Mandy Moore joins the ranks of the likes of Britney Spears as being one of the hottest teen stars around and, like Britney, has her heart set on movies. She was a scene-stealing bad girl in Princess Diaries, and now, in the charming A Walk to Remember, Moore stars as an awkward, protected innocent who finds herself falling for the wild boy. Amanda (Mandy) Leigh Moore was born April 10, 1984 in Nashua, New Hampshire, but two months later moved with her family to Orlando, Florida. Ever since she was six, Mandy knew she wanted to sing, and at age nine she sang the National Anthem for sports teams in her home town. She was discovered working in a recording studio, singing a theme song to a TV show, when a producer there recognized her talent, and shortly thereafter she had a record deal with Sony. Her debut single "Candy" was a hit and it managed to climb the charts until early January, when she released her second single "Walk Me Home". Mandy's debut album, So Real, reached platinum status in just three months. She went on tour with both N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys. Moore divides her time between acting and music and, as she revealed to Paul Fischer, she loves it all and remains unconcerned with the competition...

Paul Fischer: So Mandy, was this just a natural transition for you to make, from music to acting?

Mandy Moore: To me it was not something I was looking for. I was not looking for a lead role. I have a supporting role in Princess Diaries and I was thinking I was figuring that I would continue that run for a little bit and build my confidence and stuff, but I fell in love with the book (so) that when I read the script there was no way that I couldn't be involved with it.

PF: Do you have an affinity with this character (in A Walk to Remember)?

MM: There are similarities between us, but there are a lot of differences. There is a lot that I needed to learn from Jamie by playing Jamie and that was probably my biggest motivation for wanting to do this.

PF: Major differences such as?

MM: The confidence that she has and the fact that she didn't let anything get to her. You know the fact that she was stereotyped in school and people treat her not the best, the fact that she did not let people's comment affect their impression of her or try to get to her and make her change herself. It is the type of confidence I haven't found yet in my life at seventeen, and I think a lot of seventeen year-olds haven't, and that is something that I wanted to learn by trying to play her.

PF: Now, do you have to make a conscious effort, or do you feel yourself making a conscious effort to separate yourself from Britney, Jessica and all of those girls?

MM: I don't think it is a conscious effort, I just think it is an ongoing effort to remain yourself. Because there are all the pressures in the industry and so many people trying to tell you how to dress, and wear your hair and this and that and people constantly throwing their opinions at you. Sometimes you can have a weak moment and listen and end up doing the wrong thing and end up doing something that is completely not yourself.

PF: What do you think separates you from them? What can you do that they don't? What do you offer?

MM:I don't know if there is something that I can do that they can't, maybe it is the fact that I am seventeen that makes a difference in what we're singing about, who we are as people and where we are in our lives, how we dress and what we look like. I mean we are all different people. Bottom line. I mean no one in this world is the same just because we all have the same pop music. It just is a stupid way to consider people to be a common threat, it is a stupid thing to consider that all of us is the same is not quite possible for me to have my own personality.

PF: Is there a degree of healthy competition amongst you?

MM: I think in the music industry you are in competition with everyone. I mean the main goal is to have as many people around the world hear your music, so therefore you're in competition with every single artist that releases material.

PF: You write your own stuff right? I mean you write as well as perform.

MM: Yes, I have been writing my own music.

PF: Which is one of the main differences presumably between you and a lot of your peers.

MM: Well, I think that everyone is getting into writing their own music, but yes, on the past record I wrote a couple of songs and (I'll write) more in the future too.

PF: Is the way people approach you as a blonde different as to how they approach you as a brunette?

MM: Yes. I felt honestly, and I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing, but I feel a lot of people kind of speak over me now that I am a brunette. For some reason I feel more confident. I feel like, I, myself, speak out a little bit more. Um, as a brunette I feel more like myself. I feel a lot more comfortable. As a blonde, I don't know, I mean, it wasn't like a conscious thing, like, oh, this is how I'm known, this is just the image for the typical girl of pop genre music to have this blonde hair. I loved being a blonde, but you know, it's just on a whim, I decided to color my hair. I don't know.

PF: Does being a singer lend itself to acting more?

MM: Yes and no. I think if you're lucky enough to have any bit of success in this industry, windows are going to open, you know, if you're lucky enough to have that success. Some people take advantage of it. I don't know, it's something that I have in my heart. I mean, who wouldn't want to be in a movie. The acting thing is something that I've had in my heart since I've started doing musical theatre when I was like ten, so to have the opportunity now at seventeen, to read scripts, have meetings with directors and producers and possible co-stars and stuff, is amazing to me and something beyond my wildest dreams.

PF: What do you think makes some singers unsuccessful at acting?

MM: Maybe the fact that the love of acting isn't there. I mean, it's just like singing, in that if you really don't have a passion for the music, you're going to crumble. There's too much other stuff involved, there's too much hard work. There's things that you really don't take into consideration, just thinking, oh, I want to be, a musician or an actress. There are so many other elements that go into it that, I don't know, people don't really realize sometimes all that's involved.

PF: In this movie, you do both. Did you play an integral role in selecting the music for this?

MM: No, not really. I mean, it was always appropriate. Jamie was in the church choir and in the school play, that was something that was already written in the script that she sang and that's the moment that Landon really starts to fall in love with her.

PF: She's a very religious character. How religious are you?

MM: I don't know, I think that's kind of like a personal question, I mean, I consider myself to be very religious and everything. Also, doing this film didn't make me question my faith but only made me more strengthen my faith in portraying Jamie.

PF: How was it playing someone involved in the kind of intense relationship we all hope for?

MM: You know, I'm seventeen and I'm in my first relationship, like first real relationship, and it was weird to compare because I think they're at different levels and I felt so far, at least in Jamie's situation and what she was going through, kind of what was going on in her head. I don't think I could be that strong, I don't think I could be as brave as she was. There's a lot of elements that go into falling in love and what the whole particular situation is all about. It was hard to get there sometimes in some of the more difficult scenes.

PF: Is it hard to balance that first relationship with the very busy career that you obviously have?

MM: Yes and no. I mean, I think any girl is going to make time for a relationship if they really want it to happen, you know what I mean, so it's all part of being a teenager. If you want it to happen, you're going to make it happen.

PF: What is it about Orlando, Florida, that's producing all these young pop stars?

MM: People have said there's something in the orange juice. You know what; I'm just this random girl who happened to live in Orlando. I just lived in Orlando. I mean, I grew up there, did all my training there, like going to musical theatre camps and doing community theatre around town and stuff like that. I have no idea.

PF: You look so gorgeous yet not so in the movie at all. Was that weird?

MM: I loved it. It's so weird, too, because I've been reading so many responses on the Internet. People are like, god, Mandy's ugly in this move and I'm like, cool, I love it. You know what, because I got to come to set every morning and for two and half months, I could have the biggest bags under my eyes and they'd still accentuate the under-eye circles. They treated my face pale. They cut my hair and cut bangs and just did all of this stuff to me and I loved it. I got to wear baggy clothes with tags and like, mismatched socks. You would think that doing a movie and the glamour of Hollywood, of walking out of the trailer is like, feeling beautiful, and I just felt okay. I didn't feel ugly. I don't think Jamie was supposed to be ugly. She was just not too concerned, everything that most teenagers are.

PF: Why were you enjoying it? What did you think made it so special?

MM: Because I got to relax. I didn't feel like I had, I wasn't supposed to be the goddess, the star of the movie, it was just kind of fun playing the more plain Jane.

PF: What are you looking for at the moment more, are you developing your music career at the moment? Are you looking for scripts?

MM: Looking at scripts. I want to start recording, this music is my life. I've been writing a lot, so I want to start recording, doing some demos maybe next month. I'd like to do an independent film. I'd love to honestly, do anything, as long as it's a good script, something that I felt as passionately about as I did with Walk.

PF: How does your album reflect who you were when you recorded that?

MM: I still feel like that album was very much me. I really do. I had a great time making it, but I'm ready to work on some other stuff, too. I'm ready to show people what I'm all about. I may not be the most commercially successful thing out there, and that only provokes me more to make music that I'm even more passionate about. I'm really so proud of this movie and so proud of that album. I just finished the album right before I started filming the movie and it came out right after I was done filming the movie, so it's still very much in my heart.

PF: Do you want to continue to do wholesome films like this or are you ready to discover another direction and just be a wild woman?

MM: I guess that's sort of what acting is, playing someone different from yourself, but I like this movie because I think it is a movie that's very needed right now. It's the antithesis to every other teen film, in my opinion, that's out there because it offers a positive story, a positive reflection of what high school is like, although you can still see the realistic aspects of peer pressure and you know, falling in love and stuff like that. But, like I said, I want to do something, whether it's a comedy or an action film or an epic, something that I feel really strongly about. People that I'm going to work with script everything.

PF: Today's teenagers tend to be very cynical and 'cool' and they find it very hard to be sentimental. Is it hard to persuade teenagers to let loose and cry?

MM: That's a very good question. I don't know. I don't know if it's going to be hard to get people in there. I hope not. I hope that people are really interested in the movie and are looking for something different because I think, sometimes, a lot of movies out there cater to us and consider us stupid. They spell everything out for us, you know. It's exactly different in this film but it just offers them, offers me, too, something different, you know. There hasn't really been a movie like this in theatres in a really long time.

[Unintelligible]

MM: I'm still working on it. I mean, we just wrapped the movie a couple of months ago, but, um, I'm a senior in high school so as soon as I get out of high school, I'm going to start college, like do correspondence like I do in high school right now and I'll work on the French. I'm going to work on it. I love it. It's fulfilling, and the traveling around thing, I guess it still depends on how people perceive the music.

PF: What message would you most like teenage girls to get from this movie because it covers a lot of basics: faith, sex, falling in love?

MM: I think guys, too. A lot of my friends that have read the book, guy friends, that have read the book and saw the movie, are like, "Mandy, I want to find my Jamie." It's a healthy thing to say you have to tell me that there's a Jamie out there, so I think that guys kind of walk out maybe thinking that this faith in general, doesn't have to be a faith in God or faith in any organized religion, just like I said, in mankind, in each other, in relationships, everything that's really special to you. I want people to walk out believing that there's hope.

PF: And next for you is another album?

MM: Another album and I'm looking at movie, films and stuff.

PF: Title of the album?

MM: That's out now is Mandy Moore.

PF: No, the next one.

MM: I have no idea. I haven't even started recording it.

A Walk to Remember opens nationwide on Friday, January 25, 2002