Canadian actress Amanda Crew may describe herself as a dork, but she's the dork who gets to romance Zac Efron in a new movie.
In Charlie St. Cloud, opening Friday, Crew plays the woman whose love returns Efron to the land of the living and gets him through the grief of his brother's death. Crew and Efron became friends in the course of filming, and she has nothing but good things to say about her co-star and his performance in this film.
"He is such a hard worker, and I'm so excited for this movie to come out for him," says Crew, over the phone from California. "I think he's going to blow a lot of people away with what he's capable of. I have so much respect for him."
We have to ask: Charlie St. Cloud involves intense sailing scenes, so what was tougher, the love scenes or the sailing scenes?
"Sailing," Crew says at once. "I'm a klutz. My legs were covered in bruises for that entire shoot because I was constantly crashing up against things in that boat. But you can see why people fall in love with sailing."
At 24, Crew is already a seasoned veteran of film and television, with roles in such movies as Sex Drive, The Haunting in Connecticut, The Break-Up Artist, She's the Man and Final Destination 3, among others. She was also a regular on the TV series Whistler and 15/Love, and all of it accomplished just in the last five years.
Crew fell in love with acting when she was still a tyke at elementary school. When she was in Grade 4, she had a role in a play called Dragon Tales.
"I was pretty shy up until that play," she says, laughing.
"It was usually just the sixth and seventh graders who got to be in the play, and for some reason I got to be in it and I got to have this quirky role. And I just loved it. My mom let me take acting classes, but she didn't let me get an agent until I was 16." The actress later went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Crew grew up in Langley, B.C. and says her guitar-playing father was the artistic influence in the house, while her mother was the role model for structure and drive. She has one older sister.
Crew may live in Los Angeles now, but she says her life really hasn't changed much in the last five years, success notwithstanding.
"Everyone has this perception of what my life must be like, and obviously it's changed a bit like everyone in my age range, going from being a teenager to being an adult, but I do the same things I'd have been doing if I hadn't chosen this type of work. I'd be hanging with friends, going to dinner, going to the movies, being a dork."
But choosing this type of work, concedes Crew, has put her in the land of the ever-striving. "Every role you do, you always have that question -- will I ever work again?" she says, laughing again.
" I think it's a natural insecurity that actors have. Sometimes I envy people who work at Starbucks, because it's a 9 to 5 job, they show up, they do their thing, and then they can leave it at the end of the day and enjoy their friends. Some days it's so crazy-busy I forget my own name, and other days and weeks I'm so bored out of my tree I'm thinking, 'What am I doing with my life?' "
Articulate and down-to-earth, Crew channels energy into photography on her own time. "I've really gotten into photography in an amateur way," she says, adding that she also collects old cameras. "As much as digital is fun and it's instant gratification, there's also something to be said about shooting on film. While we were shooting Charlie St. Cloud, I was non-stop with the photos. When we were finished, as a wrap gift, I made a coffee table book for some of the crew of photos from the shoot that reminded me of the experience we all shared. That was kind of cool."
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