[[MEDIA-VIDEO]] Trailer: 'The Poker House'

[[CANDIDS-MEDIA]] Selma in NY sacandose fotos con la gente (Video)

[[CANDIDS]] Selma picks up a coffee with a friend in LA

[[INTERVIEWS]] UP CLOSE WITH SELMA BLAIR

The 'Hellboy II' hottie talks about her flame-throwing role in the sequel, shacking up with the Demon of the Apocalypse and the rumors she's playing Neil Gaiman's Death!

By Andy Serwin

WIZARD: Four years have gone by since the first movie; did you think you'd get to play the pyrokinetic Liz Sherman again?
BLAIR: I hoped that I would. I kind of thought that it was never going to happen, but ["Hellboy" and "Hellboy II" director] Guillermo del Toro just didn't give up. When he gave me a call at 11 o'clock one night to tell me that they had the financing, I was really relieved. It was something that I had been waiting and hoping for and this does feel like we're back with family even though it's a whole new amazing experience. The first one was such an introduction to Hellboy that I always thought the meat would be in the second and third, at least for Liz, because in the first one she was afraid to take a step. She was a zombie, not wanting to own up to her power and not having the memory of what she'd created in her life. So I was really eager to come and play Liz with a little more vibrancy.

How much has she changed since the first movie?
I thought I would get here and already know this girl, but I realized that I don't know her at all because I don't know her as a woman. It seems like such a straightforward role, but it's really been a challenge for me not to suck the energy out of Liz because that's kind of how I played her in the first one, like she was in a vacuum.

Was the haircut something that Guillermo suggested, or something that you came up with together?
It was together. My hair, I basically went nuts and shaved my head. There was actually a girl who wanted my hair and I'm a giver. So I gave her my hair. [Laughs] I did that to make a wig for a child, but then I just made it a fashion thing that I had this strangely shaped head. But I thought, "Oh, God, Guillermo is going to kill me." But he saw the short hair and I think he really wanted it. I think that it's a little anime inspired.

How has Liz's relationship with Hellboy developed since the first movie?
Well, it's worked out about as much as my marriage in real life. [Laughs] [EDITOR'S NOTE: Blair divorced musician Ahmet Zappa in 2006.] That's terrible to say. We're very good friends. It's difficult living with someone, especially a guy that takes up as much room as Hellboy, with as many cats as Hellboy has. So we are very happy together, but there's trouble with spending so much time with someone that you love after you're used to being alone and having your way. Between my fire and his little-boy sloppy behavior, we're a mess—a lovable mess.

You're packing heat in addition to your fire powers this time around; why are you carrying a gun?
Talk to Guillermo about that. It's really embarrassing too. I wouldn't pull this out if it weren't completely rubber, but it's really embarrassing. I spend so much time in this movie holding this gun up and I'm like to Doug [Jones, aka Abe Sapien] next to me, "Jesus Christ, don't I have fire for this?"

You did the voice of Liz in the animated movies; has there been talk of any more of those?
I know that one was nominated for an Emmy, and I'm glad that that one person who nominated it bought it because that's about the only copy that I know of. I don't know if anymore are going to happen, but one of them was really beautiful. [Laughs].

Has the cast dynamic changed with the addition of psychic Johann Kraus?
I had just one scene with Abe Sapian that was really touching in the first one. That was actually really my only scene where I felt like a person communicating with someone, and in this one, he's my buddy and we're together all the time. So I feel closest to Doug in this and always Ron [Perlman, aka Hellboy]. I live next to Ron in real life, so he's just someone that I'm really close to and have kept in touch with. Then John Alexander and James [Dodd], the couple of people that play Johann, I think the more the merrier—the more people that can suffer in their costumes and I can make fun of them because I don't have one. I bedevil them. It's awful. They're sweating and dying and can't breathe and I'm like, "Oh, my God, this cotton tank top is just really too much. I don't know how you guys do it.''

Del Toro is also producing the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Death: The High Cost of Living. That seems right up your alley. Are you jockeying for that?
I've wanted to play Death for a long time. On the set of the first ["Hellboy"], people would see me and say, "You have to play Death. Oh my God, you have to do it." I didn't know he was doing "Death" at the time. He knew for sure that he'd be teaming up with Neil on that and he said, "Yeah, you'd be good for Death." Then it's been crickets. I think he definitely has his eye on someone, and I would know if it were me and it's not me. [Neil and I are] good friends, and that still didn't get me the job. [Laughs]

[[ARTICLES]] Role Player (Vogue Men's)

Selma Blair has shone in dozens of films, inhabiting a gamut of characters from the frothy to the seedy. Now she's not only a leading lady — she's got her own action figure. By Michael Walker

Selma Blair has Charlotte Rampling's eyes, Dorothy Parker's precision-strike wit, and sufficient acting chops to blow better-known actresses off the screen with a toss of her bangs. Having shone in all manner of movies, from lightweight fare like Legally Blonde, The Sweetest Thing, and Cruel Intentions (in which she famously twisted tongues with Sarah Michelle Gellar) to darker indie films like Kill Me Later and Todd Solondz's Storytelling, the 36-year-old native of the Detroit suburbs has lately been trading up her character-actress cred for a fatter slice of the cultural pie.

"Part of me would love to have been a leading lady, because there's a lot of glamour that goes with that, and a lot of applause," she says, nursing a coffee in a West Hollywood patisserie. "But I've been very blessed. I'm not one of these girls who has to fit into a mold. I'm a working actress able to make choices based on characters rather than what I 'should' do for my career."

Blair, the youngest of four overachieving sisters, was born in Southfield, Michigan. "I was always kind of the storyteller," she recalls. "I remember being in the schoolyard when I was six, and I'd make up stories about how there was a huge carnival behind my house and then get in trouble because everyone wanted to come to see it. I had to become a recluse at a very young age so my story wouldn't be found out." After she graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan with a bachelor's degree in photography and a minor in English ("I was mostly writing about despair, grief, loneliness...the usual William Styron type of stuff," Blair laughs), a stint at the Stella Adler Studio in New York City nudged her into acting.

These days she does dark, light, and pretty much everything in between. She portrays a young woman avenging her rape and torture in the just-released thriller WAZ; in the upcoming The Poker House, she plays a prostitute who's the ultimate bad example for her 14-year-old daughter. In the franchise-building department, look for Blair to reprise her role as Liz Sherman, the pyrokinetic heroine of Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II. ("I have my own action figure," she says proudly.) With Molly Shannon, she'll star in the upcoming NBC comedy series Kath & Kim, based on the hit Australian television show about a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship. (For the record, Blair adores her real mother back in Ann Arbor, with whom she corresponds by handwritten notes.)

Divorced in 2006 after two years of marriage to Ahmet Zappa — "a lovely man" whose ring she still wears — Blair cops to bouts of melancholy despite the wind filling her sails as never before. A voracious reader, she finds comfort in books like Elliot Perlman's novel Seven Types of Ambiguity, in doting on her one-eyed Jack Russell mutt, Wink (adopted from a Los Angeles animal shelter), and in the prospect that her career may finally reach critical mass.

"I think it's been confusing for people because I haven't had a linear career," Blair says. "People who watch WAZ aren't going to see Legally Blonde. So even though I've done 27 movies, people think I've probably only done three. I'll always be indebted to Guillermo for giving me my shot at being a leading lady. It's such an unlikely leading lady, so maybe it makes sense that an unlikely leading lady would play it."