Denise Richards: Drop Dead Delectable

https://lebeauleblog.com/2020/08/10/denise-richards-drop-dead-delectable/

After decades of Charlie-Sheen-related tabloid fodder and a couple of seasons on Bravo’s Real Housewives series, it’s easy to forget that two decades ago Denise Richards was a promising actress. This profile from the July 1999 issue of Movieline magazine came when Richards’ career was arguably at its peak. Following Starship Troopers and Wild Things, Richards was about to join the cinematic ranks of the Bond girls. But first, she costarred in a quirky mockumentary about the cutthroat world of pageantry.

Denise Richards may not yet have achieved the level of fame that makes for instant recognizability in households across the country. But to a growing corps of true believers, the mere mention of her name elicits passionate attention. Otherwise rational, sensible males go monosyllabic at the sight of her tawny skin, her lustrous hair, her pouty lips and her impossibly stacked physique. As for women, there are those who seem to grow claws and fangs at the sight of her, but lots of others applaud her implicit parody of the classic screen sex doll and would emulate her steamy moves if they thought they could get away with it.

What’s got so many so hot and bothered about Denise Richards? No one who’s actually seen her on-screen could possibly think the question needs asking. Hollywood at large picked up on her when she appeared as the Barbarella-worthy intergalactic pilot in director Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 film Starship Troopers. But it was really her follow-up film, Wild Things, that supremely un-guilty pleasure of pleasures, that put her over with the people who matter. A wickedly entertaining sex thriller, Wild Things featured Richards as a double-dealing high school Lolita who did double-love with Neve Campbell and Matt Dillon. A number of beauties in the movie business might have cut an impressive figure in a self-aware cheeseball offering like Wild Things, but Richards was so convincing, and so extreme in her presence in the film, you suspected she’d had a she-wolf for a mama.

Radiating rich-bitch, all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips insolence and a take-on-all-comers sensuality, she earned instant icon status with every Joe Sixpack and with a good number of less predictable types, too–like thinking men, including a number of movie critics, who were gratefully relieved of the burden of any coherent thought when Richards was on-screen.

Wild Things was moderately successful in theaters, but as a renter it was killer, and it turned Richards into one of the Internet’s most downloaded knockouts. Those of us who can’t get enough of her in movies will be heartened to know that she’s starring this month as a small-town barracuda in the black comedy Drop Dead Gorgeous. Later this year, she’ll fulfill a destiny most of her fan base would have voted her into if they’d been asked to render an opinion–she’ll be the newest Bond girl, Christmas Jones, in The World Is Not Enough.

When Richards walks in to meet me for breakfast at one of Santa Monica’s posh beachfront hotels, she’s so fresh-faced, ripe and elegantly groomed that a couple of waiters practically slam into each other trying not to stare at her. What’s more, the closer she gets the clearer it becomes that she’s every bit as spectacular-looking in real life as she is onscreen–and that none of this lush beauty is artificially induced. Even though she’s just off an arduous flight from London, where she’s been shooting the Bond film, she greets me with a chipper, soft-spoken, wholesomely unassuming politeness that wouldn’t be in the average young Hollywood actress’s repertoire of behaviors on her best day.

With all this encouragement, I can’t resist starting the interview with some go-for-it fun. Let’s get right to that persistent rumor about Richards–that she got so far so fast by being fast and loose in Hollywood. Any truth to the notion she may have gone on a few dates to achieve her current spotlight status?

Having just downed her first sip of coffee, Richards lets out a great, quintessential guy’s-girl laugh at this opening question. “I’ve never had anyone ask me that straight to my face,” she nearly chokes. Then she lets another giggle rip through the quiet dining room and tells me, “I’ve dated very few people since being here. But I can see how that happens to some girls, because I was very naive when I began to get into the business. Not so naive as to think that’s how you get ahead, though.” I remind Richards that when a beautiful young thing seems to emerge out of the ether and goes on to play the sort of nubile babes she has, suspicious minds are bound to work overtime. “In Hollywood,” she replies, “if you’re brought up to be a nice person, which I definitely was, and that’s what you are, people think: what does she want? I’ve had people say, ‘You’re so nice’ like they were suspicious of me. It’s sad and strange.”