As anyone knows who's seen celebrities up close, Hollywood is a land of little people. At nearly 5-foot-11, Leelee Sobieski is a beautiful freak in that place, and doesn't shy away from that fact.

Case in point, on the day of our interview during the Toronto International Film Fest, she shows up wearing heels — the better to look this 6-footer in the eye.

"I used to take Flamenco dancing when I was a little girl, so I'm comfortable in heels. I don't think a lot about height," she says.

And anyway, these pumps don't hold a candle to the stilettos she got to wear in Walk All Over Me, the goofy, S&M-themed Canadian caper movie in which she plays a smalltown prairie girl who moves to Vancouver to join her sister (Tricia Helfer) in the glamourous life of a dominatrix.

Put that assignment — with location shoots in Winnipeg and Vancouver — on the list of things she's done that make perfect sense to her, but no doubt drives agents and managers crazy. These include quitting acting to attend Brown University and taking a year off to "play housewife" to a now ex-boyfriend.

"That was a crazy experience, but I'm so happy I did that because it's important to spend time away from this business so that you're not empty onscreen."

Now, as if in a career mood-swing, Leelee Sobieski is working again … and working, and working, seemingly on whatever weird thing lands on her desk. "It's a nice movie," she says of Walk All Over Me. "I had no real reason to say yes to it, but Robert (Cuffley, the B.C. writer/director) really wanted me, like he just picked me. Sometimes in L.A., you get things sent to you and the feeling is they would pick you or any of 10 other people, and the first one that says yes gets the part."

"But I couldn't figure it out, because I'm nothing like Alberta (the girl she plays in the movie). This girl is from a small town and I was born in New York City, my dad's French and I've had a completely different upbringing. Then I realized, 'Hey, I'm an actress!' The script was charming and fresh and went in all these directions. I just had to eliminate every single bit of experience-based knowledge that I had in my life to become this naive troublemaker."

Walk All Over Me was "a great experience, with a great team, the kind of experience that makes me love my job. It was also part of a string of movies that required her to spend most of seven consecutive months in Vancouver. One of those films, The Wicker Man, received five "worst picture/actor" Razzie Award nominations, and another, In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (due to be released next month), was by Uwe Boll, reputedly the world's worst director. Another Vancouver job, with a slightly better pedigree, was the Al Pacino crime thriller

88 Minutes, also due out next year.

"Sometimes you love this job so much, and sometimes you have an experience that's just okay," Sobieski says. "But you have this job that so many people would like to have and it's their dream, and you get to travel and have fun and learn and act, it's amazing. It comes with some negative things, but you turn them into positives."

Most recently, Sobieski was in Bulgaria, shooting the action-thriller Night Train with Danny Glover and Steve Zahn.

"I was staying in this weird little Mafia town outside Sofia, so I didn't see much of it. I just saw men with guns and stuff.

"The movie's a suspense kind of action-y thing with humour, dark and twisted. And I play a very mysterious character, the most mysterious character ever!" she enthuses.

"It's very cool!"

Rating: 1

If Leelee was trying to do a Victoria Beckham, she failed miserably. This is not how you wear all black Leelee. All black shouldn't be synonymous to scary. I think she should make Posh her BFF.

[Source]