What kind of actress is Mandy Moore?

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.

Is Mandy a fan of “Jars Of Clay”?

If you listen closely to the scene where Landon and Eric have a fight because “you don’t have time for your friends anymore” Landon tells him that the CD he is playing was leant to him by Jamie. The song we hear is one of JoC’s biggies, “Flood.” [The song describes life being overwhelming at times using the allegory of the biblical “flood.”]

Mandy was asked if she had ever listened to JoC on her website and she answered that the only JoC song that she had heard was the one used in the movie. [It’s somewhere in the “Ask Mandy” archive. I don’t have an exact link.]

To Mandy and anyone else who may be reading this, I recommend you check out:

bullet “Flood” (from “Jars of Clay”)
bullet “Love Song For A Savior” (from “Jars of Clay”)
bullet “Like a Child” (from “Jars of Clay”)
bullet “Overjoyed” (from “Much Afraid”)
bullet “Fly” (from “The Eleventh Hour”)

“Fly” would have made a good song for the AWTR soundtrack. The song is about the author’s pain and hope at loosing his wife to Cancer. CLICK HERE for the lyrics.

What is Mandy’s real hair color?

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.

What was Mandy’s LEAST favorite scene in the film?

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.

How did Mandy feel about playing a “religious” character?

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.