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BUZZ Encounter I by Mike Kessler Who: Carla Gugino What: Actress, Women in Trouble Where: Her backyard, Hollywood Hills Which Carla Gugino will I get—the G-rated movie mom or the intimidatingly sexy woman I saw in a YouTube clip called “Carla Gugino in Her Underwear”? This is the ques- tion that hovers as I wait for Gugino to open the gate to her Hollywood Hills home, a two- story hacienda that’s concealed by a long stucco wall and a small forest of bamboo and bougainvillea. It’s a hot afternoon, with roofless tourist vans chugging up the road, birds chirping, and the din of traffic from -be low. I hear Gugino walk across her yard, shush a barking dog, and wiggle the latch on the turquoise gate before opening it. “Thanks for making yourself available on such short notice,” she says, stealing my line. 58 | LOS ANGeleS | NOVEMBER 2009 Dressed in a light green V-neck tee to come to parties here,” she says. and white linen pants, this is definitely “We’ve always wanted to host a film the more family-friendly Gugino who’s noir party, with a fake corpse facedown starred in Spy Kids and Race to Witch at the bottom of the pool and every- Mountain. Standing five feet seven thing. It’s such a hidden little piece of inches in beaded sandals, her hair pulled L.A. history.” back in a ponytail, she leads me and her Gugino was one of three children of poodle-Yorkie mix, Luna, into the kitch- an orthodontist father and a home- en, opens a Tupperware container of maker mother in Sarasota, Florida. In Moroccan mint tea, and begins prepar- 1988, at the age of 14, she moved into ing two glass mugs. “It’s from Urth Caf- the L.A. home of her uncle and aunt fé,” she says. “It’s traveled the world (Carol Merrill, who was a sidekick on with me.” Let’s Make a Deal) and got permission Even if you don’t know Gugino by from the courts to be exempt from the name, you recognize her face—the rules that apply to child actors. New in curvy mouth, the ski ramp nose—as town, with a last name that no one soon as you see it. She was a lesbian pa- could pronounce (it’s Goo-jeen-o), she role officer inSin City, an ex-cop in Righ- considered adopting her mother’s teous Kill, with Al Pacino and Robert De maiden name, Burgess, but “my Italian Niro, and a brainy academic opposite father would have died if I did that,” Ben Stiller in Night at the Museum. She she says. The name didn’t deter casting may be best known as Amanda Daniels, directors, who picked her for TV roles the agent who’s too much woman for in Alf, Who’s the Boss?, and Falcon Vincent Chase in HBO’s Entourage. Crest, to name a few. In 1993, she land- Gugino appears as Elektra Luxx, a ed a starring movie role opposite Pauly porn star on the cusp of an epiphany in Shore in Son in Law. She’s been busy in Women in Trouble, which comes out this Hollywood ever since, landing some month. Women in Trouble is a dark com- 60-plus roles on TV and in movies, edy—and the first in a trilogy—written from Spin City and Chicago Hope to her and directed by Sebastian Gutierrez, own short-lived drama, Karen Sisco. who is Gugino’s longtime partner. Gugi- Of the many characters she’s por- no stars alongside nine other women trayed, one of her favorites is the pant- whose lives cross paths during one par- suit-wearing Amanda Daniels in Entou- PAGE 58: DON FLOOD/CORBIS OUTLINE. FROM TOP: CLAUDETTE BARIUS/HBO; DIMENSION FILMS/PHOTOFEST; SEBASTIAN GUTIERREZ ticularly hectic day in L.A. Elektra has to rage. “The show’s producers wanted decide how to handle an unexpected someone smart and complex, not a one- pregnancy and spends most of her time NAUGHTY HABIT: Gugino as a talent agent in note bitchy thing,” she recalls. “They onscreen trapped in an elevator, Entourage, a secret agent in Spy Kids, and a porn star wanted someone who is strong and playing a nun in Women in Trouble stripped down to her undergarments sexy and doesn’t make apologies for with a perfect stranger. “The anatomi- herself. As a woman, you rarely get di- cally correct Elektra Luxx Vagina Deluxe re- learned when she was filming a steamy scene rection like that. Usually you’re asked to tails for 89 bucks and comes in three differ- with Simon Baker in Judas Kiss. Gutierrez soften up or to be cold and take on the worst ent colors,” she tells her elevator mate, as a was directing, and almost as soon as the cam- characteristics of men.” Gugino drew from a way to convey her popularity in the adult film era started rolling, “He yelled, ‘Cut, cut, cut,’ ” few female agents she knows, but she says, business. “It is the number-one-selling celeb- says Gugino. “I was like ‘But we didn’t finish “The role was written well enough that there rity vagina on the market.” Race to Witch our lines.’ And Sebastian was like ‘Yeah, wasn’t anything I wanted to change. It was Mountain this is not. yeah—we’ll make the scene work.’ So now we spot-on.” Rather than hang around some dodgy have a running joke: In any of the things we She looks at her phone and realizes she’s porn studio in the Valley, Gugino prepared for work on together, I’m either a lesbian or I late for another meeting. Tomorrow Gugino the role by watching documentaries and sam- don’t have sex onscreen.” will be on a plane to Vancouver, where she’s pling “classy porn that was shot on film” in filming her latest project, Sucker Punch, a the ’70s. “I don’t find porn very sexy, and I find * * * * * film by 300 director Zack Snyder. She stars the porn world so depressing,” she says. “Once as a psychiatrist in the 1960s—as well as a I got some insight into the mechanics of the We’ve taken a seat at a wrought- “Polish dominatrix-slash-choreographer- making of porn, I was ready to play Elektra.” iron table in the lush backyard. She and Guti- slash-madam. There’s singing and dancing, Gutierrez, who wrote Snakes on a Plane, errez have lived here for the last six years. The too,” she says, admitting that she felt some- created the role of Elektra Luxx with Gugino place was built in 1927 by the Chandlers, the what “schizophrenic” researching the part. in mind. But the two agreed that the film powerful family who founded the Los Angeles But, as Gugino says, in her line of work “you would be ill served by nudity or gratuitous Times and helped shape the city. The house have to mix it up. I want to be able to do this skin-flick realism. “You can’t do that with a later served as the consulate to a Western for the rest of my life. I’m aware that there movie if you want to keep a certain level of European democracy. (Fearing attention isn’t a big role that would change my career. lightness,” she says. The same might be said from those tourist vans, Gugino asked us not And that’s fine. As long as it affords me a shot of their relationship—something Gugino to reveal too much.) “Alfred Hitchcock used at the best parts.” n 60 | LOS ANGeleS | NOVEMBER 2009.

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