Here are three things you should know up front about Rachel Veltri: (1) She loves bowling. (2) She can beat you at bowling. (3) She keeps a basketball in the trunk of her car, just in case. ("You never know when you're going to need one!" she says.) For some guys, number three alone makes her a dream girl. But keep reading; there's more.
On a recent night at Pinz bowling lanes in Los Angeles, Rachel tells the story of one of her first experiences in Hollywood, a debacle known as the fourth season of the NBC reality show For Love or Money. She's wearing skintight faded jeans and a pink half top with the phrase Spread the Love bookended by her blonde locks.
"I was sick about that show for a year afterward," the Chicago native says about her reality-TV endeavor. "I had nightmares. I still can't watch those shows."
In front of millions of viewers, Rachel had to choose between a guy she didn't know very well and a cool million. Incurably romantic, she chose the guy, but the relationship didn't work out quite as she thought it would. She got neither love nor money, which is why the trunk in which she carries her basketball belongs to a beat-up Hyundai and why her L.A. apartment comes equipped with two roommates (and a poodle).
"Guys were coming up to me and asking, 'Why didn't you take the money?' But I'm happy I didn't take it," she says. "If I had, I would probably still be a flight attendant. I wouldn't have gotten the nerve to come out to L.A. and start auditioning for movies and TV." Besides, she explains, the cool million wouldn't have come in a lump sum but in installments over 40 years. "After taxes that's like $18,000 a year," she says. "I know I'll make the money back acting anyway."
Rachel started out in showbiz as a model; her silver-blue eyes and lithe body have graced the covers of more than 60 romance novels. While she was auditioning for a Budweiser commercial, a casting director suggested she return the next day for the NBC audition, and things happened quickly after that. Though reality TV didn't go her way, it gave Hollywood a good look at her. Like us, it liked what it saw.
This month you can catch Rachel's act in American Pie Presents Band Camp on DVD; she plays a sexy camp counselor alongside original cast members Eugene Levy and Chris "the Sherminator" Owen. She'll also appear in the upcoming teen horror flick Pray for Morning. (Her character is named Bunny, and she's quick to point out the Playboy connection.)
For a moment the conversation stops while Rachel concentrates on the 10 white pins standing 78 feet away. She winds up, hurls the ball down the lane and throws a strike. Then she busts into a wild jig unlike anything we've seen before--ample breasts bouncing, hands pumping up and down, legs pogoing in place. Every eye in the bowling alley is on her, and judging from our experience in such matters, half the women and all the men have the same question on their minds.
"Yes, they're real," Rachel answers, "and I'm proud of them. I get that question all the time, especially when I'm wearing a push-up bra."
Outside of work, Rachel likes doing "anything sporty"--tennis, volleyball, Rollerblading, a quick game of pickup hoops. "I'm very competitive," she admits. She describes herself as a lightweight when it comes to partying ("If I have one drink, that's it; my night's gone"), but she also says she's no angel. "Growing up I was a pretty good kid. I don't know what happened."
She says she's dating but no one serious at the moment. "I guess I'm looking for the perfect person," she says, laughing. "But I have to wake up and realize--hello--no one's perfect!"
Oh yeah? Judging from what we're looking at, we beg to differ.
See more of Rachel at cyber.playboy.com.
