“There are days when I put on a dress and think, ‘You look cute in this,’ and then there are days I think I look like E.T.”Jennifer Love Hewitt
THERE are performers who coast on their good looks and connections – and then there are those like Jennifer Love Hewitt, who take chances.
Hewitt, 23, has always played risk with her career, bouncing from music to TV to movies and now back to music.
Her latest effort, “Bare Naked,” for which she received a whopping $4 million advance from Jive Records, is a good, not great album that has received mixed to harsh reviews.
“I’m leaving myself open to be smashed,” she admitted to The Post, by telephone from her home in Southern California. “I sort of do that a lot in my career.”
Hewitt first found stardom in her kewpie doll role on the hit Fox series “Party of Five,” then graduated to film, screaming her way through the teen horror flick “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
She’s now onscreen opposite martial arts superstar Jackie Chan in “The Tuxedo” – but, she says, she’d rather be singing. “Acting is hard, music is what comes to me easily.”
Post: There are a lot of people who are going to say you’re just a pretty face stepping up to the mike. On “Bare Naked,” did you have involvement in the music beyond singing?
Hewitt: A lot of the words and music are mine, but I’d never take all the credit. This was a collaborative effort.
Post: It will surprise some of your TV and movie fans to learn that this is actually your fourth album.
Hewitt: I never planned on acting as a career. I really have to work at it. Acting is where I have the least comfort level. When I’m singing, I feel like all I have to do is . . . do it. I know the place that music connects with my spirit – that’s what makes it easy.
Post: How was this album different from your others?
Hewitt: The studio. I told my producer [Meredith Brooks] how I hate being in a studio.
Post: Why?
Hewitt: Studios are fishbowls. People wander in and out when you’re recording, just to check out your session. I’d find I’d be belting out something with my eyes closed, and when I’d open my eyes, there would be six guys eating jelly donuts, scratching their bellies, staring at me.
Post: That sounds kind of distracting. Did you close your sessions?
Hewitt: No, Meredith actually built a studio for me in her house. So if I wanted to come over and record in my pajamas, I could. It was just her and me recording, relaxing. It was a great experience to be creative in.
Post: The title track of the album is “Bare Naked.” It’s about getting caught in public in your birthday suit. Are you actually afraid of that?
Hewitt: It’s my worst nightmare. I’m terrified that it’s going to happen to me one day. It’s a weird dream I have, but I have it all the time. I guess it’s about vulnerability. I also have dreams that I’m fighting people. Those happen when I get stressed out.
Post: Do you win the fights?
Hewitt: Always. I might be a bloody mess, but I won’t wake up until I do.
Post: On the last song, “Me and Bobby McGee,” it sounds like you have 20 people in the room with you partying.
Hewitt: That’s a very important song to me. Janis Joplin’s version was one of the greatest inspirations for me musically. It’s also one of my brother’s favorite songs. Whenever we’d have a family party, he or my mother would ask me to sing it. I wanted to do it the way I do it at parties – just me and my friend, Flash [Chris Canute], playing the bongos.
Post: Unlike all the other tunes, it has no polish – it’s very raw.
Hewitt: We just threw it down to see what would happen. I had a little bit of a sore throat, but I thought we had to do it in one take – if it wasn’t perfect, that was OK, that’s the way it would have been if I sang it at a party in my living room.
Post: But perfection and beauty must matter to you as an actress.
Hewitt: I don’t know about all this beauty stuff. It’s hard for me to talk about because I don’t feel I’m beautiful.
Post: You realize other people do.
Hewitt: I’m completely honored by that, but I’m like any girl. There are days when I put on a dress and think, “You look cute in this” and then there are days I think I look like E.T. I’ll tell you one thing for sure, being a rock singer is more comfortable than being a movie star.
Post: Why is that?
Hewitt: As a singer I don’t have to put on a lot of make-up, wear corsets and all that other stuff. For the past four months, I’ve been working on this record and I’ve only worn jeans and T-shirts. If I do a radio show I can go with my hair in a ponytail. The DJs don’t care what I look like – they want to hear if I could sing.