career has, deservedly, skyrocketed since Mamma Mia in 2008. How have you changed?
I’m just a little bit smarter. I know myself a little bit more but that’s about it. Experience breeds knowledge. I’ve been on some amazing experiences. What I do, what we all do, especially when we live in big cities and in this industry, it’s like we live on Mars to some people. I have to keep that in perspective too. I might be maturing faster because of the travel I do and people I meet, and the people I’ve become close to. I think that all plays into it.

5. Your character in Letters to Juliet gives advice to the lovelorn. And you gave advice to SELF readers that was really empathetic and insightful. What do you seek advice on?
Love. Sometimes I need encouragement because it gets really hard when you don’t live in the same country. [Seyfried’s boyfriend, her Mamma Mia co-star Dominic Cooper, lives in London.] I get insecure, he gets insecure and sometimes you lose yourself in those insecurities. I love turning to my friends for their perspective. But it’s amazing and I have my life, he has his, and I get to have this great feeling when I know I’m going to see him.

6. What’s a bad day for you?
When someone gets upset with me. I recently had a bad day. It’s exhausting. But as soon I spoke to the person it was all better.

7. Do you enjoy working out? Does it keep you feeling balanced?
There are times when I need it. I really do, sometimes feel like I just need to do something, burn calories, something. It depends on how I’m working. But it’s on a day to day basis. If you don’t have time for it, you can’t freak out.

8. You look incredible. Please say you eat indulgent stuff sometimes!
Yes! I like raw stuff in the morning, a shot of chlorophyll or a ginger lemon drink, but or lunch, I want a piece a pizza.

Amanda Seyfried, who exited “Big Love” earlier this year after the show’s fourth season, says she’ll likely make return appearances to the hit HBO series.

“I’m gonna go back, probably at the end of the year,” the actress said during a recent interview, where she was promoting her new film, “Letters to Juliet.”

Seyfried, who on “Big” plays a teenager trying to understand her family’s polygamy, said she left the show because she wanted to pursue film opportunities.

“The commitment [of ‘Big Love’] would have kept me from doing anything this summer, and that’s just not fulfilling enough,” she said. “People were throwing opportunities my way, and I was like, ‘Oh, sorry, I can’t.’ But I was talking to Bill [Paxton] the other day, and he was like, ‘You’re coming back, right?’ And I was like, ‘Absolutely, if I’m not busy working on something crazy, of course I would.’ ”

And what does she have to say about her former cast mate Chloë Sevigny, who notoriously called the show’s fourth season “awful” and “very telenovela”?

“Oh, gosh,” she sighed. “We all make mistakes like that and say things that people take out of context. She was probably saying, ‘Oh, that’s awful,’ because she was probably envisioning herself on the show and saying how bad she thought she was. I don’t think she was saying anything bad about the show itself.”

As far as the 24-year-old is aware, Sevigny didn’t burn any bridges by making the remark.
“As long as she ties it up and calls everybody and apologizes for whatever she did, everybody’s cool,” Seyfried said. “She and the writers are all good. It’s not a big deal. I just felt so bad for her because I was like, ‘Ahh, it’s so easy to be in that situation.’ ”

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Earlier this week, at an event following the Hollywood premiere of the new movie “Letters to Juliet,” actress Amanda Seyfried found herself under friendly fire. Besieged by back-slapping studio executives and adoring fans — all eager to congratulate her on her role as a young journalist who stumbles into love in Italy — she was pinned down in a restaurant banquette, graciously thanking and hugging admirers as they approached.

But what she really wanted to do was to leave her own party.

“I’m so ready to go,” she sighed while eyeing the next group of people waiting to talk to her. It wasn’t that she was ungrateful for the attention, but rather that she was still rattled after a long day; before the premiere, she had taped an appearance on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno, during which she said she had a panic attack. And it was clear that, hours later, she was still feeling anxious.

“I have realized that I hate going to the premieres of the movies that I’m in,” she whispered. “Because I feel this tension after the movie is over that everyone feels obligated to say something nice to you. It’s so unnatural and uncomfortable. You’re not sure if they’re saying it because they feel like they have to or because they genuinely feel that way.”

It’s an emotion that the 24-year-old has had to confront several times in the last few months. After exiting HBO’s hit series “Big Love” after four seasons, she’s appeared in four films since January — “Chloe,” “Dear John,” “Boogie Woogie” and now “Letters to Juliet,” which opened Friday — making her the latest incarnation of a time-tested Hollywood tradition: the “it girl.”

It was only a few years ago that she landed her first small-but-memorable film role as a dumb blond sidekick to Lindsay Lohan in “Mean Girls.” But while Lohan’s career has been tainted by a never-ending stream of salacious tabloid headlines, Seyfried is suddenly being considered a box-office draw. Her last film, “Dear John,” a romantic drama based on a Nicholas Sparks novel costarring Channing Tatum, surprised insiders when it became a modest hit, bringing in more than $94 million worldwide since its release in February. Now, Seyfried’s face is at the center of the campaign for “Letters to Juliet.”

So how has she managed to rise above a pack of other talented young Hollywood starlets?

“She’s drop-dead gorgeous. God gave with those hands for her,” said Mark Waters, who directed her in “Mean Girls.”

But it’s more than her looks that make her unique, says Erik Feig, president of worldwide production and acquisitions for Summit Entertainment — the studio behind “Juliet.” Though he knew casting Seyfried as his leading lady was initially a gamble, he felt that the actress’ combination of innocence, her “naturalistic” approach to acting and her popularity among young audiences made her the right choice.

“She was the one girl on our list who was the most unproven in terms of her box office clout,” he said. “At the time, she hadn’t yet opened a movie like ‘Dear John,’ and even though she was the costar of ‘ Mamma Mia,’ the conventional Hollywood wisdom was that a lot of the success of that movie was due to ABBA and Meryl Streep. But I very firmly believed that Amanda was someone young girls were connecting with. So we took a bet on her. And it was a bet in the fee we paid her — we wanted her to feel like we were making a bet on her, like we were treating her like a star. And I truly believed that she was and is.”

Despite that proclamation, Seyfried isn’t yet entirely comfortable with her new status.

Sipping a cappuccino during an interview earlier this month, she admitted, for example, that she worries about the way she looks. Accordingly, she “throws her money away” by paying $250 for 45-minute sessions three times a week with celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak. And because she speaks often candidly to journalists, sharing tidbits about her life that her handlers might consider too personal (like the fact that she takes the anti-anxiety medication Lexapro), she said that she often has others minding her words.

“Oh, I’m always being briefed by a publicist before I have [interviews],” she said, twirling her braided hair around with her fingers. “They’re like, ‘Come on, you can’t be self-deprecating.’ ”

But that’s just who she is, said Atom Egoyan, who directed “Chloe,” in which Seyfried played a prostitute who becomes entangled in a lesbian romance with a woman played by Julianne Moore.

“She’s very self critical,” Egoyan said. “After I would say cut, she always had this expression of frustration, like she didn’t quite get it. But I found that quite endearing, because she’s always feeling there’s more she can do to capture or enhance or clarify.”

As a young girl growing up in Allentown, Pa., Seyfried first felt a pull to acting after watching Baz Lurhmann’s “Romeo and Juliet.” She began staring at herself in the mirror, she said, reciting lines from her favorite films.

“It was a big deal to me to play characters and feel things and connect to somebody in a fake world,” she said. “It sounds so stupid — a fake world — but I guess, yeah, I just wanted to be those people. To be a part of a glamorous world.”

So she began persuading her parents to allow her to take one-day bus trips to New York City, mostly for television parts. During her senior year in high school, at age 17, she landed a recurring role on “All My Children” and moved to NYC.

Soon, she was accepted to Fordham University. But when she was late to her first English class because of an audition for “Mean Girls,” she began to reconsider going to college.

“I never ended up getting in the elevator,” she said. “I was panicked. It was a big moment for me and I just wasn’t in it. There was nothing in my body telling me to go forward with this. I was like, you know what? It’s fate.”

The move seems to have paid off. This summer, Seyfried will begin shooting Rodrigo García’s “Albert Nobbs,” costarring Glenn Close, and “The Girl With the Red Riding Hood,” which is being directed by Catherine Hardwicke.

True to character, Seyfried still finds the future a worrisome prospect.

“I mean, why am I considered an ‘it girl?’” she asks. “Because I’m in a lot of movies right now or am on the covers of magazines? I just hope there is something solid behind that. Because here’s the thing with ‘it girl’ status. It’s great and amazing that anybody is saying that at all. But how long does that last? I would like to establish myself. I don’t want to just have a moment.”

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Gallery Links:
2010: Session 015 (Teen Vogue)
2010: Session 016 (Teen Vogue Behind the Scenes)

It’s 3 p.m. on a gorgeous sunny day in Los Angeles, and Amanda Seyfried is sitting at an outdoor café, wearing a light-blue long-sleeve button-down and shorts, her signature glamorously wavy blond hair peeking out from a mustard-yellow cable-knit cap that she made herself. In a bag on the table is a DIY dog-collar kit for Finn, her blue-eyed Australian shepherd who lies lazily at her feet. The actress isn’t hiding under huge sunglasses, sitting in a dark corner, or ignoring the passersby who stop to pet her adorable pup. (In fact, she’s chatting them up, making it difficult for anyone to get a word in edgewise.)

Amanda is the rare young star who has managed to continue to thrive in Hollywood despite having no background in anything remotely Disney or Nickelodeon, and in case you haven’t noticed, she’s having a moment. In the past year, the 24-year-old actress from Allentown, Pennsylvania, has hit a movie genre trifecta—Dear John, a Nicholas Sparks tearjerker; Chloe, an indie thriller; and this month’s rom-com Letters to Juliet. And beyond the occasional red carpet and the Oscars, where she presented alongside Miley Cyrus, the paparazzi have generally left her alone. The closest they’ve gotten are a few snaps of the actress with beau (and Mamma Mia! costar) Dominic Cooper, although one guy was daring enough to follow Amanda and Finn on a recent six-mile hike.

“I don’t really care about paparazzi—like, I’m not wearing makeup right now and I should be—but when someone follows me around on a day like that, a really wonderful, beautiful day . . .” she trails off. “Had I known he was there, I would have been really upset.” Amanda’s going to have to get used to it.

A breakout role as Sophie in 2008′s Mamma Mia!, alongside Meryl Streep, launched the career of the actress, who got her start on daytime soaps As the World Turns and All My Children, but it was her big-screen debut as the ditzy Karen in Mean Girls that first made audiences take notice. “People still come up to me and say, ‘You were really funny in that,’ and I’m like, It’s not me. Tina Fey wrote everything I said!” she says, laughing. “I think I impressed a lot of people in Mean Girls. I don’t know how I pulled that off.”

Proving that her comedy chops weren’t just a fluke (or a gift from Tina Fey), Amanda shined as the nerdy Needy in last year’s Diablo Cody–written horror-com, Jennifer’s Body. Though it didn’t exactly blow up the box office, the film catapulted her into the spotlight. At the end of 2009, she announced that this past season of the HBO drama Big Love would be her last. And after Dear John made over $30 million in its opening weekend, Amanda moved from actress to star. Letters to Juliet is sure to make her a bona fide celebrity.

In it, Amanda plays Sophie, a young woman who travels to Verona, Italy, the home of fiction’s most well-known tragic couple, Romeo and Juliet. Sophie finds an unanswered love letter and chases down it’s owner, Claire (played by Vanessa Redgrave), in an attempt to make things right.

One would think that starring in two heartstring-tugging films in a year would turn even the most unemotional realist into a romantic. For Amanda, whose parents have been together for almost 30 years, that’s simply not the case. “It’s fun to play characters who have these ideals that you don’t have. Like, in Dear John, Channing [Tatum] and I had such a good time because we were pretending to be in love,” she says, but even though Letters to Juliet was “very romantically shot in a very romantic place,” it didn’t change her perspective. “A lot of people ask me, ‘Is Dominic the one?’ I don’t know, and I’m fine with that. Too much planning can lead to heartbreak. Love is great and possible, always, but it’s very rare to have the feeling that ‘I want to be with this person forever.’”

Lest we peg Amanda as a stone-cold cynic and revoke her membership in Hallmark’s card of the month club, she does melt a little when she talks about her past relationships. “I can’t remember if he said I love you first, or if I did,” she says of her first serious boyfriend, Micah Alberti from All My Children, at age seventeen. “But I do remember when my ex Jesse said it to me. It took my breath away.”

Her passion is most evident, though, when she talks about her craft, especially the process of deciding whether or not to sign on to a movie. For her next two films, Albert Nobbs and The Girl With the Red Riding Hood, Amanda fell head over heels for the directors (Rodrigo García and Twilight’s Catherine Hardwicke, respectively) and said yes to both projects almost immediately. This impulsive creativity might make life hard for her agent, whom Amanda has been with since day one, but it’s a good demonstration of the driving force that makes her performances so vibrant.

“I had no idea if I wanted to do Red Riding Hood, but I sat with Catherine for, like, two and a half hours that first day, and she was amazing,” Amanda remembers. “She is who should be a big Hollywood director, making cool-ass movies. She has such an imagination. I was like, OK, I’m doing it. Done.” And that was before Amanda had even read the script.

When she’s not filming, Amanda spends a lot of time at her piano, a gift from Letters to Juliet director Gary Winick, which has inspired the classically trained singer—who has written a song with Damien Rice and contributed songs to the Mamma Mia! and Dear John soundtracks— to return to her musical roots.

These days she’s listening to a lot of A.A. Bondy and Deer Tick.

After a chance meeting with singer/songwriter Joshua Radin at the Soho Hotel in London a few months ago, Amanda agreed to record a duet with him, but she has no intention of making this her full-time, or even part-time, career. “I love being the background voice,” she says. “But I’m not interested in being in the spotlight.” The actress, who lists Miu Miu, Stella McCartney, and Alexander Wang as some of her favorite designers, is equally as chill about her personal style, describing it as “comfortable and simple with a little edge.”

That’s pretty much Amanda’s M.O. There was some drama earlier this year when the blogs (falsely) reported that she was being difficult about committing to a Mamma Mia! sequel, holding out for more money, but in reality, she is as low maintenance as it gets. And she has a strict “no expectations” philosophy that keeps her grounded and has solidified her reputation as one of Hollywood’s most down-to-earth glamour girls: “I am successful now, and it’s wonderful. But the reason it is so wonderful is because I didn’t expect it to happen.”

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“God Karen you’re so stupid!” high school tyrant Regina George exclaimed to her daft minion when she stupidly suggested that they go to Taco Bell. (She was just trying to cheer her up!) Sure, Karen wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box — she was confused by genealogy and thought that ESPN was a fifth sense — but Amanda Seyfried, who portrayed her in the film, may be the smartest of all her Plastics counterparts. Or just the luckiest.

Six years after the release of Mean Girls, the film stands as a cult favorite. It’s a quotable landmine and a genuinely accurate depiction of the wild animal kingdom that is the high school girl-world. While its themes and funny one-liners remain timeless, the players who brought them to life, and their careers, couldn’t look more different now. In 2004, Lindsay Lohan was poised for Hollywood domination. The not-even 18-year-old was already a bankable Disney star, and was eying edgier, more mature roles (thanks to those pubescent changes). Next to her three co-stars, she was the one we thought was poised for super-stardom.

But things change. Today, Lohan remains engraved in our pop culture consciousness, thanks to endless tabloid fodder, but as an actress, her resume looks a little thin. (Anyone want to admit to seeing I Know Who Killed Me?…anyone? Bueller?) Party of Five‘s Lacey Chabert, the second “biggest name” on the Mean Girls bill at the time, has done mostly voice work since the film, with the exception of a role in Matthew McConaughey’s forgettable Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Of course, Rachel McAdams has hardly disappeared (thanks in part to TBS and ABC Family for their constant looping of The Wedding Crashers and The Notebook), and is perceived as an actress with longevity, but in 2010, Amanda Seyfried is arguably the biggest success story to come out of the Tina Fey-scripted film. Her third film this year, Letters to Juliet, hits theaters tomorrow, positioning her to become a romantic film staple. And since Mean Girls, she’s shown she can handle sappy tear-jerkers (Dear John), darker indies (Chloe), and campy high-profile musicals (Mamma Mia!), all while pulling her own weight alongside more seasoned actors (Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Colin Firth).

For Seyfried, the journey was slow but steady. She did a few guest spots on popular television shows (Law & Order, House, Veronica Mars, CSI), followed by a series of smart, yet risky, choices: Big Love and Mamma Mia! ultimately paid off. Mamma Mia was the fifth biggest film of 2008, and Big Love has raked in critical acclaim over the course of its four seasons (season five premieres next year). On deck for Seyfried: Albert Nobbs, with Glenn Close, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Orlando Bloom, and The Girl with the Red Riding Hood with Gary Oldman and Julie Christie. Not bad for the girl whose breasts can tell when it’s already raining.

But could you tell Seyfried would be a contender for Hollywood Queen Bee simply from her vastly underrated performance in Mean Girls? Her role consisted of mostly blank stares and a few aptly timed silly comments, but maybe that was the brilliance of it. In a way, Karen Smith is to Mean Girls what cheerleader Brittany is to Glee: A blonde scene-stealer with an incredible knack for deadpan.

Did anyone expect Seyfried’s career to explode and Lohan’s to self-destruct? Should we chalk it up to talent, project choices, personalities, or merely luck? Should Lohan do a Nicholas Sparks film to get back on track. (It certainly couldn’t hurt.) And do you, like me, find yourself randomly quoting Mean Girls throughout the day? Oh my God, Danny DeVito I love your work!

Source: Entertainment Weekly

VERONA, Italy — Amanda Seyfried “would do anything for love,” but she won’t do that. And after getting that Meat Loaf song in our head, the “Letters to Juliet” star revealed that much like her character, Sophie, she’s a big believer in romantic gestures.

“I’d fly anywhere for somebody if I loved them,” she told MTV News in the Italian city that inspired “Romeo and Juliet” as well as “Letters,” which opens on Friday. “There are no boundaries. There are some things I wouldn’t do. I wouldn’t kill for love, for sure, but I would do anything positive for love. I would do it.”

In the film, Sophie answers a 50-year-old letter a woman named Claire (Vanessa Redgrave) wrote to Juliet about her long lost love and stuck in a wall where the lovesick appeal to Shakespeare’s tragic character for help. Claire and her grandson Charlie (Christopher Egan) soon fly to Verona and take Sophie along on a road trip to look for the man Claire lost touch with so many decades before.

Seyfried said she was drawn to the romantic flick because of Sophie’s incredibly positive outlook on love. “That’s another reason I liked the script, because I connected to that romance,” the “Mamma Mia” star said. “She’s not cynical. There’s nothing cynical about her, and a lot of times in a romantic comedy, the lead character is pretty cynical about love. And she’s not and I love that. [Charlie's] that guy. … I’m glad it was him.”

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Amanda Seyfried was 10 when her dad brought home a video copy of 1996′s ”Romeo + Juliet.” At first, she thought Leonardo DiCaprio looked weird on the cover. But then she pressed play and, to hear her tell it, life was never the same again.

”That was the movie that made me realize I wanted to be an actress,” says the Allentown native of the DiCaprio/Claire Danes love story directed by Baz Luhrmann. ”It really got into my blood, I don’t know how many times I watched it. I took it on vacation with me. I rewrote the script and I’d stand in front of the mirror, pretending to be Claire Danes.

”I really wanted to be Claire and to live in that world, and have a romance like that. And now I’m doing it. It’s not real life but it’s almost better. I love love stories. I love acting like I’m in love.”

Seyfried isn’t alone in her affection for old-fashioned romance. February’s ‘ ‘Dear John,” which paired the actress with Channing Tatum for a tear-stained love story, grossed $95 million, a remarkable sum considering the movie cost only $25 million to produce.

Now comes ”Letters to Juliet,” a star-crossed romance about an American journalist in Verona , Italy, striking sparks with an uptight Brit (Christopher Egan).

The movie begins when Sophie (Seyfried) discovers a wall in Verona where the lovelorn leave letters seeking romantic advice from Juliet — of Shakespeare’s ”Romeo and Juliet.” Sophie’s chef-boyfriend ( Gael Garcia Bernal) is preoccupied with work, so she decides to assist one letter writer ( Vanessa Redgrave) in a quest to re-connect with her first beau (Franco Nero, Redgrave’s real-life husband).

On the journey through sun-dappled vineyards and olive groves, Seyfried falls in love with Redgrave’s grandson (Egan), who just happens to be along for the ride.

After years of reciting Shakespeare to herself in front of the mirror, it was rewarding for Seyfried to finally re-connect with the Bard in her own strange way. In fact, she says, nothing would please her more than to know the PG-rated ”Juliet” prompted her young fans to check out Shakespeare for themselves.

”I so want to be that [inspiration] for them,” she says during a telephone interview fro m New York. ”I’d love it if kids wanted to go off and read ‘Romeo and Juliet’ because it’s such a masterpiece, man.”

”Letters to Juliet” marks the first time that Seyfried has been top billed in a movie. In the past, she’s played second fiddle to Lindsay Lohan (”Mean Girls”), Meryl Streep (” Mamma Mia!”), Megan Fox (‘ ‘Jennifer’s Body”), Channing Tatum (”Dear John”) and Julianne Moore (”Chloe.”)

Asked what it’s like to finally see her name above the title, Seyfried says, ”That was crazy! Too much responsibility!”

Seyfried might be top billed but she shares a lot of the emotional heavy lifting with Redgrave. It was the opportunity to work with the Oscar-winning actress that drew Seyfried to the movie in the first place.

”Vanessa’s eyes go deeper than anything,” she says. ”It’s like she’s from another planet. She’s super open and super warm. She shares so much of herself. She’s honest, which is what makes her such a good actress … I felt honored to work with her.”

”Letters to Juliet” began production on June 25 in Verona and continued for two months at a handful of Italian locations including Tuscany and Siena. Even though temperatures routinely hit 100 degrees, Seyfried describes the experience as ”magical.”

Every morning at 4:30 a.m. before going to work, the actress would take a long run through Verona’s winding streets. On weekends, she’d explore the ancient towns and villages.

”I saw a lot of vineyards. I saw a lot of architecture,” she says. ”I saw a lot of beauty.”

When her boyfriend — actor Dominic Cooper — visited, Seyfried would play doubles tennis with Redgrave and director Gary Winick. ”Vanessa moves like a whip,” reports Seyfried. ”She’s really fit. I suck compared to Vanessa.”

If there was a downside to Italy, says Seyfried, it was the impossibility of maintaining her raw-foods diet. ”Italy isn’t exactly a place that has a lot of power shakes and sushi,” she says with a laugh.

While the movie accentuates romance, Seyfried brings an air of melancholy to her role. The actress says one of the biggest challenges was communicating her character’s overwhelming insecurity without making her a sad sack.

”My character doesn’t have as much confidence in herself or her writing as she should,” says Seyfried, 24. ”Her fiancé is a famous chef and he has this huge passion and she wants to connect to that but can’t. I’ve dated someone who was struggling, and it’s not easy. It’s not easy for the person that’s succeeding and it’s not easy for the person struggling.”

Ask Seyfried if she’s as much of a romantic offscreen as she is on and she says, ”Hell yeah.”

Although she can’t remember her first date, she does remember her first kiss. ”It took place outside my parents’ house in Allentown and it was with my first boyfriend Ben,” she recalls. ”It was such an amazing feeling. I had a crush on Ben for so long. I didn’t know what to do; I was scared but it was so wonderful.

”It was the summer between my first and second year of high-school [at William Allen]. I had dance team rehearsals the next day, and I can remember going to those rehearsals still having chills and butterflies in my stomach.”

In a recent interview with Britain’s ”Look” magazine, Seyfried claimed she rarely caught the eye of boys in high school. ”No guys wanted to date me,” she said. ”I was weird!”

Clarifying that statement, Seyfried says, ”I meant to say that I was weird-looking. Ben was older than me. Boys my age didn’t care to date to me, which was fine. They wanted to date all of my friends but they didn’t really like me. Maybe I was a little weird. I was always kind of quirky. So easily embarrassed and nervous.”

So, what’s the most romantic thing anyone has done for her?

”I had a boyfriend who wrote a song about me called ‘Burning Red.’ When I first heard it, I thought, ‘That might be about me.’ I was the only person besides his family who had the song on their iPod. So one day I finally asked him, ‘Is that about me?’ And he said, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘Tell me, please,’ and he just smiled. But it meant a lot to me, and I have it forever.”

And her most romantic gesture?

”I did fly from Toronto to New York to surprise my boyfriend. That was a long time ago. His apartment was always unlocked. So I came in before 8 a.m. and just crawled into bed with him and he was shocked, in a good way.”

Seyfried says she’s such a big fan of romance that, like her character in ”Letters to Juliet,” she takes pleasure in playing matchmaker for her pals.

”I absolutely will do almost anything [to set my friends up],” she says. ”I’ve gotten in trouble a lot, actually. I want people to find happiness like that. I know that I have it. I’ve been really, really lucky with love, and I’m dying for people to feel the same way especially when I know that some of my friends are a little bit lonely.”

For her next movie ”Albert Nobbs,” Seyfried is leaving conventional romance behind for something a bit edgier.

The movie, which reteams the actress with ”Nine Lives” director Rodrigo Garcia, centers on a woman ( Glenn Close) in 19th-century Ireland who pretends she’s a man in order to survive. Seyfried will play Close’s unsuspecting girlfriend.

”I can’t believe I get to work with Glenn Close,” enthuses Seyfried. ”C’mon, Glenn Close! She’s amazing.”

After that, Seyfried returns to romantic territory for ”Little Red Riding Hood,” a gothic telling of the fairy tale directed by Catherine Hardwicke, who directed the first ‘ ‘Twilight” movie.

Seyfried will play the title character, a caped crusader who, after a tragic accident, tries to solve the mystery of the wolf that’s been terrorizing her village for two decades. In the process, she finds love.

Producing the movie is none other than Leonardo DiCaprio. ”I sat across from him, and I told him that ‘Romeo + Juliet’ had blown my mind when I was a kid,” says Seyfried. ”I think he felt old when I said that. But I told him, ‘Dude, you should be in this movie with me!’ ”

”Little Red Riding Hood” promises plenty of chills and spills but Seyfried is looking forward to falling in love all over again.

”It might be my ‘Romeo + Juliet,’ ” she says. ”My character falls in love but can’t be with the person she’s crazy about. I can’t wait; it’s going to be so romantic.”

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