Jennifer Morrison

By Rob. Walton

WHO IS SHE?
Steel-eyed, silky-haired Chicago native Jennifer Morrison currently kicks asphalt as a pro street skater in the skate-rat road trip comedy Grind.

WHAT HAS SHE DONE?
At 15, the dancer-turned-actress made her Hollywood debut as Sharon Stone and Richard Gere's daughter in Intersection. After haunting Kevin Bacon in Stir of Echoes Jenny got a starring role in another thriller, Urban Legends: Final Cut. She did time on TV in the FX flick Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie and had a recurring role as Joshua Jackson's girlfriend on Dawson's Creek. Next year she co-stars as Ben Affleck's girlfriend in the holiday release Surviving Christmas.

WHY DO WE CARE?
The brainy and buff 22-year-old is the kind of girl who graduated from Loyola in three short years and can hold her own shredding a wave or grinding a rail. Jennifer went from teen scream queen to big screen heartbreaker without even breaking a sweat.

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PLAYBOY: Before you started acting, you were a model. Who did you model for?

MORRISON: I was a kid, so I wouldn't consider that real modeling, but every Sunday you could open the paper and see me in ads for Kohl's, JCPenney, Montgomery Ward and stuff like that. The big scandal was when I was in seventh grade and I modeled a bathing suit. Everybody freaked out!

PLAYBOY: You were also somewhat of a jock.

MORRISON: I grew up dancing when I was a kid in Chicago. I played soccer for a couple of years in high school. Once I moved to Los Angeles and was in the warm weather all the time I learned how to play tennis, wakeboard, snowboard, surf and ride dirt bikes. I also go hiking in L.A.

PLAYBOY: So you had a big head start when you got the part of a pro skateboarder in Grind.

MORRISON: Actually, everything moved so quickly. We had two days to learn everything. They gave me Tony Hawk's Trick Tips videos. I'd be in my PJs at night with my board trying to learn how to Ollie on my carpet or skate up and down my alley at 2 a.m. I almost got evicted from my apartment complex. We spent the entire time on set on our boards, so we constantly got more comfortable and got better and better.

PLAYBOY: What's the most difficult stunt you can do on a skateboard?

MORRISON: To drop in on the ramps on the street course. That's freaky, 'cause when you're standing looking at the ramps, they don't look so intimidating, but when you go up to the top, they're very intimidating. We're talking like four-foot ramps. I wasn't doing 16-foot verts, because my character is a street skater.

PLAYBOY: Who's your favorite pro skater?

MORRISON: I just started following it since I did Grind. It's such a cool sport. There's a pack of girls right now that are so young and so good. Vanessa Torres. My stunt double Lauren Perkins. They're 13 and 14 years old, and they're tearing it up all over the place.

PLAYBOY: Your dad was the band director at your high school. That must have put a crimp in your social life.

MORRISON: I think "crimp" is a real understatement. It was not good. I love my dad so much, and he's an amazing teacher, so I really wouldn't trade that for the world, but it didn't make me too popular.

PLAYBOY: Do you have a boyfriend now?

MORRISON: I do not. I've been single for a little while partly because I've been working so much and partly because I don't want to settle. A lot of people run around and are real crazy in Hollywood, but I want to wait for it to be the right thing.

PLAYBOY: What kind of guys do you like?

MORRISON: All the wrong ones. [Laughs] I'm definitely working on that right now. I'm actually in a really cool place. I really do see the good in people, and I don't want to change that. That's really how I view things, so sometimes I'll look past a lot of huge red flags because I see something else in someone. Then of course it always comes back to haunt me in the long run.

PLAYBOY: In your next movie, Surviving Christmas, you dump Ben Affleck before Christmas. Have you ever broken up with a guy during the holidays?

MORRISON: I always had a thing with Thanksgivings. I've started dating people and broken up with them around Thanksgiving several times. What is it about Thanksgiving? I guess that at least someone's there to console you.

PLAYBOY: When you were working on the movie with Ben, did you meet J.Lo?

MORRISON: Yeah, she's cool. They were cool together. We talked a couple of times when she was around, like normal people on set. It's funny that they're in the media so much that it's hard to think of them as real people. Even for me, I'll step back and think, "No, I totally hung out with them." They're totally cool.

PLAYBOY: Was J.Lo jealous of Ben kissing you?

MORRISON: She wasn't around the days we had scenes where we were really close. We didn't have any intense love scenes or anything like that. It's more the cozy, kissy sort of stuff. After I dump him, he wins me back and then it becomes this crazy love triangle between him, Christina Applegate and me. That's when it gets complicated.

PLAYBOY: Does Ben wear a toupee?

MORRISON: No, he doesn't! I've actually talked to him about that. "What is the deal with the rumors about your hair?!" Ben is like, "I don't know. I'm only 30. I don't know why people think I have no hair."

PLAYBOY: Dancing, modeling, acting, skating. What's not on your resume?

MORRISON: I spent a summer doing "public relations" in the parking lot at Arlington Race Track. There was a big concert with seven stages going. It was 102 degrees outside—so muggy and hot—and I'm sweating like crazy. People are all in a bad mood, hot, totally drunk, wasted, asking how to get places. One car pulled up, and the guy in the back seat said, "Come here, I need to ask you something." He's like, "Jennifer, can I just shake your hand for doing a good job?" I went to shake his hand and he...licked...my...arm, from my wrist all the way up! I went, "Aaaaii!" It was so nasty.

The next day I was on the cleanup crew. The whole track was covered in trash. The things we found...people's underwear, a shower curtain, the strangest things. By the end of the day I was covered in filth. It looked like I had tan lines. But, I didn't have a tan line; I had a filth line.

PLAYBOY: What's in your stereo right now?

MORRISON: Simple Plan. Norah Jones. The Who is never far from my CD player, either. And the Grind soundtrack, of course.

PLAYBOY: Growing up in a northern suburb of Chicago, does that make you a Cubs fan or a Sox fan?

MORRISON: Cubs fan, man. Cubs all the way!

Photo: Getty