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" Blake Lively is starving. She slides into a booth at a charming restaurant in New York City&amp;#039;s West Village and immediately buries her head in the menu. &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s share a bunch of stuff,&amp;quot; she says, then adds, &amp;quot;On average, I order about three meals for myself in one sitting.&amp;quot; She isn&amp;#039;t kidding. Two bread baskets, two appetizers, two pasta entr\u00E9es, and three desserts later, she decides that&amp;#039;s enough food\u2026to start with. But there&amp;#039;s good reason for Blake&amp;#039;s ravenous appetite. As one of the breakout stars of television&amp;#039;s most buzzed-about show, Gossip Girl, she&amp;#039;s spent the last several months working 18-hour days. And that&amp;#039;s in addition to promoting her new flick, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, in which she plays a college student coming to terms with her mother&amp;#039;s death. Though she looks every bit the chosen Hollywood starlet (she&amp;#039;s dressed in skinny jeans, black ballet flats, and a leather bomber jacket), she hardly acts it. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t drink. I don&amp;#039;t do drugs. But I do sleep around a lot,&amp;quot; she deadpans, before busting into laughter. The fact is, her own high school experience in Burbank, California, was a far cry from her character&amp;#039;s ultraprivileged existence. While Serena van der Woodsen spends her time sipping champagne at the Palace Hot e l dressed in designer clothes, Blake, now 21, was more of a gung-ho overachiever. &amp;quot; I was class president, on the cheerleading squad, in a competitive show choir, and in, like, six different clubs,&amp;quot; she says. She&amp;#039;s even sported a bulldog costume to act as mascot for some football games . That up-for-anything attitude is what helped her break into acting. She got her first gig (in the original Sisterhood movie) because her brother, also an actor, thought she would like performing and asked his agent to send her on a couple auditions. She steers the conversation back to her alter ego and finds it important to distinguish her world from the drama-filled one her character inhabits. &amp;quot;There wasn&amp;#039;t a period in my life like Serena went through, where I was doing drugs and having sex with my best friend&amp;#039;s boyfriend. I never went through that kind of crazy,&amp;quot; says Blake, who describes herself as a &amp;quot;weird combination&amp;quot; of really outgoing and really shy. Instead, she&amp;#039;s famous among her group of friends for being a prankster who breaks into impromptu &amp;quot;Riverdances&amp;quot; and belts out show tunes in the wrong key. &amp;quot;People think I&amp;#039;m goofy,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t have that whole Angelina Jolie air to me. I wish that I did, and that&amp;#039;s an insecurity of mine. Some days, I wake up, and I&amp;#039;m like &amp;#039;Oh, I look good to day!&amp;#039; And some days, I wake up and feel like I look like a tranny.&amp;quot; More like a statuesque 5-foot-10 blond bombshell. No doubt Blake&amp;#039;s gorgeous looks have made her something to talk\u2014and blog\u2014 about. As she dives in to her ravioli, two women walking by the table do a double-take when they notice her. (You can practically hear them gasping &amp;quot;OMG!&amp;quot;) And on a typical day, the Gossip Girl set is surrounded by 60 to 80 scoop-hungry paparazzi. &amp;quot;Their cameras will be clicking during scenes while we&amp;#039;re just trying to get through our lines. It sounds like a swarm of wasps,&amp;quot; she says. Blake has also already gotten a taste of what it&amp;#039;s like to be thrust into the celebrity rumor mill, thanks to tabloid speculation that she&amp;#039;s frenemies with her costar Leighton Meester, who plays Blair Waldorf on the show. Counters Blake: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s absurd. We get along so well.&amp;quot; And the gum-flapping doesn&amp;#039;t stop there. Long before they were photographed frolicking together on vacation in Mexico, Blake and her onscreen boyfriend , Penn Badgley (who plays Dan Humphrey), were linked romantically. Without mentioning his name, she says, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m the happiest I&amp;#039;ve ever been now. When I&amp;#039;m in a relationship, I give my heart an d soul to it and do it 100 percent.&amp;quot; Turns out, she has some pretty specific requirements for the man in her life: &amp;quot;If a guy can play Guitar Hero with me and sit at home and watch the Food Network and read magazines with me, that&amp;#039;s good. I don&amp;#039;t think there are many guys that&amp;#039;s fun for. It&amp;#039;s a lot to ask.&amp;quot; As far as Penn goes, she only cops to turning to him for advice on-set from time to time. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s very stoic and calm and confident. He&amp;#039;s much more like Serena than I am.&amp;quot; On the topic of love, Blake does admit to one thing: her lack of experience. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve kissed just three people in my life, other than stuff that I&amp;#039;ve done for TV or movies. I know\u2014I&amp;#039;m weird! I hope Brad Pitt doesn&amp;#039;t hear this. He&amp;#039;s never going to want to marry me!&amp;quot; she says, giggling. &amp;quot;But seriously, I haven&amp;#039;t been in many relationships. I don&amp;#039;t want to date someone just to date someone. I want to be with a guy who&amp;#039;s going to better my quality of life and better me.&amp;quot; At that point, the waiter comes over to set down the aforementioned array of cake and pastries. Blake pauses with her spoon in midair, looking bemused, and says, &amp;quot;Actually, you know what? A guy&amp;#039;s also perfect if he doesn&amp;#039;t try to eat my dessert.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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