Aparita

Mandy Moore’s not just your singing, acting girl next door

Wanna see a Popstar? Forget the TV show - the real deal’s here.

Mandy Moore was in town yesterday to promote her latest single, “Cry.” She’s a month shy of turning 18 and she’s already working on her fourth album. She’s had a show on MTV and is a spokesperson for Neutrogena.

Want Moore?

She starred in A Walk to Remember - a small but surprising box-office hit that was released late January and raked in $30 million (U.S.) in its first month.

In the love story like Love Story, Moore played Jamie Sullivan, a plain-Jane preacher’s daughter who is ostracized by the cool crowd. The Bible-carrying Sullivan reforms the local Lothario, Landon Carter, marries him and dies.

And that’s after she debuted in The Princess Diaries last year, in which Moore played the rude, popular arch-nemesis of the lead.

Sitting comfortably in a conference room at Sony Music Canada and munching on Jelly Spellies “for a sugar kick,” Moore looks more like the squeaky clean Jamie Sullivan.

“Want one?” she asks. A small cross dangles from her neck.

Much like her character, Moore is a “pretty spiritual person.” She was raised a Catholic and has a strong relationship with God, she says. So, yes, she could relate in many ways to the character she plays in the movie. Of course, an outfit more worthy of a teen idol - a low-cut aquamarine top and jeans - has replaced the dowdy duds of Jamie Sullivan.

But don’t compare Moore to the other singing, acting starlet, Britney Spears.

“Well, I am a brunette now. So that’s different, right?” Moore flashes a beatific smile.

“If you have blonde hair, you’re a woman and you sing pop music, for some people that means you have to be like the person before you. But I am a different person.”

She’s been called the anti-Britney, but Moore says she’s never been anti-anything.

“It’s not to say that I am better. No offence to Britney, but I am not her.”

The brunette look was a proviso for playing Jamie Sullivan, but Moore has retained it, even sporting it in the video for “Cry.”

“(’Cry’) represents me and my music and the direction that I want to go into,” she says.

Moore says she wants to move away from the synthesized sound and choreographed moves that have come to represent modern-day pop, instead preferring the more organic element of live guitar, bass and drums.

But eventually she wants to get into Broadway.

“Broadway is my main goal,” Moore gushes. “One summer I will just take off and do a show.”

After all, she’s wanted to be a performer since she was six years old. She was all of 15 when her debut album So Real, which included the hit single “Candy,” went platinum three months after release.
Fame has its price.

There are “no football games, or sleepovers, or shopping in malls with friends.”

But, “at the risk of sounding cheesy,” Moore says she feels lucky to have had the opportunity to roam the world and learn life first-hand, not through textbooks.

Moore credits her parents and friends with helping her survive the highs and lows of the industry.
“At the end of a bad day, you can go back to them and it’ll be okay. There will still be tomorrow.”