ALL GROWN UP, HOLLYWOOD'S WILDEST CHILD IS UHAPOLOGETIC AND UNDRESSED
"* * dmlt it: You're curious. When it comes to Tara Reid, who wouldn't be? She's had fame and fortune, hit movies, spots on the sexiest lists. She's gone through addiction, a red-carpet mishap, public embarrassment and a stint in rehab. She hasn't always been safe or sane, but she's always been fascinating.
Blink and here she is again: 34 years old, straight and sober and, you've probably noticed, looking damn good.
"I'm in a good place in my life," Tara says. She's sitting in the living room of her condo. Outside, through the open door, it's a clear, mild day on the southern California beach. The sand comes almost to her door. She's dressed casually in jeans and a gray sweatshirt sporting the logo of the movie she just finished shooting. Tara is buzzing with excitement. A few minutes ago she got her first look at the photos on these pages, the fruits of her two-day playboy shoot with photographer Sheryl Ntelds.
Tara loves what she's seen and can't stop talking about the golden tones, the elegance.... "I am so glad I decided to do it," she says.
She had a chance to pose for playboy before, but the timing wasn't right. She was young and acting younger. "I've always seemed younger than I am," she says. "I was doing teen movies when I was in my 20s. But at 34 I think I'm the perfect age to do this. This is the first time in my life I can say I'm really happy. I'm relaxed. I'm a young woman with confidence." She shrugs. "I've grown up a lot, and it's time for people to see who I am. I lived a lot of years in the public eye. But if you look at me now, that's not who I am anymore."
A child actress who landed a game show at the age of seven and made her first movie at 11, Tara grew up in New Jersey a natural performer. In her early 20s she had a role in the cult hit The Big Lebowski and then the smash American Pie; she was a star, and she also turned into the quintessential party girl, alternately hanging and feuding with Paris and Lindsay.
We saw the subsequent wreckage on her reality show, Taradise, and in a thousand other places. But Tara has no interest in revisiting the behavior that landed her in rehab. "I'm not Girls Gone Wild anymore," she says. "I like it like this. At the end of the day I go to sleep knowing who I am. I'm fortunate to have a great family that was always supportive."
The new Tara just finished making two movies—a comedy called Last Call and a thriller called The Fields, in which she plays a mom for the first time. In that film, she says, she has a great scene at a kitchen table with Oscar-winning actress Cloris Leachman.
"The character is talking about how she tried to make her husband happy, but he's just so angry about everything," she remembers. "At the end of the scene my character has this moment when she says, 'It wasn't supposed to be like this.'" Tara shakes her head. "I think in life everybody has moments like that, and the scene was so touching. Cloris started crying, the whole crew was crying, and I started to cry. You don't get a moment like that very often."
In another indication that the bad days are behind her, Tara also heard from director Larry Cohen, who cast her in A Return to Salem's Lot when she was 11. "Talk about full circle," she says delightedly. "He gave me my first movie, and now he's offered me a new movie, 23 years later."
As for her shoot, Tara says it was a ball. "I liked what little clothes we did have," she says. She leans back, looks around and smiles broadly. "I wouldn't change anything that's brought me here," she says. "I'm happy with my life now, and I'd like to keep it this way."
