Alexa Davalos

AGE: 25. PROVENANCE: Paris (though she's port American, on her mother's side). FROM ONE KIND OF ACTION TO ANOTHER: Best known till now as Yin Diesel's sidekick in The Chronicles of Riddick, Davalos is part of the ensemble cast (with, among others, Morgan Freeman, Selma Blair, Fred Word, and Greg Kinnear) of The Feast of Love, Robert Benton's new film, out this month, based on Charles Baxter's acclaimed 2001 novel about the multiple ways that people experience love and sex. YES. THIS ENTAILED HER BEING NAKED A LOT. "It was incredibly daunting, doing all that nudity," Davalos says. "It was something that made me CONTINUED on page 330

All Is VANITIES ... Nothing Is Fair_

VANITIES

Alexa Davalos CONTINUED from page 329 question whether or not I could pursue the film. Having been raised in Europe

with European film, that's something that never really made me blink an eye until I was in the U.S. It's raw. People sit together in bed naked. It happens, you know." FOR ROCKAND MOVIE-TRIVIA BUFFS: Davalos takes her surname from her maternal grandfather, actor Richard Davalos, who appeared alongside James Dean in East of Eden—and whose face, in a blurry still from that film, adorns the cover of the Smiths' final album, "Strangeways, Here We Come." AND DAVALOS HAS JUST LANDED HER FIRST MAJOR lead...Opposite Daniel Craig in Edward Zwick's Defiance, based on the true story of a star-crossed couple in Nazi-occupied Poland who helped create a forest sanctuary for Jewish refugees. Look for it next year. —K.RISTA SMITH

KRISTA SMITH