With a new role as a ghostbuster on CBS’s Ghost Whisperer, Jennifer Love Hewitt is out to prove she’s all grown up – and not afraid of snakes, spiders, heights, spirits and…well, anything else you can think of.
There are a few things you need to know right off the bat about Jennifer Love Hewitt (JLH). The first is that everybody calls her “Love.” It’s in every article ever written about her. Right up near the top, in what is professionally known as the lead. Articles about JLH lead with Love because she goes by “Love.” Such as, “Just Love,” or “Call Me Love” or “Whole Lotta Love.” Every article starts with someone meeting JLH and her telling them to call her “Love.” Everyone, that is, except me. I don’t get somebody to Love. I can’t find somebody to Love. I am un-Loved. I am Loveless. Anyway, to me, she’ll always be Jennifer. As in, “Hi, I’m Jennifer.” Yeah, well, thanks a lot, Love.
The reason we can forgive her for the whole Love incident is, among other things, because she talks about her breasts inthe third person. They’re referred to as “them” or “these” or “this and that.” When JLH was working on The Tuxedo, she had to tell Jackie Chan what a rack meant. “There was a scene where Jackie was supposed to say, ‘nice rack,”’ she recalls, “and he was saying it over and over but didn’t know what it meant. Finally, he took me aside and asked, ‘Jennifer, what is rack?’ I was like, ‘ Jackie—these are rack.” Not for nothing, he got the line right on the next take.
Now, it should also be pointed out that talking about her rack is usually not done in the third paragraph of a typical JLH article. Maxim Magazine showed considerable restraint, waiting eight paragraphs before asking if she ever had to tape down her "endowment," then slogged on to the tenth paragraph before wondering "is it wierd to have people so obsessed with your breasts?" Lifetime magazine went an entire page before noting that ex-boyfriend John Mayer wrote Your Body Is a Wonderland about her, while Cosmopolitan managed 38 column inches before noting, “She has a body built for sin." And she's not above joining in the fun, occasionally calling her biggest movie hit “I Know What Your Breasts Did Last Summer.”
IN PERSON, JLH looks like a cross between the best-looking girl from high school and a young Audrey Hepburn. Now, finding oneself alone in a room with the best-looking girl from high school crossed with Audrey Hepburn can be a little disconcerting under the best of circumstances—and the best of circumstances do not usually include a tape recorder. To cover my bewilderment I mention that it recently dawned on me that the version of Party of Five shown in Latin America must be known as Fiesta del Cinco. There is something inherently funny to me about the phrase Fiesta del Cinco. (If you don’t believe me, say it aloud a few times with the same inflection usually reserved for “We don’t need no stinking badges.”) As it turns out, there is also something funny about the phrase to JLH because, for the rest of the interview, she refers to her earliest television hit by its Spanish name, as in:“There was a time when I was working on Fiesta del Cinco..."”
When not speaking Spanish, JLH has a penchant for sending strangers gifts. When Gwyneth Paltrow won her Oscar, JLH sent roses. And ithasn’t ended there. “I sent Matt Damon a bed,” she says excitedly. “He was filming The Bourne Identity in France and I read an interview where he said he felt like he didn’t have a bed of his own because he was always sleeping in hotels. So I went out and bought an AeroBed—a really nice, super-comfortable, blow-up bed. I bought sheets, a comforter, pillows and pillowcases and I wrote him a letter. It said I was a huge fan and hope that you can travel with this and feel like you have a bed. I never heard anything back [from him]. Some time later I saw him at a party and he kind of looked at me strange like, ‘That’s the girl who sent me the bed.’Note to Matt Damon: When jennifer Love Hewitt sends you a bed, you write her a damn thank you note. I mean, like duh, her body is a wonderland!”
JLH IS SCARED OF MANY THINGS: snakes, spiders, heights, answering the door late at night and speaking in public. Plus, she’s claustrophobic and has what might be best described as a mortal fear of tanning beds. “I’m also scared of some of the outfits I’ve worn in the past,” she admits. “I’m scared of some of the outfits other people have worn and I’m scared of hot pants and latex.” In addition, she’s frightened of horror movies. “To get over my fear of horror movies I did I Know What You Did Last Summer. And I was the one who didn’t die!” she states proudly. (I didn’t get around to asking, but I’m assuming she did I Still Know What You Did Last Summer to squelch her fear of sequels.)
Her new TV show, Ghost Whisperer, is partially of the horror genre as well, but it’s a new version of classic subject matter. JLH plays Melinda Gordon, a woman who can communicate with earthbound spirits. JLH explains: “On the show, earthbound spirits are the ghosts of dead folks who, for whatever reason, haven’t found their way to the light. My character’s life is constantly being invaded by confused ghosts who are in need of help. The character is based on a real-life woman named Mary Ann Winkowski who lives near Cleveland and makes a living as a real-life ghostbuster.”
One night, after she had been filming the show for a little while, JLH was home and in bed watching television. Suddenly, the TV turned off. “Then I heard footsteps,” she remembers. “My bedroom light switched off. It didn’t switch off like the power cut out, it switched off like someone turned the light switch from up to down. I was like, ‘Okay, Mr. Ghost, can we turn the lights back on now?’ I then heard more footsteps and the same light switch flipped from down to up and the lights came back on.”
Not quite knowing what else to do, she called one of the show’s producers and asked him if he had any suggestions. He recommended she call Mary Ann. So she did, and the next time Mary Ann was out in Hollywood she came and spent some time with JLH. “She came over and cleared me of two spirits. Apparently, I live in a haunted house...built by [l920 schlock horror pioneer] Lon Chaney,” reveals JLH. Mary Ann also took the cast of Ghost Whisperer on a ghostbusting tour of Hollywood. “The most haunted place we visited was the Disney animation building,” says JLH.
JLH took the part in Ghost Whisperer because, like her ethereal “costars,” she is trying to cross over herself. First she crossed over from child star to teen star, and is now trying to make the transition from teen star to adult star. “I think there’s lots of easy way to prove to people that you’re an adult,” she says.
“Take your clothes off, play a severe drug addict—or become one in real life. Just mess yourself up from head to toe. There are lots of ways that people have done itthat are not the ways I want to do it.I think the shock factor is where people go wrong. I don’t think being an adult is about shocking people. Real grown ups don’t wake up one day and go, ‘I’M AN ADULT.' You don’t turn 30 and take all your clothes off and walk down the street in real life, so why would you do it in the movies?”
JLH is not your typical celebrity. That is, she’s willing to laugh at herself and at her past. She understands that much of her life has been paved by luck. It is a lesson that celebrities usually don’t take notice of until it’s too late. “I carry a few ideas about my career around inmy head,” says the actress. “I like to think of [my career] as this dream toy I got as a kid. When you first get it, your instinct is to throw itaround the room and smash itto little bitty pieces, but the problem with that is then you don’t have the toy anymore. So I’ve always thought of my career as the thing I wanted more than anything else inthe world. Now that I have it, I think about how stupid I would be to abuse it.
“I also think of my life the same way. I’m just this girl from Waco, Texas who likes hamburgers. Any time I get to do something, like a new job or the cover of a magazine, it’s daunting. I always imagine thousands of other girls in Middle America who look like me, if not 50 times better, who could do what I do, but will never get the opportunity. When I get up in the morning, I know that I have to take really good care of my career and do itfor all the people who will never get a chance. Hollywood is made up of a group of people who are not only really talented, but also really lucky—and I always need to remember that.”
And that is why starlets and trends will come and go, but JLH will be left standing. Appreciation, luck, a sense of humor and, as Jackie Chan put it, a nice rack. Unbeatable.