X-Girl

Witches, junkie pros, skinheads - actress Fairuza Balk has played them all. Surprise, people don't believe her when she says she's happy.

Now this is truly strange, Azure-eyed actress Fairuza Balk is puttering around in her herb garden, getting ready for the first harvest of "parsley, cilantro, thyme, rosemary, lavender, roses, sage, mint, dill, fennel - a million things" that she has planted on the side of her Venice, California home.

Truly strange because Fairuza Balk has been cast about as far from serene, nurturing earth mother as you can get: a moody girl with an attitude to match her bottle black hair. And that image has followed her off-camera. Her performances - generally in supporting parts, with the exception of 96's teen-witch flick The Craft - strike you in the same place Blue Velvet-era Dennis Hopper did: You're just not sure she's acting. Getting into character for Balk means going solo on the bad side of town to learn how the junkie prostitutes walk (which she did to prep for her role as Lucinda in 95's Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead, or infiltrating the neo-Nazi skinhead scene in Orange County to osmose the energy fueling their racial hatred for her role opposite Ed Norton in American History X.

"For many years I chose roles that I (could) do something with, that were juicy, that weren't someone's daughter or someone's neighbor," says Balk. Even her role in this fall's "wacked out" romantic comedy The Waterboy opposite Adam Sandler skews toward the skewed. Her character, Vicki Vallencourt, is a "bike pyromaniac who's constantly in jail; this crazy girl who loves to steal automobiles and stuff....(Sandler) brings out this real sweetness in her. The rest of the time she's just crazy as all hell."

And though Fairuza is doe-eyed blond, she is not as scary as all hell. Her aesthetics have run on the other, less conventional side of the tracks long before you knew her name. "My first real love as a child was Klaus Kinski," the Polish actor who starred in Nosteratu the Vampyre, followed by Christopher Walken; and, most recently, she's developed a long-distance crush on Willen Dafoe. "I actually met him in New York, I was so...God, he was just so beautiful I can't even stand it. So beautiful and so nice. He's a real person."

Feeding her head with the films of Luis Bunuel and Georges Bataille's Story Of The Eye ("That's a sick book, man, but it turned my crank, it did. I hate to say it. I love erotica. I love erotica..."), the canvas currently on her easel comes as little surprise. "I'm working on a painting of a big green human eye on a funk green background. And underneatj it is Chinese calligraphy." There is a beat, following by a laugh. "I'm not a fruit and flowers kind of painter."

Fair enough. Ditch the sill lifes. After all, there's a lot more to the world than fruit and flowers.

Black Book : What's the significance of the triangle tattoo on your shoulder?
Balk : The triangle is what they actually put on the Gypsies in [World War II]. And it's part of my heritage. I really liked the way it looked. 'Cause it was so simple, and so many tattoos are so gaudy and icky. This is just such a pretty color, and a nice shape. Funny, though, everyone thinks it means I'm a dyke...because of the pink triange.

That didn't cross my mind, but maybe I've lead a very sheltered existence.
I don't mind. There's so many crazy rumors about me that I think they're funny now. There's a rumor that I have two wild badgers living in my house. Don't ask me where this came from, because I don't know. There's another rumor that I have a young box sex slave that I summon to the set when I'm on lunch or when I'm bored, and, when he comes, I hate sex with him and then tell him to go away.

You have a look where people want to throw the words "moody" and "dark" at you. Do you get called in a lot for light-hearted romantic comedies?
Are you kidding me? Of course not! It's kind of the band of my existence, to tell you the truth. The fact that Hollywood does that is really sickening. That's kind of why I'm going to move away from here. For example, when I've done interviews they don't wanna hear that I'm happy, productive, or that I paint, or that I draw, or anything that I do. They want to hear that I'm depressed, that I'm all crazy...They're doing the same thing to Christina Ricci right now. But I think she's propagating that. Because she's kinda into being through of as the "wacky It girl of the moment.

Fairuza's time in the entertainment petri dish of the West Coast, surrounded by the yammering of They, "is going to end very soon. I'm moving out of here. I'm about two jobs away from hopefully being able to move to Paris. I'm basically selling all my things here and just getting ready. If not Paris, then New York first, because I don't fit [in Los Angeles]. I have it a good shot and it just didn't work, so I'm going to move." Fairuza "never assumed that making films would be the end-all deal in my life. And it still isn't. It just seems to be the way my path has gone."

You began landing roles age the age of eight. But there was also a period of pretty crushing poverty during your childhood. The phrase "living out of a car for a while" comes to mind. What's your relationship with the notion of success and money now that your career has taken off?
I still have a bit of a poor-man's complex. Not that I have the money to do it, anyhow, but I could never go and spend a thousand bucks on a dress. [Real scarcity] makes you appreciate everything you have so much more because you know that at any second it could be taken away and you could be back where you were. You could be living out of a fucking backpack with a dollar in your pocket and nowhere to go.

Tell me about your research on skinheads for American History X?
I went to some rallies and some parties. Just hung out with them and first had to gain their trust for them to believe that I wasn't someone that was out to do them wrong...And I'm not a racist. At times it was a little freaky, because they couldn't know that I was actually researching them. I would be in big trouble because I wasn't with anybody else. I just showed up at once of their rallies and said that I was from a group in Vancouver because there are a lot of skinheads up in Canada.

Would you have to spew out some racists lines just to be there?
No, but if they ask you a question, you gotta answer the right way. If they said something, and you said, "I work for Amnesty International," or "I think what they're doing in South Africa is wrong." They're not going to be happy. They're not going to entrust you with their experiences and their stuff, and that's what I wanted to learn. In a way it is kind of nuts because I only have four scenes in the movie. I'm not supposed to say that, but I didn't have a huge part. That's just the way I am. For me, it's all or nothing. I can't picture myself doing a half-assed job.

Because, as Balk intimates, take away the acclaim, the perks, the money, deflect the lust directed towards her elsewhere, and all that's left is her work. "It's the only thing in my life that I've been able to do somewhat right...I'm not at the top of the hill. I'm still struggling by far, but I've had a lot more luck than many people and I know every day that at any second it could just change. That's what worries me about how the press represents me."

Fairuza is referring, most particularly, to a recent cover story for a magazine named after a popular breakfast food. The reported forgot to tape the interview and fabricated an entire evening front to back, including quotes that caused resentments amount her family and friends. "I would just die, I would just love it so much, if just one time the person that I speak to could bring what I say and represent me the way that I was when I met them...instead of turning it into some kitschy bullshit...God, I swear a lot, don't I? Will you take my swears out? Because everybody prints them."