Confessions of an Heiress Read online

  Once I decided to start acting and singing, I think everyone snickered and thought I’d never really pull it off. It’s fun proving everyone wrong! And one of the best things is that my parents are really proud of me. Who knew? I found out I like working. It makes you appreciate things more. So, even if people say I’m spoiled, at least they can’t say I don’t do anything. When they see me at parties now, they know it’s probably for a reason. Now I have an agenda like everybody else.

  I’m working on a lot of projects, from jewelry, clothing, and handbag design to acting and singing. I’ve just wrapped up the second season of The Simple Life, and I’ve also had a few fun cameos in movies like The Cat in the Hat, Wonderland, and Raising Helen. I’m attempting to take the whole acting part of my career to another level. It’s so much fun I don’t even mind getting up in the morning anymore. Anyway, if all else fails, my bodyguard wakes me up, throws me into the car, and we’re on our way. The hair and makeup people do the rest, until I wake up.

  Me As Movie Star

  Over the summer, I got my first big role in a major studio movie. It’s a horror movie called House of Wax, and it’s a remake of a famous old movie that was made before I was born. Joel Silver produced it for Warner Bros. He also made the Lethal Weapon and Matrix movies, and I am a huge fan. I love Joel and really appreciate that he believed in me.

  We shot on the Gold Coast of Australia this summer with a very cool young cast: Elisha Cuthbert, who’s on Fox’s 24, Jared Padalecki, Robert Ri’chard, Brian Van Holt, Jon Abrahams, and Chad Michael Murray, from One Tree Hill on the WB.

  I was thrilled because I love scary movies, even though they don’t really scare me or freak me out; they just make me laugh. The only thing I could never do in a movie is be anywhere near insects. Spiders, bugs, daddy longlegs, bumblebees. They really gross me out. But I was fine with all the fake blood and guts, even when they were mine. I had to be fitted for a fake head before we started shooting because, well, you can imagine. I don’t want to give too much away.

  “I’ve never had to have a wardrobe to wear to an office, thank God.”

  Acting has become a huge passion of mine, which is why I’ve done so many TV appearances recently. I’ve even taken some acting classes, and I really love it. I’ll always be perfecting my technique.

  Comedies are my favorite. If I could choose any type of movie role, it would be like Cameron Diaz’s in There’s Something About Mary. I also loved the movie Zoolander. I like that really sick, silly humor. And making fun of myself is something I’ve always been good at. Note to the Farrelly brothers, who are always casting funny, ditzy blondes: I’m available. Call my managers. And I’m a big fan of Ben Stiller.

  There’s no reason I can’t do more than one thing. It’s all about taking charge and branding yourself. I think we’re living in a moment when having a career, especially a really glamorous one, is a very sexy thing. It makes guys want you more, and it makes your whole package a lot more attractive.

  My First Album

  I started working on this record a while ago. We’ve cut about six tracks so far, but I keep getting interrupted by acting jobs. I go in the studio and work on it whenever I have time. I hope it comes out in 2004, but I’m not in a rush. It sounds like danceable rock. I LOVE my first single, produced by Robb Boldt, who works with JC Chasez. It’s called—and don’t take this the wrong way—“Screwed.” It’s not what you think! It’s about a girl who really falls for a guy and knows she’s emotionally in too deep and in trouble, so she’s screwed. When my parents heard the title, they weren’t too happy, but my mother listened to it, and she loves it. When I heard it—before I even recorded it—I didn’t even think about the double meaning. But at this point, I’m not afraid of controversy. Everything I do seems to freak somebody out, but I just have to let it go. Some of my friends told me I’m fearless—and that makes me really happy. I like to have fun in almost any form. That is truly what being an heiress is all about. After all, hasn’t it been said that having fun is the best revenge?

  And it is.

  Me As TV Guest Star

  This spring, I guest-starred in quite a few TV shows to brush up on my acting skills. I was on Las Vegas, playing a girl who’s really just in love with money. Trust me, I got the joke. I also shot an episode of The O.C. with Mischa Barton and Adam Brody. I played a model-actress who was getting her master’s degree in literature. She didn’t want her friends to know she was a bookworm.

  I also did a guest shot on George Lopez. I played his son’s tutor. It was my biggest TV role, and we shot for about twelve hours. I had a lot of lines, so for that show, I learned a trick for memorizing them: I find if I write down what I’m supposed to say, I can memorize it.

  Me As Celebrity DJ

  Last spring, I was named Best Celebrity DJ at the DanceStar Awards in Miami. I was up against other celebrity DJs, like Adrian Brody, Cameron Douglas, Rosanna Arquette and Danny Masterson, so it was really exciting to win.

  Me As Model

  I am currently the face for the Marciano collection and the Guess? line. The campaign was shot by photographer Ellen von Unwerth. I was really thrilled because in the past, they’ve had great girls like Claudia Schiffer, Drew Barrymore, and Adriana Lima do their magazine ads and billboards—and it was something I always wanted to do. I’ve also been doing loads of magazine covers and fashion shoots for Elle, Movieline’s Hollywood Life, Seventeen, TV Guide, Rolling Stone, and Entertainment Weekly. Photo shoots take a long time, but I still love the work. It’s fun to get paid to have people fuss over you.

  I’ve also learned a lot from working with some of the world’s best fashion photographers—people whose work I’ve been admiring for years. Antoine Verglas really knows how to make a woman look sexy. I love working with David LaChappelle; he’s a genius! I love how colorful and creative his photos are. Gilles Bensimon, who shot me in Paris for the March 2004 cover of American Elle, was so talented and polite. We shot at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, probably the most beautiful hotel in the world. Paris in Paris. How perfect is that? And Ellen von Unwerth, with whom I just shot the Guess campaign, is incredible. I’ve always admired the sexiness of her pictures and how alive they are. It is such an honor for me to be the Guess? girl.

  I always love working with Jeff Vespa, my favorite photographer. He looks after me, makes sure the best photos of me are the ones that run, and now we’ve even started doing a bunch of portrait photos together that are very, very pretty.

  “It’s fun getting paid to have people fuss over you.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to do The Simple Life when Fox first offered it to me. I hate all the dating reality shows. They are so stupid, and the people on them are so boring. Losers. My mom thought the whole Simple Life concept was just trying to make fun of me—a couple of rich girls doing gross jobs on a farm—and I knew she was probably right. At the end of the day, I wound up doing it because I realized it was a TV show meant to be entertainment, and I was just playing a funny role. Anyone who thinks that’s really me is in for a total surprise. I thought it would be a fun thing to do with my best friend, Nicole Richie. Not to mention, the producers begged me. Even to an heiress, that’s fairly flattering. Particularly to an heiress.

  Nicole and I had a great time shooting the show in Arkansas, even though the work was hard. It could have been miserable, but we made the best of it. We brought a lot of cute outfits with us, and coordinated them so we’d flatter each other on camera. But after we left, there was stuff in the tabloids about how everyone in the town hated us. I thought it was interesting, because they loved us when we were there, then called the papers and said bad things about us after we got home. I assume a lot of these people got paid to tell tales. That one boy who had a crush on me apparently got four thousand dollars for every picture he sold of me and him together. I guess I don’t really blame him.

  On the first installment of The Simple Life, Nicole and I did work every day from six A.M. to five P.M. for minimum wage.
I said I never realized people worked hard, but I didn’t mean it that way. I know movie producers work hard, and my managers and agents work hard. I guess I didn’t realize what hard work meant. Like, dinner at the Ivy in Beverly Hills costs two hundred dollars. Well, I made forty-two dollars a day working, so I’d have to work four or five days just to eat dinner at the Ivy one night! Now that I’ve worked for that kind of low pay, I understand more what people really go through.

  I know a lot of people thought the show was funny, and I love that. Nicole and I might have been naive about farming and stuff like that, but we weren’t as naive as they portrayed us on the show. Well, would it have been as funny if we had known what we were doing the whole time? Would it be funny if Jessica Simpson didn’t say things about chicken of the sea? People like to laugh at people on reality shows. We get that.

  We really did do all those gross things. There were no body doubles for that stuff. All the chores were pretty bad, but the thing that grossed me out the absolute worst was when Nicole and I had to go work in a taxidermy place, because I love animals so much. People actually shoot animals to have them displayed dead in their houses! They showed us people who were scraping these bones, and there was all this blood and skin and fat dried up—it was sick. Then we had to scrape the bones with scalpels. They told us the bones were raccoon penises, so we threw them on the floor. Later, Nicole and I thought they were just trying to mess with us. That sucked. But now I think they really might have been raccoon penises. Gross!

  The Making of The Simple Life 2

  The first show was a big hit, so when Fox offered us round two, Nicole and I got to make a few demands. We’d been through a lot, so I knew what to ask for the second time around. I didn’t want to have to stay with just one family the whole time, so the second season was set up as a thirty-day cross-country road trip, from Miami Beach to Beverly Hills, with multiple families.

  We drove—or, I should say, I drove, because Nicole doesn’t have her license—a cotton-candy-pink pickup, and lived in this Airstream trailer that we dragged behind it. It was small and rather gross, and it was so filled up with our and Tinkerbell’s outfits that it became a moving closet. There was only one small bed, but we were so tired at night, we’d just pass out from exhaustion. The farthest I’d ever driven before the show was from L.A., to Palm Springs, and that’s only two hours. I won’t even drive to Vegas from L.A. Driving the trailer was scary because big trucks rocked the Airstream when they passed us. Making turns and backing up were also really hard. I’m amazed we didn’t hit anybody. Can you imagine how the press would have dealt with that?

  After a while, Nicole and I started to feel sick. I know there were mosquitoes and spiders in that trailer, because we’d wake up with bug bites all over us. There was so much light in there from all the cameras that it attracted every mosquito known to man. And no one cleaned it. And there was no laundry service. Luckily, I never had to wear the same thing more than once, because I brought five million outfits.

  We lived on fast food, because in the South, that’s all there is (as you know, I love junk food). We weren’t allowed to have any money, so we had to beg people to pay for our food, or get the restaurants to give it to us for free. Or if we stayed with a family, they would feed us—but I was usually happier with tacos or fries on the go.

  We had to get jobs to make a hundred dollars, which would pay for our gas and food. My first job was at Weeki Wachee, a kids’ place with an underwater show. I got to play a mermaid, and Nicole was a turtle. It was kind of stupid, but Elvis had been there, so that made it kind of cool.

  For our second job, we stayed with this old guy on his farm somewhere in Florida, and unfortunately, that’s where I had a horrible accident with a horse. We had to get on horses to herd bulls into the pen, and we were going really fast. All the cameras were scaring the horses. The boss’s horse went really fast, so my horse followed fast. When the cameras started chasing it, my horse started bucking really hard. I went flying into the air and actually fell under the horse. Its hooves went into my stomach and my thigh, and it galloped right on top of me! I was on the ground crying, and the skin on my face and arms putted up from stinging nettles. They called an ambulance, put an IV in me, and flew me by helicopter to a hospital in Tampa. The IV really hurt—I’d never had one before. (And I’m not looking forward to having another one any time soon.) Then they did CAT scans, an MRI, and a lot of tests. Luckily, there was no internal bleeding, just some bruises.

  And, of course, the cameras kept shooting till I was off the horse. The press said the reason I was bucked off the horse was because I was wearing high heels. That’s so not true! First of all, I was wearing tennis shoes. I know when and where to wear heels, and it’s definitely not on a horse. Boy, am I glad that’s behind me. I don’t know if I’ll even be able to watch the show, let alone get on another horse.

  After that, I had two days off and stayed in bed. I really needed it. Then Nicole and I went to this crazy nudist resort in Florida. Everyone in the lobby was naked. Even everyone on the street was naked. People were riding bikes wearing shirts and shoes, but no bottoms. That’s got to be uncomfortable. Why go bottomless and not topless, I thought? And people accuse me of being an exhibitionist! At least we didn’t have to get naked in front of them. There was a nightclub in this country club, and when we walked in, we saw all these butt-naked people—fat, naked old people. All the guys wanted to take pictures with us. It was so weird. Old ladies, old men, all naked. Even the bartenders. But there was no one cute there, believe me. So what could Nicole and I do? We just started dancing, with our clothes on, to OutKast, Britney Spears, “YMCA.” Well, it looked like me and Nicole were dancing in a geriatric music video. It was funny, because I’m sure it’s the first time in my life I was the person with the most clothes on in the room!

  Next, we had to be hotel maids for two days and clean people’s rooms. But all we really did was make the beds and put towels away. We weren’t going near any dirty laundry. Nicole and I were so lazy, we ended up sitting on a bed, ordering room service, and talking on the phone! Then, like a scene out of Maid in Manhattan, Nicole took off her maid’s outfit and put on one of the guest’s outfits. I put on a towel, and then a real maid came in and did the room, thinking we were the guests. Funny!

  After that, I drove twelve hours to Biloxi, Mississippi. And I had to do it, because they shot us driving. There were three cameras on in the car. We stayed with a family who made us eat this gross bacon and build a new pool for them. The son was always yelling at us. Finally, we got so sick of it, we snuck out to a casino. It was not the Bellagio—there were no cute guys anywhere. At least we didn’t have to stick around long.

  Probably the worst job was having to work in a sausage factory. I never knew sausage was made out of strings of slimy pig intestines. They look like condoms, and you have to push the meat through to make sausage. I swear, I’ll never eat sausage again. Even at the Ivy. Okay, maybe at the Ivy.

  After that, we went to a Louisiana swamp and then to Austin, Texas, where we had to work at a concession stand at the baseball game, making French fries. I had no idea they got fried in so much grease! But that isn’t going to stop me from eating them. I also had to be a bat-girl, which was kinda fun. I’m not into watching sports, but I like to be around athletic guys. These guys were staring at us so much, they could barely play the game!

  The worst part of the second season was begging for money. I admit, I made Nicole do most of the dirty work. Nicole doesn’t care—she’ll do anything. She’s wild and fun. I would just stand there and look cute and smile. I know what I’m good at.

  “We really did do all those gross things.”

  Okay, I may be an heiress, and a lot has been handed to me on a platinum platter, but the one place I’ve had to apply myself, just like every girl, is in studying and analyzing the male species. I may not know how to do brain surgery (who wants to? Guys don’t want girls to know that stuff), but I do know the science
of what makes a guy tick. I’ve been told my advice on getting—and keeping—a boyfriend has a very high success rate. When was the last time you saw me without a great-looking boyfriend?

  The Kind of Guys I Like

  I like guys who are hot, funny, sweet, loyal, honest, and, of course, won’t lie or cheat on me. Most important, I want someone who will make me laugh, because I love to laugh. Is that too much to ask? I don’t think so. My friends keep telling me I don’t prefer one type of guy, and it’s true. I admit I like all kinds of guys, just like shoes. But a guy should not be the biggest thing in your life: You should be.

  And if you don’t believe that, or at least act like it, you will never attract a great guy. You may be dying to have a boyfriend; every girl’s been there. Even me. Although, I admit, not for very long. But it shouldn’t show. Instead, let your inner heiress come out. Guys do not want girls who are too nice to them, or girls they can walk all over and get too easily. Every guy wants to be with a woman who thinks like an heiress. This is another situation in which being a real one comes in very handy.

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  The Heiress Way of Flirting

  Never be too easy. If you’re too easy, a guy knows he has you. Love is a battlefield, right? You may be dying to be with a particular guy, but once he knows it, you’ve lost almost all your power. If he doesn’t need to chase you, he’s not going to feel like a real guy. Guys want to compete; it makes them feel important.