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The Louisville Scene - October 24th 1999
"Whatever Happened to Becky?" by C. Ray Hall

As the laughter and lightness of a family reunion swirled around him, 3-year-old Jake Gayheart drifted to sleep in the arms of his aunt Rebecca.

Jake was blissfully unaware of the prominence of his perch: The arms encircling him belonged to Rebecca Gayheart, anointed by Maxim magazine as the hottest woman on the planet. So, as the sun set over an Owen County farm, the world's hottest woman cradled the world's sleepiest babe.

Gayheart, an actress with piercing eyes and Olympian cheekbones, projects an exotic, even unsettling beauty on the screen and the page. But in the flesh, it is a quieter thing, especially in the softness of a Kentucky twilight. And in the company of other Gayhearts -- an almost uniformly handsome family -- her beauty seems nearly unremarkable.

At the family reunion, cars sported license plates from Georgia, Arkansas and Indiana. Many were from Knott County, Ky., the epicenter of the Gayheart clan, three hours to the southeast. (Rebecca was born in Hazard and grew up in Pinetop, with two sisters, Elizabeth and Rachel, and a brother, Wayne.)

As dusk closed in, the children at the reunion were giddy at the notion of sleeping in tents. Rebecca would be nearby, in the white farmhouse, less giddy, memorizing her lines for "Wasteland," her TV series Thursdays at 9 p.m. on ABC.

Gayheart has scorched a swath through the pages of men's magazines. She may be ready to do the same to television, if producer Kevin Williamson's remarkable run continues. He is the force behind "Dawson's Creek" and the "Scream" movie series. (Rebecca was in "Scream 2.") In "Wasteland," she plays a "grunt" in the Manhattan district attorney's office.

"Now I'm playing my age, finally," says Gayheart, who is 27. "I can't play teen-age forever. Last year I did 'Jawbreaker,' where I played a high school student."

"Wasteland" might be a "Dawson's Creek" for grown-ups.

"It's about the second coming of age," she says, "that transitional, awkward, uncomfortable time before you turn 30. Where you make a choice -- you have to become an adult, whether you want to or not."

This marks Gayheart's, oh, third coming of age. The first came, improbably enough, at age 15. It is a tale that would require a preposterous headline:

Fifteen-year-old from Kentucky mountains takes on Manhattan -- virtually singlehanded -- and wins

"She is the million-to-one shot," says Jerry Crump, co-owner of Vogue of Lexington, the agency that gave Gayheart her first break. Twelve years ago, Crump's partner, Dorothy Lewis, delivered Rebecca to a New York modeling agency. Rebecca was to test the waters in the summer, then return to Knott County Central High School in Hindman.

"She was cute and she was smart," Crump says, "but I had no indication of the depth. She's street-smart, she's tenacious, she's focused."

At summer's end, Crump met her in New York, figuring Rebecca was ready to return home.

"No way was I coming home," Gayheart says. "I had gotten a job in a restaurant, I had started modeling, I had found a high school."

"Well, now," Crump says. "She's 15. She had signed herself into the Professional Children's School up there. She had . . . renegotiated the models' apartment to take control of it so she could say who she was going to room with.

"We didn't know this. So her mother and father come up. She says, 'I'm not coming home, this is what I want,' and they signed the papers. We're about to have a heart attack, saying, 'What in the world are we doing?' "

TWELVE YEARS later, Gayheart seems unsure how she mustered the moxie to create her own little urban legend.

"I really don't have a clear answer," she says. "I think you're fearless when you're 15, and I knew I wanted to be an actress, and I wanted it so badly that I knew if I stayed (home), it would never happen.

"My mom always said . . . nothing is impossible. We weren't allowed to say 'can't.' 'Can't' is a dirty word in our house. So I figured I can do it; there's nothing I can't do."

(Her parents have done some semi-legendary things, too. Her mother, Flo, has bought bulldozers and sold cosmetics for a living. Her father, Curtis, is a contract trucker who has worked the steel mills in East Chicago and the coal mines in East Kentucky. He took the family to see "Coal Miner's Daughter," and Rebecca was enchanted. She soon realized she wanted to act. And sing. And drive a Ferrari.)

Rebecca was smart and determined, and as presumably unawed by New York as she was by, well, Carr Creek Elementary School.

"How many kids can go through Professional Children's School up there, which has higher standards than schools in Kentucky, and not miss a lick?" Crump asks. "She graduated with honors. She went to Japan and never missed an assignment."

"I think I was more mature then (at 15) than I am now," Gayheart says. "I was a very, very good kid. . . . My mom still feels bad about letting me leave home so young, but I was a straight-A student; I was very responsible."

Back home, she had been just wild about school. "I had perfect attendance," she says. She was a cheerleader; she was a hurdler and long jumper on the track team. And she was in the drama club, playing Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet."

"I played Lizzie Borden once," she recalls. "With much enthusiasm. It might have come in handy for my role in 'Urban Legend.' "

("URBAN LEGEND," the family's favorite Rebecca movie, is also the source of some irritation. About 30 family members went to see it in Hazard. Before they settled into their seats, one piped up, "You know Becky's the killer, don't you?" It ruined the ending, but it enabled the family to focus more sharply on Rebecca's performance. "I enjoy sitting down and watching her act," says her father. "I can tell improvement every show that she's in.")

What did folks back home in Pinetop think of her decision to take on New York at 15?

"I think," she says, "people just thought it was ridiculous -- and it kind of was, because I didn't know what I was getting into. . . . Once I got there, I figured it out."

She never allowed herself to believe she could fail. Never considered another career.

"Nope. Never had a Plan B. Because I think if you have a Plan B, then your Plan A definitely won't work."

Still, she faced many potentially crushing moments in Manhattan.

"I had lots of people in New York tell me to go back home -- that it would never happen, that I would never be an actress, or that I wasn't pretty enough to be a model," she says. "I didn't believe them. I was stubborn. I was really stubborn."

"Strong-willed," says her brother, Wayne. "Ever since she was 7 years old. . . . She's always had that drive about her."

Once the folks in New York began to take her seriously, what did they want to change?

"I think my innocence," she says. "Everybody wanted to change that. . . . My accent. There were lots of things. I was told to have my moles removed. I was told to lose weight. And of course the only thing I actually listened to was losing my accent, because I was told by lots of casting directors, 'You're pretty, you're talented, but you have no range; you can only play a Southern girl.' So I lost my accent, and now all I get is Southern roles."

(She studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute. And she worked to dispel her accent. Her elocution is so precise that she bites off words as crisply as other people gnosh celery. The word "tent" comes out "tentah." Every once in a while, a relic of Southern speech bobs to the surface; she'll catch herself saying, "I'm fixin' to . . .")

Gayheart, who actually seems more bright than hot, soon deduced that practically every aspect of her persona had two sides. Like being Southern.

"I think there is a bit of a stigma attached to being a Southerner when you go to New York or Los Angeles," she says. "They think that Southerners aren't as smart or aren't as educated, and that the accent sounds ridiculous. But then later, they find that charming and intriguing.

"AT FIRST THEY THINK, oh, a little country bumpkin, a little hillbilly, things like that. But then later I think they appreciate it because they realize just what you get from being brought up in a place like this -- which is lots of morals, you're really grounded, you have a loving family."

To her diary, she committed impossible dreams: To win an Oscar by age 17. And possible dreams: To work with Woody Allen. ("There's always something great in his movies.")

Slowly, Manhattan moved, a little, for her. She got commercials for Burger King and Campbell's soup, and some work for the JC Penney catalog. Then she became "the Noxzema girl," and landed a role in the soap opera "Loving." Then, ultimately, came the movie career -- and the persistent, panting praise of men's magazines.

Along the way, she chose good roomies, apparently. One was Carla Gugino, whose credits include "Spin City" and "Snake Eyes." Yvonna Kopacz, an actress who recently appeared on "Cosby," remains her closest friend. When they were 18, she taught Kopacz her modeling moves.

"She took everything so seriously, even a catalog job," Kopacz says of Gayheart. "She basically had these 10 poses (and said), 'This is what we need to do.' She was extremely motivated and headstrong."

(Whereupon we find that, a couple of feet below the hard head, there's a soft center.)

"I think a lot of people don't see that she's just a down-to-earth, really sweet girl," Kopacz says. "She's extremely caring . . . very generous."

When Maxim magazine declared her the world's hottest woman (and, presumably, Earth's No. 1 sex object), it was not exactly the crowning moment Gayheart had worked for.

"I thought it was kind of funny," she says. "Of course it's flattering, but I don't see it; I see all these other girls and I'm like, 'They're crazy. They made the wrong decision. It was a mistake.' You know, Catherine Zeta-Jones and all these girls, they're prettier, they're sexier."

Her friend Kopacz says: "She definitely doesn't think of herself as the hottest babe, just because she's a regular down-home girl, and to be put in that position, I think, was very strange. . . ."

Stranger still is the notion that, at any moment (like this one), folks all over the globe are dialing up images of Gayheart on the Internet.

"If I sit and think about it, it's very strange," she says. "That's probably why I don't think about it, because it's so bizarre. Hopefully, they'll be inspired or encouraged or motivated in a good way if they're reading about me or seeing photos of me."

Therein lies a small rub. Magazines splash her over their slick pages, with little text. As if the image is all there is.

"I think people would much rather see a photograph of a young, attractive woman than hear what she has to say," Gayheart says. "And that can be really annoying sometimes. But the other side of it is I understand that, and I use that to get the publicity that I need to get my next job. So it's a big game that everyone's playing."

She's winning. A couple of years ago, she was losing: It was another coming-of-age moment.

At 24, she landed in Los Angeles and quickly landed movie roles in "Nothing to Lose" and "Somebody Is Waiting." A stint on "Beverly Hills 90210" followed.

Then, she hit a wall.

"I went one year without a job," she says. "And that was really scary and frustrating. That's a fear that all actors have -- that you're not going to get another job, no matter how successful you are. In a way it was really discouraging, but in a way it made me fight harder for jobs. It made me work harder and become a better actress. So I cherish that year, because I learned a lot about myself."

She won roles in "Scream 2," "Urban Legend," "Jawbreaker" and the forthcoming "The Hangman's Daughter," shot in South Africa.

So her plate is full. In Hollywood and at home. At the family reunion, a Saturday night spaghetti supper was only the warm-up for a Sunday pig roast.

Having ingested Flo's spaghetti (accompanied by 200 garlic-laced meatballs), Gayhearts groaned their appreciation: "Flo, this is so good, I'm bustin' out of my pants."

Flo's white T-shirt was speckled with spaghetti sauce from a day in the kitchen. In the farmhouse yard, she stretched in a chair and looked across the dark fields at the day's last light, dying in brilliant red streaks.

"Look at this," she said. "I love this."

So does her daughter, the hottest woman on the planet.

Earlier, Rebecca had surveyed that same stretch of earth and sky, and said, "It'd be nice to get a little piece of property and build a little cabin and have it, to come home and hang out with the family."

This observation incited a question about the places Rebecca Gayheart has called home: Pinetop for 15 years, New York for nine years, and Los Angeles for the last three.

"AT HOME, I would wake up and I would feel an overwhelming sense of family and support and nature," she says. "But I also saw a lot of people wasting their lives -- I thought. I'm beginning to realize that that's not necessarily true. . . . Different things make everyone happy.

"But there was a sense that . . . there wasn't a lot of hope for a lot of the teen-agers in my high school. . . . And I know there were a lot of kids in my high school who were extremely talented and smart and clever and creative who could go off and be amazing . . . and they never saw those opportunities, so they're working at a grocery store instead.

"In L.A. and New York what I would see was ambition. . . . The negative things I see in L.A. and New York are the lack of a sense of family, the rat race, and people being workaholic. There's good and bad in both. That's why it's lovely that I kind of get to have both. I can take the good from both."

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