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» Articles » Canoe: Popping Up on Campus (August 20, 1998; by Rick Conrad)

Montgomery lands role in MTV-produced flick

Young women the world over were crushed when The Spice Girls lost or threw Ginger from the rack.

Add actress Poppy Montgomery to that list.

"I think it sucked!" she says.

"I'm so bummed! She was my favorite. I LOVE the Spice Girls. They're so kitsch and so great."

It's not often you hear a 23-year-old woman pledge her allegiance to all things Spice, but it's more understandable when you realize her parents named her after a flower.

"It's Poppy Petal. Can you believe it?" she says, as she does the vocal equivalent of rolling her eyes.

"Sounds like a porno star."

While you probably won't see the Australian-born actor in the next installment of Deep Throat, you can catch her in the new MTV-produced flick Dead Man on Campus, set for release on Friday.

The movie is about two odd-couple college roommates, played by Tom Everett Scott (That Thing You Do) and Mark-Paul Gosselaar (TV's Saved by the Bell), who are doing disastrously in their first year at Daleman College.

Everett Scott plays Josh, who is there on a full scholarship and must get at least a B-plus average to keep it.

Gosselaar portrays Cooper, heir to a toilet cleaning empire, who is too busy partying to worry about grades.

Desperate for different reasons to save their academic hides, the roommates hear of an old college loophole which says that if your roommate kills himself, you get straight As, despite your academic standing.

So Josh and Cooper begin looking for the most suicidal guy on campus to move in with them.

It's an urban myth common among American campuses, according to the movie's producers.

"I thought they were just making it up for the premise of the film," says Montgomery, who did not go to college.

"I still don't know if it's true or if it's like this urban legend."

Montgomery, who plays Josh's more sensible girlfriend Rachel, says that while much of the movie's humor is directed at the mentally ill and the suicidal, people shouldn't be offended.

"It's not a comedy about suicide, it's a comedy about two guys who are basically messing up in college and what they do in order to stay there," she explains on the phone from Toronto, while on a promotional tour for the film.

"It's not a message movie or a deep and meaningful film by any stretch. It's certainly not Saving Private Ryan, but it's just a fun film."

Montgomery says it was a great opportunity for her to break into film, after doing mostly television work in the four years since she moved to the U.S.

And knowing veteran producer Gale Anne Hurd (Armageddon, Snake Eyes, The Abyss) was involved in the project didn't hurt either.

"It was just a great bunch of people. And I was attracted to the whole MTV side of it."

Some NYPD Blue fans might remember the strawberry-blond Montgomery as a drug addict with a baby, while Party of Five fans will recall her as a lesbian with a major crush on Neve Campbell.

"And I was brutally rebuffed, I might add," she laughs.

But it seems she's left the small screen behind for good, with roles in new films like Life, starring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence, due later this year.

She'll also team up with Diane Keaton and Juliette Lewis in Garry Marshall's new flick The Other Sister set to open this fall.

Still, she refuses to be awestruck.

"I was just thrilled I was getting to work or be in the vicinity of such great people," she says.

"It's like anyone going to their job and working with someone who's great in their field. It's definitely a pleasure to do. But after the first few days on the set, you're just working together."

And besides, she's too busy trying to improve her acting and find more work to dwell on the great names on the marquee with her.

"The movies and the interviews and the articles and all the hype and all that stuff is great and it's fun.

"But in the end, what matters most is the work and you have to keep working out. An athlete just doesn't sit around and wait for the next game."

[source: canoe.ca]

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