Emilie De Ravin "Lost" in the Desert

The beautiful blonde with the light blue eyes first grabbed our attention as an alien in the "Roswell" TV series a few years ago. Now Emilie De Ravin, a pretty product of Australia, plays Claire on the hit show "Lost". During her break from that series, Emilie flew from tropical Hawaii to the arid Morocco desert to play a tortured young vacationer in the big screen re-make of the Wes Craven horrorfest The Hills Have Eyes.

Looking casual in dark blue crepe blouse, white cardigan, jeans and slides, the actress joined us in Beverly Hills to chat about the grueling shoot in the desert, playing Brenda, a high school senior who had way rather be in Cancun with her best buds that vacationing in a Winnebago with a family destined to be attacked by cannibals!

Although none of the "Lost" cast ever reveals the future of their characters, we did get a little info on the series as well as what it's like to eat lunch with the mutant cannibal who was just attacking you in "Hills"!

It was climate and culture shock for the young star who told us about life on set, bonding with her castmates and her next projects.

TeenHollywood: Were the mutant men gentle with you? The actors playing mutant attackers we mean.

Emilie: [laughs] They were actually really, really nice people. Michael [Bailey Smith] and Robert [Joy] were so sweet. I mean, they still are. They're really nice so it was kind of weird because they're so mean and so disturbing. I mean , Michael's like three times my size so if he squeezes your wrist too hard, he almost broke my fingers.

TeenHollywood: Well, in this one, it's your sister who has a baby, not you like Claire on "Lost". Were you glad you weren't the one with the baby in this one?

Emilie: Oh, she was adorable. That baby, I wanted to bring her back to Hawaii and use her as my baby. She was so good and she was so cute. She was working like all day. She was there from Malta though so she was used to the heat.

TeenHollywood: What was it like going from Hawaii to Morocco?

Emilie: A little less comfortable in the desert. I'm not used to the desert. I hadn't really spent that much time there until then. So you have to acclimatize and adapt to the heat which the first few days I thought, 'I can't do this. It's so insanely hot.' The middle of summer in the middle of the desert over there, it was sweltering hot. But you get used to it. You kind of don't think about it after a while. I'm glad that happened.

TeenHollywood: How often do you get back to Australia and what do you miss most?

Emilie: My family. I'm really close with my family and they're all there, so I miss them a lot. You know, it'll always be home home. I mean, I've made LA my home as well but it's just the vibe there. I grew up in Melbourne, sort of a very cosmopolitan city, very easy to live in. Nice green city, friendly, good food. But LA's great too. There's plusses and minuses.

TeenHollywood: Are you still commuting back and forth to Hawaii from L.A. every week?

Emilie: Mm-hmm. Well, I've been here for sort of a month right now because I've had a couple episodes off. You'll work every day on an episode for two weeks or you have one off. They're usually not using the entire cast in each episode nowadays because there's just too much going on. They'll bring us all back together at the end of the season as they did last year, the way it sort of intertwined with flashbacks.

TeenHollywood: Is The Hills Have Eyes the type of movie you'd go see? Do you enjoy horror films?

Emilie: Specific ones I do actually. I like being scared in movies.

TeenHollywood: Have you even seen the whole movie yet?

Emilie: Yeah, I saw the NC-17 version of this. I don't think there was that much change though actually. I think they wanted them to take more out and then they were like, 'Well, Hostel...[made big money].' And they got to keep more in. Of course there'll be a director's cut for the DVD which is always great. It's kind of a nice cushion for a director to know that everyone can see it on the DVD and DVDs have been so popular these days. It's nice.

TeenHollywood: Was it hard to watch, especially your scene with your sister [where the girls get attacked]?

Emilie: Yeah, and my mom. Kathleen [Quinlan's] such a great actress, I was so sad [when something happens to her]. I called my own mom straight after that scene and oh, she made me cry so much. So sad. Yeah, it was hard. After a few days, you forget that- - in a good way I think. More than physical stuff for me, emotional stuff like that really drains you. It takes a toll after a few days.

TeenHollywood: Maggie Grace did a movie and they killed her off "Lost". Are you worried?

Emilie: [laughing] 'Anyone who does a film will die!' That would be funny, wouldn't it? Well, not really. Well, we've all got films coming out so maybe we'll all die. It'll be like a whole new cast. That was the original idea. One of the original ideas was to have a whole new cast the second season. People are going to die on the show because that's the kind of show it is and otherwise it's really very unrealistic. You definitely have a supernatural thing going on with it, but apart from that, it's a real drama and people have to die because there's not a hospital. Otherwise it's just a little bit like, 'Oh, come on. All these people just survive, no major injuries?' It makes it more interesting.

TeenHollywood: Did you know when you did the "Lost" pilot that it would take off like that?

Emilie: We had a great feeling doing the pilot. Everybody worked so well together, got along together, really eclectic cast so it was very good vibe with a group of young people. This was just a nice atmosphere but apart from that, just being such a different concept from anything out there at that time. And shooting where we did and all the elements combined, everyone sort of had a good idea. But you never know what the public's going to want to watch really.

I think we came along at a time when there was a huge influx of reality shows and people were sort of craving something different. Reality shows are huge. I think they will be for a long time. But it's different and it's interactive for the audience. The audience likes it because it's something that you can talk about afterwards and have interesting conversations about and theorize and really get involved with and there are so many different characters for different ages and races and nationalities to relate to.

TeenHollywood: If Locke makes a move on Claire would you approve?

Emilie: Ewww. You're just bringing up all the good stuff, aren't you? I'm not answering that one.

TeenHollywood: Will Claire ever forgive Charlie?

Emilie: She hasn't yet. We'll see.

TeenHollywood: Can Charlie redeem himself?

Emilie: [sly smile] I'm sure he will.

TeenHollywood: Claire had a big story in the last episode. Will there be more on your character?

Emilie: Everyone sort of has their busy times learning about their characters. There's been so much going on with new people on the island so they've had to concentrate a lot on that, otherwise people wouldn't know anything about them and they wouldn't be interested in watching their characters as well. So that's taken up time definitely this season. I mean, we found out what happened to her then but what are the aftereffects of that? The immediate thing is yeah, the baby's safe. It's still there. I haven't lost it again. But what happened with what he was doing to her, I don't know yet. They don't tell us. We read the scripts three or four days before we shoot when we get them. I'm about three ahead right now, that's all I know. Or two ahead.

TeenHollywood: Back to "Hills". How old is your character Brenda supposed to be?

Emilie: She's in her last year- - she's 17 so she's in her last year of high school. She's young.

TeenHollywood: Is she the typical high school girl?

Emilie: As a character, she's sort of typical I suppose as far as a 17-year-old teenage girl put in that situation of going on spring break in an Airstream with her family in the desert. I don't know personally anyone who would be that amped about that idea as opposed to Cancun or wherever she wanted to go. So she's not very happy during the first part of the film for that reason, and maybe it's an interesting change for Brenda. Her character really develops into realizing how precious time is with the people who are important to you and the people who love you and who you love. That you don't know how long that's ever going to be.

TeenHollywood: Was it fun doing an American accent?

Emilie: As long as I've been acting I've had to do an American accent because generally, films that are casting out of the states are about American families. Being young, your involvement is usually you'll have parents or relations in the film so you can't be the random Australian child.

TeenHollywood: Have you seen High Tension, the horror film by your French director Alexandre Aja?

Emilie: I did see High Tension and I thought it was incredibly shot. I thought they did a really different concept to that film. Working with Alex was wonderful. He and Gregory ["Hills Have Eyes" screenwriter] are so charismatic and people who have such life and such happiness in them and I really respect the way they took a genre film but did something really artistic and interesting with it. They focused on the acting, focused on the audience being invested in these characters, which I personally think can make or break a film of this genre. You need to feel a connection to the characters whether they live or die. The impact of somebody dying that you care about or somebody that you just sort of have seen strutting around in a cute little outfit is so different. You're affected so much more. They really put emphasis on that.

TeenHollywood: Are you planning a wedding? [Emilie's fiancée, is actor Josh Janowicz]

Emilie: This year. I don't know. We're not big wedding people so we'll see what we do. We're very mellow. We'll probably get married this year though.

TeenHollywood: What would you do with 2-3 hours of free time?

Emilie: Humm, I have that sometimes. Clean my house. You know, mundane things. Sit back, watch a movie, read a good book, do some gardening, some cooking. Just homely stuff. I'm a big homebody. Just hanging out with friends, going out to a good dinner.

TeenHollywood: What do you cook?

Emilie: My fiance's a better cook than me I think. I know he is. He is. Risotto's my main dish that I like cooking most. It takes a long time. You're sort of stuck in the kitchen for a while but it's yummy.

TeenHollywood: What's the last good book you read?

Emilie: I loved 'A Million Little Pieces'. I'm reading 'Life of Pi' right now which I'm enjoying.

TeenHollywood: Who did you bond with the most on the set of "Hills"? Kathleen?

Emilie: We all really bonded. We all really did. Kathleen and Ted [Levine who plays her dad] and Vinessa [Shaw who plays her sister] and Aaron [Stanford who plays her brother-in-law] and Dan [Byrd who plays her little bro]. We would all hang out so much. You're in Ouarzazate, Morocco. What else is there? We'd go eat around the pool of the hotel, hang out, just get to know each other. It was just so great that we had some time before shooting too, and while shooting to make sure that it was that vibe that we were really a family.

TeenHollywood: We hear that the mutants had their own tent.

Emilie: Yeah, they got air conditioning. Favoritism.

TeenHollywood: Was it helpful for you not to get friendly with them?

Emilie: In a way, yeah. But they were really nice. It was sort of odd but I know what you mean. It kind of was a separation. I worked with them through that whole trailer sequence for days. But most of the time together was with the Carter family so that did help bonding with them.

TeenHollywood: You play another modern teen in Brick with Joseph Gordon Levitt. Is it nice to have that indie film coming out at the same time?

Emilie: It is actually. I'm very lucky. It's kind of perfect timing. Yeah, Brick's completely different and it's nice to have three characters out there. It's easy to get pigeonholed when you do TV so it's nice for people to see you in another light with another character as much as possible really.

TeenHollywood: Who are you dying to work with?

Emilie: Alfred Hitchcock. Can you make that happen? Maybe "Lost" can figure that out. They can bring him back.

TeenHollywood: Sure. Hey, I hear he loved cute blondes. You're a natural!

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertaintment journalist and produced screenwriter.