Joey Lauren Adams happily admits that she's better off shooting a quirky little indie film called Harvard Man, that starring opposite Adam Sandler in the more slight Big Daddy. Talking on the phone from her native Arkansas, where she is visiting family and friends for the July 4holiday, Adams admits "that doing a movie like that gives you the kind of visibility that studios need from you, so you do what you do." That visibility not only enables the 32-year old to accept a role in a film such as Harvard Man, but also to get her directorial debut off the ground. "I've written this small, intimate piece about a group of Southern women which I hope to finally shoot by next May", explains the actress. "Obviously had I not had the kind of career, it would have been far more difficult to get that project off the ground." As it turns out, Joey persuaded friend and fellow Southerner Billy Bob Thornton to lend his name to the film as executive producer, and so Adams, after years of trying, says she will "definitely get my film made sooner than later." As a first time writer/director, Adams has learned a lot, especially regarding the casting process, she laughingly recalls. "I remember when I was going out for casting sessions as an actress and directors might tell me I was wrong for a particular role. I'd always say: Give me a chance, I can do anything. Now that I'm casting my own movie, I get to see the other side and have had to tell people that such-and-such is not right. It's a weird role reversal."

In Harvard Man, which the actress shot in Toronto for writer/director James Toback, Adams plays a free-spirited and sexual Harvard philosophy professor who is having an affair with one of her students, played by Adrian Grenier. Adams has many an intimate, sex-filled moment with her young co-star in the film. "If you signed a contract for this movie, you are definitely having sex." After all, it's a Toback picture, she exclaims. And this was a role the actress lapped up. "My character's very honest with people that she's acting on the dark side," reports Adams. "She blackmails, she bribes. I'm not the nice girl in the movie."

Part of the film has Adams delivering university lectures from a podium. Joey admits shooting those scenes weren't easy. "It was a really good lecture on fear and dread. I got to stand on the podium in front of 150kids. It was nice." But some critics were none too happy with those moments. "One guy wrote that I looked as if I was reading from cue cards. But screw him; I knew what I was doing." Adams is not afraid of speaking her mind. While she doesn't approve of students sleeping with teachers "because teachers are supposed to be role models", Adams says that "when you're an actress you're expected to be some sort of role model. So does that mean that I can't go into a bar and get drunk? Screw 'em," she laughingly adds.

Joey, who divides her time between LA and Arkansas, is now devoting her energy to her script, which she sees "as an honest portrait of the South, which Hollywood continually fails to convey." The beautiful actress is proud of her southern heritage "while appreciating what LA has to offer."

Harvard Man opens in limited release this Friday, July 5.