Alyson Hannigan

At 32, Buffy vet starring in sitcom and on big screen

New film Date Movie sends up romantic comedies

Alyson Hannigan has no problem being "a little selfish" when it comes to starting a family with husband Alexis Denisof.

"We are just really loving being married right now," the 32-year-old redhead gushes. "You have to be sure you are ready for that time when it is not just going to be the two of you anymore."

Besides, the happy couple - who met six years ago on the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and wed in October of 2003 - have figured out a way to have the best of both worlds, she says: "A lot of our friends have babies, so when we get the itch, we go to their house and change diapers."

Time permitting, of course. Hannigan, a standout in the teen comedy American Pie ("This one time at band camp ..."), currently stars on the top-rated TV sitcom How I Met Your Mother and is busy promoting her newest big screen release, Date Movie, opening next Friday.

"It’s just a fun, crazy kind of spoof comedy," she says. What else would you expect from the creative team behind the Scary Movie series?

Hannigan is at her comic best as Julia Jones, "a combination of every woman you have seen in a romantic comedy," as she describes the role.

The film lampoons Shallow Hal, My Best Friend’s Wedding and other romantic comedies.

Jennifer Coolidge and Fred Willard co-star in the Barbara Streisand and Dustin Hoffman roles from Meet the Fockers (Mr. And Mrs. Fonckyerdoder).

"I think this will be a good date movie," Hannigan boasts, "because it has enough of the gross-out humour for the guys to like, but it is also quite sweet and romantic."

Okay, perhaps not as romantic as the day Denisof, 40, decided to pop the question during a drive through the northern California wine country.

"We were going up to my mom’s house for Christmas," Hannigan remembers. "We had piled the dogs in the car. And we stopped to have a picnic. He said he was going to get his jacket out of the car and came back with a ring. My brain shut right off!"

It’s the kind of moment Hannigan thought she could only dream about having. An only child, she was born in Washington, D.C., and moved to Atlanta when her parents - truck driver Al and real estate agent Emilie - divorced in 1976. At the Northside School of the Performing Arts, Hannigan enjoyed soccer and the clarinet, but her passion was making people laugh.

"She’s got a little Lucille Ball thing going on," says Date Movie co-star Eddie Griffin. (He plays her dad in a send-up of My Big Fat Greek Wedding). "She has got meticulous comedy chops. It’s the little things she does that makes big laughter."

Hannigan relocated to Los Angeles in 1985. It was just three years later that she made her film debut as Dan Aykroyd’s daughter Jessie in My Stepmother Is an Alien. She later appeared as a guest star on Roseanne and Touched by An Angel before landing the role of gay witch Willow Rosenberg on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The 5-foot-6-inch redhead was "fuelling the threesome fantasies of Goth boys everywhere," according to an interview in Playboy magazine, in which Hannigan also discussed wanting to install a chain-link fence headboard on her bed.

"I was always a tomboy growing up ... and Willow was sort of a wallflower in the beginning," she says, pondering why she took part in Playboy’s R-rated article and subsequent photo shoots in various men’s magazines. She describes that period as a case of "I needed to express that part of me."

In Date Movie, she shows off a completely different side. A spoof of Gwyneth Paltrow’s character in Shallow Hal required the actress to appear for several scenes in an uncomfortable latex fat suit.

"It was very heavy and very stiff," she says. "It felt like I was wearing a mattress."

The normally 114-pound actress had to endure two hours of makeup each day for the scenes, plus another hour being fitted in the suit.

"My husband told me, `You’re still beautiful to me,’" Hannigan recalls. But that was apparently no big surprise. "He is incredibly romantic. Always making sweet little gestures, like breakfast in bed."

The couple occasionally enjoy a date movie together themselves. "My favourite is Say Anything," Hannigan says. "I am a sucker for John Cusack."

But their most romantic nights, she insists, consist of "staying home, cooking together, and enjoying a quiet evening alone at the house."

At least for now.