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"  Mandy Moore&amp;#039;s shiny black Prius whirs through slow lunchtime traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, her speakers thumping the loping bass line of &amp;quot;Extraordinary,&amp;quot; a track from her first album in four years, next month&amp;#039;s Wild Hope. &amp;quot;Sorry it&amp;#039;s so loud,&amp;quot; she says sheepishly, her thin eyebrows raised into a contrite scrunch, an expression you see a lot since Moore&amp;#039;s big on making unnecessary apologies for stuff like having to run to the bathroom, talking too much, or her entire pre-2003 musical oeuvre. And though the girl does have a remarkable capacity for breathless chatting, as the song kicks in, she falls completely silent. She grips the wheel tightly with both hands, rocks out not one little bit, and even when stopped in traffic, keeps her eyes glued to the road, which seems to provide an excuse to avoid gauging her passenger&amp;#039;s reaction, good or bad. Moore&amp;#039;s sensitivity is understandable. Though it&amp;#039;s gotten to the point now where you want to plunge a Drano-filled syringe into your neck if you hear another comely pop star utter the words, &amp;quot;This is my most personal album yet,&amp;quot; you&amp;#039;d have to forgive Moore if she said it. (Thankfully, she doesn&amp;#039;t.) She cowrote every song on the album\u2014and not in the sense that she showed up in a studio, changed an &amp;quot;ooh&amp;quot; to an &amp;quot;ahh&amp;quot; on some producer&amp;#039;s verse, then slapped her name on it. &amp;quot;It was 50/50 or more on her end with me,&amp;quot; says Rachael Yamagata, the indie troubadour of heartbreak, about the songs she wrote with Moore. &amp;quot;Mandy&amp;#039;s not trying to be a singer-songwriter. She is a singer-songwriter.&amp;quot; Moore spilled her guts into a Moleskine notebook. (Getting your heart stomped on by a schnozzy TV actor would seem to lend itself to journaling.) Then, in modest kitchens, home studios, and hotel rooms with some respected but little-known artists, converted those feeling into songs. Her label, Warner Bros., wasn&amp;#039;t grooving on the organic direction she was taking. Executives were insistent that if she wanted to write, why not give it a go with the type of proven commodities who had written megahits with, say, Ashlee Simpson and Kelly Clarkson? Moore tried it. It didn&amp;#039;t work for her. &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s the point of getting onstage and singing music my heart wasn&amp;#039;t behind anymore?&amp;quot; she&amp;#039;d said earlier. &amp;quot;I might as well sing karaoke in a hotel bar. I&amp;#039;d actually be more content doing that.&amp;quot; So she left Warner Bros. and decided to allow her management company, the Firm, to release the album on its record label so that she could stick with her ragtaggier crew, which included Yamagata, twangy Boston singer Lori McKenna, and the husband-and-wife folk duo the Weepies, who collaborated on five of the album&amp;#039;s songs, including &amp;quot;Extraordinary,&amp;quot; the track we&amp;#039;re listening to in her car right now. The first thing that strikes you when you hear the song&amp;#039;s strummy acoustic guitars and swirling ethereal chorus is that it would be more at home on a 30-year-old Joni Mitchell album than on a 14-year-old mallrat&amp;#039;s iPod. That&amp;#039;s a high compliment to a song cowritten by the same artist who eight years ago recorded &amp;quot;Candy,&amp;quot; a catchy single, but a transparently cynical record company attempt to siphon off some of the money that was flying at Britney at the time. Then you remember that sadly, the mallrats are the only ones buying music right now, and the Joni Mitchell fans are too preoccupied raising those mallrats to check out the new Mandy Moore album, no matter how shockingly good it might be. Still, isn&amp;#039;t there hope for an album without the obligatory track from megaproducer-of-the-moment Scott Storch or a single that owes its very existence to Kelis&amp;#039; &amp;quot;Milkshake?&amp;quot; Moore herself is stumped: &amp;quot;At this point, I don&amp;#039;t know where I fit into the musical landscape,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t even know if this record fits in on the radio at all.&amp;quot; Then, as she takes a right off the traffic-choked Santa Monica Boulevard onto the wide-open Beverly Boulevard with all those tall palm trees telescoping into the sky on both sides of the street, she flips her iPod ahead to the album&amp;#039;s last track, a mournful ballad written with Canadian songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk called &amp;quot;Gardenia.&amp;quot; Admittedly, it&amp;#039;s a squirmy feeling sitting so close to Moore, who radiates an almost angelic purity, during the line in the chorus, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m the one who likes to make love on the floor.&amp;quot; But the song is gorgeous in its simplicity, expressing the same wronged-girl angst that Alanis Morissette conjured in &amp;quot;You Oughta Know,&amp;quot; but quietly, with just a piano accompaniment, and without causing suspicion that the singer belongs in a straitjacket. Strange things happen when you first hear the track. Initially, you must overcome the feeling that it&amp;#039;s not considered cool to like a Mandy Moore song. Then you notice the hairs stand up on your neck, feel a lump form in your throat, and get the vague sense that in solidarity with the pain she&amp;#039;s expressing so honestly, you&amp;#039;ll never again watch her ex-boyfriend Zach Braff on Scrubs without seething. After the song ends, you conclude that this 23-year-old has finally achieved something that will pulverize the saccharine image she&amp;#039;s been saddled with for so long. But Moore says she&amp;#039;s reining in any wild hopes about Wild Hope. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t want any expectations,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I just want people to know that I still sing. Most people don&amp;#039;t realize that, or else they hate my music\u2014rightfully so.&amp;quot; Lately, Moore seems to have assumed the mantle of President and Chief Spokeswoman of the Mandy Moore Ain&amp;#039;t All That Club. Earlier, we&amp;#039;re having breakfast at Hugo&amp;#039;s, a shabby West Hollywood melting pot of a natural food diner she frequents. (That morning&amp;#039;s patrons: Alan Arkin and a punk girl wearing a sweatshirt that reads I Know the Olsen Twin&amp;#039;s Coke Dealer, but not together.) Moore is in a blousy vintage floral dress she recently found at a Paris flea market, with her thick hair falling over her shoulders, dewy complexion, and, at 5&amp;#039;10&amp;#039;, much, much taller than you would expect, given her slightly elfin pug nose. Apart from the earthy, hippie-chick look she&amp;#039;s been working for a while, her chipper demeanor and tendency to theatrically overannunciate words seems consistent with the footage of one of her early breaks, at age 11, her killer vibrato belting out the national anthem in a Dorothy Hamill bob for her hometown Orlando Magic. On paper, she&amp;#039;s in possession of the same goody-goody traits you&amp;#039;d expect from a girl who, starting at age 10, performed in a ton of local musicals before attracting the attention of a record industry scout. She rarely drinks, hates going to clubs, is always in bed early, claims to have never tried any sort of drug (&amp;quot;I have a fear of being out of control and I&amp;#039;m not a rule breaker,&amp;quot; she says), and admits her main vices are shopping and heavy TiVo usage. And although there are no Moores on her payroll, she&amp;#039;s tight with her family; her two brothers share her Los Feliz home, which until two years ago also housed her American Airlines pilot dad, Don, and mom Stacy, who used to mind her while on tour. What&amp;#039;s missing now though is that frightening look of pageant-girl self-assurance and determination she&amp;#039;d worn singing at that basketball game. I ask how she thinks she was perceived as a teen pop star, as compared with those other pubescent singers of the late &amp;#039;90s. Moore finishes her bite of oatmeal frittata, pauses to consider the question, then cheerfully plunges this verbal dagger into herself: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sure I was viewed as the young untalented one. Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera had some great pop music. And then there was Jessica Simpson. And then there was me. And that&amp;#039;s fine.&amp;quot; Does she consider herself a better singer or actress? &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m mediocre at both,&amp;quot; she chirps. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not trying to come across as self-deprecating. I&amp;#039;m just being honest.&amp;quot; In the past few years, this brand of masochistic honesty led Moore to announce at one point that if she had the dough, she&amp;#039;d reimburse every person who bought her first two albums of what she&amp;#039;s referred to as &amp;quot;such trite, blah pop music.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sure other people look back at things they did when they were 15 and go, &amp;#039;Oh, God,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s how I feel about it. It&amp;#039;s so embarrassing.&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;s also hesitant to put much stock in the comment that just maybe her lovely understated performance in Justin Theroux&amp;#039;s upcoming independent film Dedication could lead to more meaty roles. Moore has shone in films before, particularly in 2006&amp;#039;s American Dreamz and 2004&amp;#039;s Saved!, but in both movies she tweaked her own image by playing girls with squeaky-clean exteriors that serve to hide their mercenary black hearts. In Dedication, Moore is quieter than we&amp;#039;ve ever seen her, as Lucy, an intelligent but insecure illustrator who hides under a big blue snorkel coat and heavy Goth mascara that makes her look like Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. &amp;quot;The sentiment I&amp;#039;ve been getting is, &amp;#039;Wow, it&amp;#039;s bizarre you cast Mandy Moore,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Theroux says. &amp;quot;But once you hang out with her, you realize that she has this beautiful sincerity and a still quality, which is exactly what I was hoping to exploit in that part.&amp;quot; It worked. Moore plays the alt-girl well enough that you actually believe Billy Crudup&amp;#039;s weirdo children&amp;#039;s book author would put aside his rabid misogyny long enough to fall for her. Moore herself has embarked on her own phase of searching and quiet introspection\u2014pondering life&amp;#039;s meaning; wondering about the growth (and guys) she missed out on by being home-schooled through high school and skipping college; worshiping bands nobody&amp;#039;s heard of; developing unlikely obsessions with things such as Dadaism; and embracing green pursuits, like buying an old Mercedes converted to run on soybean oil, available by the five-gallon jug, she says, at Costco. Still, she&amp;#039;s not convinced Dedication will change any minds. &amp;quot;If people watch the movie and their opinion of me somehow shifts, then great,&amp;quot; Moore says. &amp;quot;But I never put those sorts of expectations on anything, because inevitably I&amp;#039;ll just be disappointed. And that&amp;#039;s nothing new.&amp;quot; Yes, in her short life, Moore has inhaled her share of the footy smell of disappointment. In the old days, as Britney was selling out arenas, Moore was doing gigs at bowling alleys and sweaty radio station promotions in mall atriums; the crowning achievement of her early career was a short tour opening for the Backstreet Boys. Britney hosted SNL; Mandy got Mad TV. &amp;quot;We had people laugh at us,&amp;quot; says Jon Leshay, her longtime manager, &amp;quot;but we just kind of plugged along.&amp;quot; Epic, the label that signed her at 14, wasn&amp;#039;t exactly thrilled when, for her third album, she rerecorded songs by what must have seemed like creaky acts such as Carole King, Todd Rundgren, and Joan Armatrading. &amp;quot;At Epic, there was an indelible impression of Mandy being a 15-year-old girl singing &amp;#039;Candy,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Leshay says. &amp;quot;It was incredibly hard to get that same group of people to understand she was growing up.&amp;quot; In 2003, Epic released the album, called Coverage, but, Moore and Leshay say, barely promoted it; Epic and Moore parted ways. Despite some small triumphs\u2014her cred-bolstering arcs in Entourage and Scrubs\u2014there have also been disappointments in the acting department. Two years ago, she appeared in a pair of prestige projects that could have been tickets to a new plane of Hollywood respectability: Southland Tales, Richard Kelly&amp;#039;s follow-up to his cult favorite Donnie Darko, and Romance &amp;amp;amp; Cigarettes, the John Turturro-directed musical with James Gandolfini and Kate Winslet; neither got distribution. Theatrical release can be a mixed blessing too, as demonstrated by Because I Said So, the recent romantic comedy in which Diane Keaton plays Moore&amp;#039;s overbearing mom. &amp;quot;Well, it&amp;#039;s cute,&amp;quot; Moore says, delicately, of the film, which was opening the day after our meeting. Critics, understandably, weren&amp;#039;t as diplomatic; any movie with Diane Keaton asking Mandy Moore what an orgasm feels like deserves the tomatoes hurled at it. Of course, nobody writes songs about being in films that tank. In Moore&amp;#039;s honesty crusade, she&amp;#039;s been candid about the fact that in the past year, she&amp;#039;s experienced some unfamiliar depressive moods. The feelings weren&amp;#039;t so acute as to land her in therapy, or in a random L.A. salon to have her head shaved, but they did trigger her to pose that elusive existential question: &amp;quot;Why do I feel so icky?&amp;quot; This ickiness happened to correspond with the breakup last summer of her nearly two-year relationship with Braff, who recently came out with a similar public admission that he thinks he suffers from mild depression. Could her moods have been a by-product of shacking up with an admittedly gloomy comic actor-director? &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think so,&amp;quot; Moore says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s just a coincidence I think.&amp;quot; Then was the breakup the catalyst for her bluesy spell? &amp;quot;The breakup didn&amp;#039;t help,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But I was already in that place.&amp;quot; Others offer a different diagnosis. &amp;quot;When I met her, I never thought, Oh, my God, she&amp;#039;s so depressed,&amp;quot; Yamagata says. &amp;quot;But I definitely did get the impression that she&amp;#039;s weathered in love. It was clear that she had been affected very deeply.&amp;quot; The loss of Braff&amp;#039;s influence on Moore, who is nine years his junior, is not particularly mourned by some in her circle. &amp;quot;Toxic&amp;quot; is the word one Moore friend who&amp;#039;d spent time with the couple uses to describe him: &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s a really bad combination of narcissistic and insecure.&amp;quot; Moore, however, remains diplomatic. &amp;quot;Out of respect to Zach, who I still consider a friend and care about and support, I have nothing bad to say about him,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;It just didn&amp;#039;t work out.&amp;quot; Well, she&amp;#039;s got nothing bad to say about him outside of nearly every song on her album. And okay, maybe it&amp;#039;s unfair to assume that the album is all about Braff\u2014Moore went out with tennis star Andy Roddick, and before that, serial starletizer Wilmer Valderrama, and claims Wild Hope &amp;quot;is not necessarily about one person&amp;quot;\u2014but there&amp;#039;s a consistency to the boyfriend character roaming through her songs, and the portrait painted is not one of a love affair that &amp;quot;just didn&amp;#039;t work out,&amp;quot; but one that finally imploded under the weight of its collected horrors. Here, a smattering of lyrics: &amp;quot;You did everything/ I asked you not to/You said you could be good/ But somehow you&amp;#039;re guilty/ And you&amp;#039;re not even sorry/Everybody I know/ Says I&amp;#039;m too forgiving/ I can think of a million ways you proved you weren&amp;#039;t the/ And I know you loved me in your way/ You were asleep while I gathered my things in the dark/I heard you say/ We were one and the same/ Well, wrong again/ I could never do those things you did to me/I hope you burn in hell/ Or do I?/And your mistakes will haunt you down eventually. The most shocking aspect of her lyrics is that they came from Moore, whose low public profile always suggested that she didn&amp;#039;t share the turbulent inner life of some of her peers, such as, say, Lindsay and Britney. &amp;quot;You see some of these girls dealing with all their issues publicly,&amp;quot; says Moore&amp;#039;s close friend Raina Penchansky, head of publicity at Coach. &amp;quot;Everything that Mandy was dealing with, she dealt with inwardly. And that&amp;#039;s what this album is. The songs are her catharsis.&amp;quot; If you happen to be like me, a thirtysomething almost-married man of Semitic descent, may I strongly encourage you to repeat this guilt-free predinner excursion: Go to the adorable little spa called the Raven in L.A.&amp;#039;s Silver Lake neighborhood and have your hands and feet massaged with lavender oil by a beatific Thai woman. And then, just as you wonder whether there might not be anything finer in the world than having your tootsies lubed and fondled while bathed in flickering candlelight, smelling burning sage, and hearing the twinkle and bong of soft chime music, listen, as Mandy Moore, reclining a few feet away in nothing but a robe, admits that she has a thing for Jewish guys. &amp;quot;I do,&amp;quot; she says softly, while enjoying her own fragrant rubbing. &amp;quot;So what is it about us?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know. I just like a good Jewish boy.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Are you just naturally drawn to men with gastrointestinal problems?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Ha! That must be it.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Please fill me in on the particulars of your present romantic life.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Oy. It&amp;#039;s boring. Nobody wants to know about it. Honestly, I thought about that today, and I tried to figure out a polite or witty way to say, &amp;#039;I don&amp;#039;t want to talk about my personal life.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Come up with anything good?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t come up with anything.&amp;quot; (Here&amp;#039;s something: Moore&amp;#039;s been seen hanging out with Adam Goldstein, also called DJ AM, and best known for making upward of 25 grand per three hours of record spinning, having had gastric-bypass surgery, and being the former fianc\u00E9 of Nicole Richie.) &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve wondered, plagued by any body issues?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Sometimes I feel fine. Sometimes I don&amp;#039;t feel so great. I&amp;#039;m a regular person. I&amp;#039;m not that thin. I&amp;#039;m okay with representing a different type than the normal Hollywood beauty ideal. But other people aren&amp;#039;t so okay with that. I&amp;#039;ve been told that I have to lose weight for stuff before. It&amp;#039;s mortifying. It&amp;#039;s hard to have someone come up and go, &amp;#039;You should lose a few pounds.&amp;#039; And they don&amp;#039;t say it delicately. How can you? It&amp;#039;s only happened to me once before. But once is enough to make you feel awful.&amp;quot; A few calls reveal that Moore is referring to License to Wed, this summer&amp;#039;s romantic comedy with Robin Williams and The Office&amp;#039;s John Krasinski. Some Warner Bros. executive had seen American Dreamz and deemed her too round. &amp;quot;All I can tell you is that I&amp;#039;ve never been on any production where some executive didn&amp;#039;t say, &amp;#039;Can&amp;#039;t that actress lose weight?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; says the film&amp;#039;s director, Ken Kwapis. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a horrible part of being a director in Hollywood.&amp;quot; Ugly show business realities and obvious biases aside, Kwapis thinks License to Wed might be the showcase that flings Moore into the America&amp;#039;s sweetheart throne that&amp;#039;s been empty for so long. &amp;quot;I feel confident that this could be the role,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;It is so winning. The audience is just going to fall in love with her.&amp;quot; Krasinki certainly seems enamored with her. In his first leading-man role, he initially had misgivings about playing opposite a woman who&amp;#039;d grown up famous. &amp;quot;I expected that maybe Mandy was going to be living on her own planet,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;She wasn&amp;#039;t at all. She&amp;#039;s incredibly sweet and smart, and she cares so much. Nothing&amp;#039;s half-assed with her. I wish I could say the same thing about myself when I was in my early twenties.&amp;quot; Even with the hide toughening that comes with spending a third of your life in the cattiest industry in the world, a girl can still make a stupid mistake. On a recent trip to Paris, Moore, unable to sleep, pulled out her laptop and ended up on a blog on which a photo of her was being dissected. &amp;quot;People are so mean,&amp;quot; she says. She chronicles the things she read about herself\u2014&amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s fat. She&amp;#039;s untalented. I wish she&amp;#039;d shut up. I don&amp;#039;t want to hear another record from her.&amp;quot; And then Moore did what she&amp;#039;s always done, and the reason we still know her name: She rose in the morning, did her best to forget all those voices, and got right back to work. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a9185/no-moore-19258/>