Mena Suvari Fan

When Mena Suvari first started auditioning for movies, she usually encountered scripts with a male lead and two main female parts: the pretty girl (the bland part) and the “character-y” girl, the one with the personality.

“They always wanted me to read for the pretty girl – but I always identified with the one with the personality,” says Suvari. “It didn’t make sense to me. Why couldn’t the girl who was pretty be interesting and have a personality, too?”

Now Suvari – so petite, pretty and sexy (and interesting) in films such as “American Pie” and “American Beauty,” shows that she’s got personality to burn in “Stuck,” opening Friday. She plays a young woman who controls her own destiny – including making horrific choices that come back to haunt her.

“I love to challenge myself,” says Suvari, 29. “I was hellbent on playing this part. But then, I have a twisted mind.”

In “Stuck,” Suvari plays Brandi, a nursing-home attendant on the management track at the facility where she works. But after an evening of clubbing, during which she ingests a variety of intoxicants, she hits a homeless man (Stephen Rea) with her car – and when he gets stuck in her windshield, she freaks out.

Rather than seeking help, she drives home and parks the car in her garage, leaving him there to die. When he doesn’t, she must figure out how to get rid of him without blowing her chance at a promised promotion at work.

The script is based on a true story from 2001, which happened in Fort Worth, Texas. In that case, a woman named Chante Jawan Mallard hit a homeless man, then parked the car in her garage (with the man still trapped in the windshield) and went into her house to have sex with her boyfriend.

Though the victim’s initial injuries weren’t life-threatening, he bled to death after a few hours in the garage, at which point Mallard disposed of the body. She was eventually convicted of murder and is serving a 50-year sentence.

Suvari, however, wasn’t aware that the film was based on an actual incident when she first read the screenplay. She just knew the script knocked her out.

“There were several times when my jaw hit the floor,” she says. “As soon as I finished it, I ran over to my agent’s office and said I had to do this. When I found out it was a true story, it had even more of an impact on me.”

The key to Brandi comes in a line when she returns to the garage the morning after the accident and finds the injured man, still alive and still caught in her windshield: “Why are you doing this to me?” she wails, as though the accident is part of a scheme to ruin her budding career. Suvari makes the moment both horrifying and hilarious.

“She’s the bravest actress I’ve ever worked with,” says “Stuck” director Stuart Gordon, who also helmed Suvari in 2005′s “Edmond,” in which she played a prostitute.

“She has this really dark side. A lot of actors are worried about not being sympathetic, but she gets bored playing cute, little, good characters. She likes something with twists and turns.”

For Suvari, it’s part of her effort to change perceptions about her as an actress. Born in Newport, R.I., she started out as a model who stumbled into acting.

“I wasn’t a child actor,” she says. “I never even watched the Oscars as a kid.”

Suvari quickly found roles in such TV shows as “ER” and Chicago Hope.” But she suddenly – and unexpectedly – found herself famous after playing canny teen nymphs in both the raunchy 1999 comedy “American Pie,” and “American Beauty,” that year’s Oscar winner for Best Picture in which she was Kevin Spacey’s object of desire.

“I remember I was in Minneapolis, shooting ‘Sugar & Spice,’ when ‘American Pie’ came out,” she says. “We were shooting a football game in front of 2,000 extras and I was supposed to be a cheerleader. And people started yelling, ‘Hey, choir chick! Hey, Heather!’ That was all very new to me. It was the strangest thing to deal with.”

So was the press attention that went with marrying cinematographer Robert Brinkmann, 18 years her senior, shortly after her 21st birthday in 2000 (they divorced in 2005).

“I see this separation between me and my personal life,” she says. “I was in the public eye but I never understood it. I never understood how to be a celebrity. I still don’t.”

Suvari has since worked at broadening her acting range, playing a skanky crystal-meth addict in 2002′s “Spun” and the prostitute in “Edmond.”

“I really appreciate that Stuart took a risk on me for ['Stuck'],” she says. “Playing a role like this is like food for the soul. I mean, sure, I could put on a bikini and walk around, but who wants to do that?

“A movie like this is an acknowledgement that I’ve got more to give than just being pretty.”

Interview by The New York Daily Post. Read more over at NYDailyNews.com