As an aspiring actress and filmmaker, Amanda Winklevoss was beautiful, smart, athletic, ambitious and talented.
She was also “very curious,” a friend said. And that curiosity may have led to the 23-year- old’s tragic death on the set of the movie “Analyze That” on a rainy night in Chelsea 10 days ago.
Winklevoss’ pals say Amanda was in the grip of curiosity when she asked them to wait in a car around midnight June 14 as she ignored a torrential downpour and darted up a nearby street to the door of a camera truck on the “Analyze That” set.
She had hoped, said one source, to introduce herself to filmmakers working on the Robert De Niro-Billy Crystal film.
“That’s the kind of thing she would do – just go up, introduce herself, start talking. She wasn’t shy; she loved filmmaking, and she’d talk to anyone she could. And people would always talk to her – she was beautiful and engaging,” another friend told The Post.
But as Winklevoss stood on the wet ramp leading to the camera truck – after reportedly being ordered out of the truck by crew members – she suddenly fell, banged her head and slumped unconscious on the ground, witnesses said.
Sources say a teamster from the set drove to St. Vincents Hospital on Seventh Avenue in the Village, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.
Results from Winklevoss’ autopsy “are inconclusive, and final results aren’t expected for two weeks,” city medical examiner spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said Thursday.
Friends believe Winklevoss could have been electrocuted.
“It was pouring rain, and she grabbed up for what looked like a cable wire as she fell,” one source said.
Her obituary, published in The New York Times last weekend, said she died from injuries sustained in the fall.
In the days following her death, Winklevoss’ friends vehemently slammed police reports, provided last week by a source close to the investigation of the incident, that she “had the look of a cocaine- or alcohol-related overdose.”
“It was just a horrible, freak accident; a real tragedy,” said one pal.
Some friends also contend that “Analyze That” crew members showed little interest in helping Winklevoss after she fell.
However, a source on the movie set insisted a production-crew medic tried to revive her, went to the hospital and was still there when Winklevoss’ parents arrived at St. Vincents to speak with doctors and police.
Representatives of the film’s co-producers, Warner Bros. and Tribeca Films, have offered condolences to the Winklevoss family and are cooperating with the ongoing investigation.
Crystal was not on the set that night and De Niro was three blocks away filming a scene. They were unaware of the accident until much later, said a crew source.
Winklevoss’ grieving mother, Carol, and father, Howard – founder of Winklevoss LLC, a prominent actuarial software firm – declined to comment.
Raised in leafy Greenwich, Conn., after moving from Palo Alto, Calif., in 1985, Winklevoss was slated to graduate in 2001 from Williams College in Massachusetts, where she was a standout women’s squash player. But before getting her diploma, she left Williams for Georgetown University, where she planned to begin her final year of college in the fall.
The night she died, Winklevoss had come to Manhattan for dinner with friends, a source said. She also reportedly spent time that evening with infamous 1970s night-life queen Carmen D’Allesio. D’Allesio didn’t return repeated calls, but pals insist Winklevoss wasn’t part of any New York jet-set crowd.
“She wasn’t a club-hopper, she didn’t hang out with the Nicky Hiltons of the world,” said a source. “She had her friends, she was very popular, but she spent a lot of time with her family in Quogue – she loved the beach.”
The Winklevosses have a summer home in Quogue, L.I., where Amanda participated in the local junior theater troupe.
There was a memorial service for Winklevoss in Greenwich on Tuesday. She was buried in Quogue the next day.
“Amanda was someone who had goals and went after what she wanted,” said a woman who knew her at Williams.
Another source said Winklevoss had just reached one of her goals in the days before striding up that movie-truck ramp: She had finished and sold a documentary related to the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks.
Additional reporting by Chris Wilson