Buffy The Vampire Slayer

SMART MOVE: BEAUTY PLAYS THE BRAIN

Hugh Hart

Sunday, March 21, 2004

Los Angeles — Growing up in Redwood City, Linda Cardellini was glued to the set whenever the cartoon series "Scooby Doo" came on. The future actress was particularly fascinated with Velma, the brainy member of the Coolsville crime- solving gang known as Mystery Inc.

Jinkies! Now Cardellini finds herself playing Velma Dinkley in the "Scooby-Doo" sequel "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed," which provides the bespectacled sleuth with a romantic story line — she develops a crush on a cute museum curator (Seth Greene). Self-conscious for the first time about her sex appeal, Velma gets a makeover from best friend, Daphne (Sarah Michelle Gellar), but winds up "squeaking" in her skintight red leather jumpsuit and quickly reverts to the comfort of her trademark turtleneck sweater.

"I remember wondering if Velma was a boy or a girl, but the way I could tell was that Velma always had, uh ... um ... breasts," Cardellini says of the somewhat androgynous cartoon character. "So in my mind, Velma was always voluptuous, but she hid it. And now, I think it’s pretty funny when she gets into this outfit and suddenly has these curves that she usually hides under her sweater."

The romantic interlude in "Scooby-Doo 2" provides another dimension for a character who’s always had more on the ball than your average cartoon sidekick. "It would have been easy to play Velma as just your typical nerd," Cardellini says. "That wouldn’t be fun for me, and that wasn’t what I remembered about her. Besides the turtleneck and the glasses, she had that voice!"

Cardellini shares her character’s fondness for articulating hyper-crisp "R’s," but looks so unlike Velma that she’s been able to stand right next to people looking at "Scooby-Doo" movie posters without being noticed. Currently sporting long blond hair, Cardellini, 28, is outfitted today in a diaphanous black silk blouse, blue jeans and Charles David high heels and a diamond ring, given to her by her boyfriend, actor (and former "Freaks and Geeks" co-star) Jason Segal.

But back in 2001, Cardellini presented herself for the Velma audition completely in character. She even did intensive homework, mimicking the voice by culling Velma sound bites from the Internet. "Linda was the only actress who came in dressed like Velma," says producer Richard Suckle. "She wore the sweater and glasses and even captured the little things, like pointing her finger up. We met loads of people over the next month or two, and nobody gave us that feeling."

When Cardellini was 10, one of her teachers at St. Pius School in Redwood City cast her as old lady Alma in a community theater production of "The Music Man."

"I wore a wig, a hat and stuffed my bra," Cardellini says. "I really hammed it up and sang ’Pick a Little, Talk a Little’ in this huge auditorium at Sequoia High. That was it. I totally fell in love with acting."

From the fifth grade on, Cardellini played soccer and hung out after school at Barone’s Restaurant in Menlo Park, but mainly she focused on acting. "I was serious when I was little ... maybe too serious. My parents aren’t into theater at all, and I would always be doing something very dramatic," she says.

Cardellini appeared in the school production of "Rebel Without a Cause" during her freshman year at Mountain View’s St. Francis High School. "I didn’t have any lines, but I remember trying to gasp the loudest when the car went off the cliff so people would notice I was onstage."

Cardellini became a star performer at St. Francis, appearing in at least three shows each school year. After taking classes one summer at the American Conservatory Theater and working at the Fortier-Bonneau Casting agency, she graduated from high school in 1993 and moved to Los Angeles, where she studied theater at Loyola Marymount University.

In 1999 she landed her breakthrough role, playing conflicted high school sophomore Lindsay Weir (another sort of nerd goddess — she was a "mathlete") in the short-lived NBC series "Freaks and Geeks."

"That’s really the thing that people started to notice me in," she says. "The characters were underdogs and they didn’t often win. It was this bittersweet, honest portrayal that happened to be funny, heartwarming and devastating."

But "Freaks and Geeks" was canceled after its first season. Diehard fans lobbied obsessively for a "Freaks and Geeks" DVD (it will be released as a six-DVD set on April 6).

After filming "Scooby-Doo 2" last summer, Cardellini was invited to join the cast of "ER," a show she had auditioned for many times before."

"I immediately fell in love with the idea of playing this struggling single mother who cared more about her kid than anything else," says Cardellini, who considers her "ER" character, Samantha Taggart, to be her first truly adult role. "For the first time, I’m playing a full-fledged woman who’s passionate, impulsive, who doesn’t always do the right thing and who gets involved in this love relationship. I have a lot of friends who really relate to her."

Many of those friends still live in the Bay Area, and Cardellini plans a reunion for the red carpet premiere of her new film this weekend when 17 relatives and old pals travel down to Los Angeles for the "Scooby-Doo 2" premiere.

Cardellini says the classmates who remember her one-line appearance in the community theater production of "Bye Bye Birdie" are thrilled to see her starring in hit movies and holding her own opposite heartthrob Goran Visnjic in TV’s most popular dramatic series.

"As much as they can’t believe it, I can’t believe it," Cardellini marvels. "It’s so exciting that I was able to turn what I wanted to do as a kid, doing theater in Redwood City, into my job." •

SCOOBY-DOO 2: MONSTERS UNLEASHED (PG) opens Friday in Bay Area theaters.