Paz de la Huerta: few have crossed the obstacle course from model to actress—but this multitasking ingenue might just have what it takes

The vagaries of youth, of being 21 and blessed with multifarious talents, can produce a great range of responses. If you're the inimitably charming Paz de la Huerta--model, actress, painter, writer, and muse--it might lead you to claim your main artistic influence as Velazquez's Las Meninas ("There's nothing like seeing it in the flesh at the Prado") or the director you'd most like to work with to be Pedro Almodovar ("He's the best").

Raised in Manhattan by her single mother, de la Huerta attended Brooklyn's prestigious St. Ann's School and spent her summers in the Spanish countryside with her father. She has been featured in runway shows donning the designs of Zac Posen and appeared in a handful of films, including 1999's The Cider House Rules, and has become a fixture in New York City fashion circles.

But this fall, de la Huerta is taking her acting career to another level. In director Melissa Painter's Steal Me, de la Huerta plays a farm girl who seduces both of the film's leading men. Painter, with whom de la Huerta is now collaborating on a script for another film, wrote the part for the actress. She also stars opposite Diane Lane and Donald Sutherland in next month's Fierce People, in which she plays another seductress, this time named Jilly, the maid to a wealthy New York family with whose houseguest, Finn (Anton Yelchin), she has an affair. "Playing this very disempowered character, serving these very bratty rich kids was really intense," says de la Huerta. "Fortunately, since Jilly's clumsy, I didn't have to do it well."

Daniel Torday is Syracuse-based writer.

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