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Movies
Isla Fisher was
encouraged
to try comedy
by her fiance,
Sacha Baron Cohen.
NOBODY'S
FOOL
It's all about timing for Aussie actress
Isla Fisher. Plus family and British W
comedy and wicked trash-talking. "
BY KEVIN MAYNARD
i£\M OUT) WORK AT the surf shop in a
jr bikini, you’d go to school in a bikini,”
Isla Fisher says deadpan over drinks
in Los Angeles. “And if you were murdered, you
would be buried in a bikinL” No, she’s not reminisc
ing about her Australian adolescence, but about
her stint as a scantily clad teen in a 1990 s Down
Under soap.
Those days are over for Fisher, thanks to her hi
larious turn in 2005’s Wedding Crashers. She played
a trust-fund, bipolar nymphomaniac who goes Fa
tal Attraction on her 6-foot-5 co-star Vince Vaughn.
“There was just so much physical comedy to be
mined when you’re a tiny girl beating up a massive
guy,” says the adorably petite (5-foot-2)
redhead, who, it turns out, is quite
the firecracker.
She has a killer wit you don’t see
coming and, according to her Hot Rod
co-star Andy Samberg, “a super sailor’s
mouth—an Australian sailor’s mouth.”
Some think it’s sweet
“Yeah! She’s definitely not one to
20
USA WEEKEND • Feb. 1 -3,2008
hold back on the [trash] talk,” says Ryan Reynolds,
who plays opposite Fisher in the Valentine’s Day
release Definitely, Maybe. “She’s sort of like a ver
bal surgeon with vulgarity. At the same time, she’s
a girl that could just as easily quote the most pro
lific authors of the world.”
In Definitely, Maybe, Fisher plays April, an apo
litical freelancer who frustrates Reynolds’ campaign
fundraiser and then becomes his best buddy. “I think
she stalls out as a girl really frightened of true love,”
Fisher says, “and then grows into a more mature
woman who’s ready to be emo
tionally vulnerable. I loved >
the idea of doing a roman- J
tic comedy that wasn’t for- H
"I couldn't marry someone
who doesn't have the same
sense of humor as me.
Humor's really important
it's the most important
quality in a person."
mi
at
■
Rlt felt like real people
fferent stages of their
nportant timing is.”
e, Fisher, 32 on Sun
iked to Sacha Baron
i, the brilliantly de
;nted British comic
ehind Bond. The cou
le, engaged in 2004,
id a baby girl, Olive,
n October and divide
their time between
the United States
and England. Fisher
iisclose details. “Oh, I
ilk about my personal
i snaps. “I’m very good
ow is that Fisher (and,
ron Cohen) is a huge
yn, the BBC’s Black
er Guest movies. “I
couldn’t marry someone who doesn’t have the
same sense of humor as me,” she says. “Humor’s
really important it’s the most important quality’
in a person.”
Still, it was Baron Cohen who urged Fisher to
lighten up. “I was going up for a lot of dramas, and
I wasn’t having much luck,” she says. “And Sacha
was the one who said, ‘You’re crazy if you don’t do
comedy; you’re one of the funniest girls I know’!’ ”
All too aw’are that Hollywood is a
boys’ club, Fisher is busy develop
ing her own projects, including an
adaptation of the chick-lit bestsell
er Confessions of a Shopaholic, in
which she’ll play the debt-ridden
c%
wr *
Fisher, left, ,md.
Ryan Reynolds
in the new comedy
Definitely , Maybe
protagonist, and Groupies
i with SNL's Amy Poehler,
ft “about rocker chicks who
■ are no strangers to the
I restraining order.” Fisher
I says, “It’s tough to be in
I comedy if .you’re a woman.
■ You've got to develop vour
■ own material or you’ll end
f up playing the girlfriend
' [forever].” I think we speak
for the potty-mouthed actress
when we say, #@&%*+s! a
PORTRAIT RANKIN /ICON INTERNATIONAL. DtHNfTUY, MAYBI ANDREW SCHWARTZ. UNWERSAI PICTURES