Hilton, whose previous big screen credits include House of Wax and Raising Helen, got hooked up with the part early on in the process. “The writer came with it to me and said, ‘We wrote this with you in mind and there’s no one else who can play the Hottie. Will you please play it?’ And I read it and I fell in love with it. I think it’s a really fun film, but it also has a really beautiful message. I just think it was just a cute, fun love story about two best friends.”
The process of getting into character was a complicated one for Lakin, at least physically. “It was about two and a half hours on a really hardcore day where I had to do my legs with hair, and the bruising and the pimples and the toenail,” said Lakin of her time spent in the makeup chair. “With the whole shebang, it was close to almost three.”
Even though she knew her character, June, was supposed to be hideous, Lakin wasn’t quite prepared for her first encounter with a mirror. “They had me turned around away from the mirror because I think they didn’t want me to start getting freaked out halfway through, and be like, ‘Screw it, I’m not doing this.’ But when they first turned me around, I was a little shocked at first. I thought I looked a little bit like a cave woman - that was the closest thing I could kind of – with the eyebrow and everything,” joked Lakin. “You know, it took a couple of seconds to get used to, but it was everything that I had talked about. So much of the character, in that moment of me seeing myself in the mirror, really started to come to life. And then I started to like – I loved looking at myself in the mirror and like making faces and kind of playing around with it and baring my teeth, my ugly teeth to people.”
Hilton and Lakin took their Hottie and the Nottie act out in public, visiting a club just to see how people would react to Lakin in her Nottie disguise. “We talked about it ever since we started the movie,” said Lakin, explaining how it all went down. “I think it was like the first day I was in the makeup trailer, the producer came in and she said, ‘God it would be so funny to see you two actually out on the town like this.’ We both started to laugh and Paris was like, ‘I was thinking about that. I should totally take you to some club and we should do it.’”
“We were both just laughing at like the idea of how people would actually react to this. And then when we were in Sundance I said, ‘I still really want to do it,’ and she’s like, ‘Me too.’ So when we came back, there was a night where we could get it together, so we called the makeup artist from the movie. He still had my mole, he still had my hair, my eyebrows, and I told him I didn’t want to do [the hair] – it’s just too involved to put the hair on here. But I put a hat on and I called the costume guy and he still had my dress that I wore in the movie. I called [Paris] and I was like, ‘I’m ready to go. I’m going to go over there, is everything cool?’ She’s like, ‘Come on.’ So, yeah, I pretty much went, got ready for an hour or so, and then met her out. It was funny, like we had a blast doing it.”
Lakin says she stayed out in costume partying until 3am. “It was fantastic,” said Lakin. “The Nottie had a very good Wednesday. But it was funny. There was just an utter sense of confusion of us walking in and people looking at her and being like, ‘Oh it’s Paris … Oh, who is that unfortunate girl next to her?’ A lot of people didn’t realize [or] didn’t know it was our characters in the movie. Some people were just literally looking at us who I think were from out of town, trying to take pictures of her and trying not to get me in them. It was very funny.”
As for her own outlook on who’s hot and who’s not, doing the film didn’t change the way Lakin looks at people. In other words, she doesn’t plop people into hottie or nottie categories. “But it’s definitely very funny because I always think of somebody who maybe is technically a Nottie, they always become a lot hotter if they’ve got a great personality or like they’re really funny, really kind,” explained Lakin. “I always think of someone who’s really beautiful, who kind of opens their mouth and just says ugly things, it’s funny to me how they kind of become like a Nottie to me. So in that sort of sense maybe [it changed me] a little bit. I guess that was kind of what the film is ultimately about. It’s about friendship and while it’s a romantic comedy, it’s also about who you are on the inside is not always reflective of who you are on the outside.”
Hilton says she’s ready to be taken seriously as an actress, and The Hottie and the Nottie was the first script that truly grabbed her attention. “I think a lot of people see me from The Simple Life, I’ve been doing that show for five seasons, it’s a reality show where I’m playing a character so I’m basically acting in that,” said Hilton. “Maybe people think that’s really how I am, but it’s not. And I’ve been working with Ivana Chubbuck who’s an incredible acting coach. I’ve worked really hard for this, and now I’m taking it seriously.”
And the hotel heiress-socialite-actress believes she’s now prepared to tackle comedies, dramas, and even musicals. “My next role, I just did a movie with Darren Lynn Bousman who directed all the Saw films. Paul Sorvino plays my father and Sarah Brightman plays my nemesis. It’s a musical horror film, and I’m never blond in the movie at all. I always have different hair, different eyes, you could never tell it’s me in every scene. And that was fun. It was great to get a role like that and be given a chance.”
Bousman’s movie, Repo! The Genetic Opera, is set to hit theaters later this year. “I play Amber Sweet,” explained Hilton. “She’s the daughter of the guy who owns the company and she’s a little demented and crazy. She’s obsessed with plastic surgery and always changing the way she looks because she wants to get her father’s approval.”
