It took only a bit of prying - just a plate of fries and a salad - before actress Brittany Murphy began confessing her deepest, darkest secret. "I have a tendancy," she says slowly, almost hesitating, "to be a little bit excessive. Like the past couple of days, I've been obsessed with hot sauce. I actually contemplated carrying it around with me in my backpack".

"But that's not exactly bad," she grins. "It makes you who you are. It's part of your idiosyncrasies."

Okay, so it's not an admission of murder, an early career in porno, or a love of the Backstreet Boys. But then Brittany - who played the hapless Tai in Clueless, and will soon be seen in Dairy Queens - is not exactly evil incarnate. Actually, she's quite sweet. Almost too sweet. Jennifer Love Hewitt sweet. When she wishes you nice day - which she does every time you say goodbye - she doesn't just sound like she means it, but almost as if she's insisting. The same could be said about her giggling, which she does more frequently than a school girl half her age (Brittany's 21). "I think it's a defense mechanism. I got my finger shut in the door the other day," she says, holding it out, "and I started laughing. And I got a spinal tap last New Year's Eve, and I'm sitting there in the fetal position, my mom's at the other end of the ER, and I'm laughing. It's terrible. But everyone has their own little thing."

She giggles so much, in fact, one can't help but wonder if that's just the way she is, or if a certain smokable leaf's involved. "I'm not a regular pothead," she says. "I've smoked, but not a lot. Actually, I'm really scary on pot. I get almost mean in this sarcastic manner."

You'd figure Brittany's compulsive giggling might also be a problem with guys. Add to that the aforementioned sweetness, a gentle smile, and refreshing innocence, and she seem's more like a kid sister than a sex object. But Brittany has rarely been on the receiving end of the dreaded "I just want to be friends." "I've had that happen before," she says "but it's normally the opposite, to a really bad extent." Which doesn't bug her much; she doesn't mind being the girl you'd give a reassuring hug, as opposed to the girl you'd cover in whipped cream. "Well, if he's the the type of person who would give you a reassuring hug," she says with a sly grin, "then you could trust him enough to tie you to a bed and put whipped cream on you."

Luckily for her, excessive giggling hasn't caused any problems with casting directors. Though she's taken parts that seemed written just for her - including the voice of LuAnne on King of the Hill - she's also had some serious dramatic gigs. She recently played a woman torn between her fiancé and her guardian in a Broadway production of Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge (a part she said was "draining"), and she just finished filming the Holocaust film Devils Arithmetic.

Brittany gets serious when she discusses that movie, her voice lowering to an almost mournful tone. She's not jewish, she say's, "Though I feel like I'm an honorary Jew after this movie. I'll never get a tattoo, ever, after having [the marking of a concentration camp] on my arms for a month. I always contemplated getting a little red heart on the tip of my left toe, but now I'll never get one."

Not that she has the time, anyway. Though she got a small break after finishing Devils Arithmetic, she was soon off to the next job, a much-coveted role in the upcoming movie Girl, Interrupted. It's a lot of work for someone who just reached drinking age, but it's what Brittany's wanted since she was a kid. "As long as I can remember," she say, leaning forward, as if she's about to reveal another secret, "I've wanted to be a performer. I was two-and-a-half, three years old, and I wanted to be in the Jordache jeans commercial. Isn't that weird? I just don't have the desire to do anything else."

By Paul Semel, Bikini Magazine March 1999

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Please note: I am not Brittany Murphy, I just run this fan page.