I would assume this question refers to Mandy’s style of acting. I have never seen she or anyone else describe what kind of actress she is, but based upon some things that she said in the DVD commentary, I would have to guess that she is what is called a “method actress.”
When she had the really emotional scenes, she had the director give her something to think about and she would go off in a corner to concentrate on it to get her in the mood (she did not elaborate on what this was). This resulted in some realistic and POWERFUL scenes.
“I do not need a reason to be angry with God!”
Shankmen revealed that after these scenes where they did this he needed to release her for the day because she needed time to get it through her system and get back to normal.
Jamie looks quite different from Mandy in real life. Mandy is a natural blonde. She was that way on both of her early albums (“So Real” and “I Wanna Be With You”) as well as her screen debut in “The Princess Diaries” (where she played Lanna the bitch cheerleader) and dyed her brown for AWTR. She later dyed her hair a darker color for “How To Deal” and cut her hair for the film (for about 15 minutes she has long hair and then cut it as a plot point). Since then she’s changed it a number of times going from blonde (“All I Want” “Bubble Boy”) to black in several films. She seems to like the darker color, but as far as I know she’s really a natural blonde.
Mandy does not specifically answer this anywhere that I can find, but the hardest ones for her were the ones when she had to pretend to not be friends with actors she had made friends with off camera (pretend to be an outsider). She also stated in the DVD commentary that she was very uncomfortable doing the scenes in the bus to and from the school where they did tutoring because of the heat and because she was distracted by the neighborhood kids that were constantly visible outside the window. This is one of the scenes where they had to re-loop the dialog because the original was unusable. Also, the scenes where she had to drive were difficult because of the condition of the car she had to use.
In the DVD commentary she reveals that her favorite scene in the film was the one where, after having been snubbed by Landon in front of his friends, he came over to make up with her and she kept slamming the door in his face.
“Only Hope”, “It’s Gonna Be Love”, and “Someday We’ll Know” (duet with Jonathan Foreman from Switchfoot) were recorded specifically for the movie.
“Cry”, on the other hand, was recorded for Mandy’s album “Mandy Moore.” She gave a preview copy to Adam Shankmen and he decided to include it in the movie.
Mandy does not consider Jamie to be a “religious” character. She was merely a character for whom her religious faith was important to her. She was not, as Eric referred to her, a “Bible-hugging, Crucifix-wearing, honk-if-you-love-Jesus” girl.
To answer the question, she enjoyed playing Jamie and is proud that it came off so well.
According to her website: “I am Catholic, but don’t necessarily believe everything that Catholics believe. But I do pray before each and every performance. I find that it calms me” [ http://www.mandymoorefan.com/ ]
Nope. Sorry, the award-winning on-screen chemistry was only acting.
They began filming on Mandy’s 17th birthday, April 10, 2001 (d.o.b. 4/10/84). Shane was almost 23 (d.o.b 6/10/78). [ACK! Talk about robbing the cradle! No wonder they never actually dated!]