Sunny Days

'I believe in fantasy and wishing for things you want. If you wish for something often enough, and you work hard enough, you will be rewarded," says Sunny Chae, the effervescent 27-year-old actress who has wished her way into the upcoming movies of Woody Allen and Robert Redford. Chae's career took off several years ago, when she landed a job in the photo department of the magazine of her dreams, Vanity Fair. Once ensconced she set her sights on meeting her idol, the great photographer Helmut Newton. "If Genghis Khan had a daughter, she would look like you," Newton said of Chae (who is listed on the V.F. masthead as SunHee C. Grinnell); the next day he asked her to pose for his "Big Nudes" series, which is currently being exhibited at the Hasselblad Center in Goteborg, Sweden. It was another one of Sunny's idols, Woody Allen, who recently gave the actress her first film break. In Deconstructing Harry, which opens in December, she plays the part of Lily Chang, a call girl who appears in actor Tobey Maguire's fantasies. And in this May's The Horse Whisperer (directed by Robert Redford), Chae is cast in the role of an art director of a fictitious magazine not unlike Vanity Fair. Indeed, she might once have dreamed of being an art director, but not now that she's looking toward Hollywood. "I've always been sunny," says Chae, reflecting on her stage name. "People always say, 'You are the happiest person I know.'" With good fortune like hers, is it any wonder?

ELISSA SCHAPPELL