TERI POLO: SHE'S NOT A HOOTCHIE AT HEART

BY DIANE BARONI
Executive Editor, Moviecrazed

When I profiled Teri Polo for Interview Magazine in 2000, I was impressed by how unpretentious she was--no attitude whatsoever. Polo's proof that you don't have to play the starlet game to succeed. --D.B.

When Teri Polo was called to go to New York to do a screen test for "Meet the Parents," the new Robert De Niro—Ben Stiller comedy, she was in full witch costume in the kitchen. It was Halloween 1999, and Polo and her husband had turned their L.A. place into a haunted house. The whole neighborhood was there, hanging out.

"The producers wanted me to fly out that same night. I was in complete and utter shock," the thirty-one-year-old recalls. Somehow she made in onto the red-eye and read for the part, and soon was on set trading lines with two big-time players. Polo, whose first acting gig was on the ABC daytime soap "Loving," moved from New York to Hollywood five years ago and says it took some getting used to.

"You know, the big breasts, hot car thing—the kind of thing I fondly refer to as Hootchieville. When I first got out here I tried dressing like a hootchie. I tried acting like a hootchie, but it didn’t work. I guess I’m just not a hootchie at heart."