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"  Supermodel Marisa Miller has posed as an Angel for Victoria&amp;#039;s Secret and a pirate for Captain Morgan&amp;#039;s rum. You can now add Jeff Bridges to the list. She plays The Dude&amp;#039;s avatar in R.I.P.D. (out this weekend),her first movie role. The Sports Illustrated cover star and new mom briefed us on her costar&amp;#039;s familiarity with her career, taking on stunts, and reviewing her work with her dad. ESQUIRE.COM: R.I.P.D. is your first movie. It&amp;#039;s got to be kind of a big deal for you, right? MARISA MILLER: Yeah. I still can&amp;#039;t believe that my first film is with such a great cast. I&amp;#039;m really, really excited to see it. ESQ: You&amp;#039;re essentially playing Jeff Bridges? MM: Right. So, Jeff and Ryan Reynolds play cops of the underworld, so they&amp;#039;re like ghost cops. When they&amp;#039;re on earth people see their disguises, their avatars. I play Jeff. So instead of seeing him, you&amp;#039;d see me. That&amp;#039;s where a lot of the humor in the movie comes from. It was pretty cool for me, it being my first film and being able to watch an actor like him work. A lot of it involved him doing a scene, me watching his mannerisms and the cadence in his voice, and then I&amp;#039;d have to step in and do the same thing. That&amp;#039;s really intimidating when it&amp;#039;s Jeff Bridges. ESQ: He&amp;#039;s a pretty unique individual. How do you even begin to mimic him? MM: I know. It sounds really funny. But for whatever reason I really got the humor doing this movie. You had to really just go for it 100 percent. If you didn&amp;#039;t jump right into it and go all the way, you would look silly. ESQ: And who&amp;#039;s the guy who&amp;#039;s Ryan Reynolds&amp;#039;s counterpart that you pal around with? MM: Oh! Grandpa Chen is his character&amp;#039;s name. It&amp;#039;s fun seeing this kind of vamped-up version of a sexy woman and then an old Chinese guy. Us being partners was just visually funny. James Hong, he&amp;#039;s been an actor forever. It was really cool to have him as my partner on set, because he&amp;#039;s just a pro and he knows what he&amp;#039;s doing. I really relied on him when we&amp;#039;d do scenes together. We&amp;#039;d just bounce stuff off of each other and he was a really great support to have. ESQ: That&amp;#039;s lucky to come in and have these veterans almost hold your hand through it your first time acting. Can&amp;#039;t hurt. MM: Absolutely. ESQ: Were you much of a fan of Jeff Bridges before you started working with him? MM: Oh, yeah. Who isn&amp;#039;t a fan of Jeff Bridges? And he is such a unique character. I can&amp;#039;t think of anybody who&amp;#039;s quite like him. He was a lot of fun to be around, just personally. ESQ: He&amp;#039;s kind of a beach laid-back guy, and you kind of have that persona as well. Did you two bond at all? MM: Definitely. He has that vibe of being super laid-back. Music is his passion. I&amp;#039;d get my hair and makeup done sitting next to him every morning, and he&amp;#039;d always have something cool playing in the trailer. It was just very, very easy to be around him. ESQ: Do you think he was familiar with your work at all, as you were with his? MM: I never want to know that. I did not ask him. But I was watching the HBO First Look, like the behind-the-scenes of the movie a couple days ago, and he did kind of say, &amp;quot;Marisa Miller,&amp;quot; with a little wink. So. I was like, &amp;quot;Oh, no!&amp;quot; Kind of embarrassed me but yeah. ESQ: You&amp;#039;re doing a good amount of stunt work in this movie. Don&amp;#039;t you get hit by a bus? MM: It was actually a huge blessing that I got to do some of my stunts, because I&amp;#039;m really athletic. For that to be one of my strengths and be able to add to my character in that way, that was really helpful because it kind of made me just a little bit more confident in the role. I mean, obviously this was on a whole other level, but it was just fun. I got to be strung up on wires and go flying through the sky. ESQ: Don&amp;#039;t you have to be careful about getting beat up, though? MM: Yeah. Definitely. It was actually funny how it evolved with the bus scene because, originally, I wasn&amp;#039;t supposed to do it. Then, all of a sudden, they were like, &amp;quot;Hey, so you&amp;#039;re game to do the stunt tonight?&amp;quot; And I hadn&amp;#039;t heard what I was doing. But my management knows I&amp;#039;m crazy like that and that I ride motorcycles and I&amp;#039;m game. So they went ahead and said, &amp;quot;Yeah, she&amp;#039;ll totally do it.&amp;quot; But I didn&amp;#039;t know what I was doing. The whole time leading up to the shoot, every single person that I ran into was like, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re so brave for doing this. Thanks so much.&amp;quot; And I was like, &amp;quot;What am I doing? What is this? Everyone&amp;#039;s thanking me for being brave.&amp;quot; What am I doing? My stunt double, she was just awesome and broke down everything for me. I think ignorance is bliss in this situation, because it is so mental and if you freak yourself out, you&amp;#039;re gonna freak out. It was really important to just relax and pay attention to what she was telling me to do. I&amp;#039;m hooked up in the harness and my outfit is ridiculous to do stunts in. I&amp;#039;m in heels and a little dress and big hoop earrings and a push-up bra. It&amp;#039;s the most uncomfortable thing you could be in. And she&amp;#039;s telling me, &amp;quot;Make sure that when you hit the windshield you put your hands in front of your face. Because your face will hit the windshield.&amp;quot; And I was like, &amp;quot;Well I hope that&amp;#039;s a natural reaction that I&amp;#039;d put my hands in front of my face.&amp;quot; ESQ: What, you&amp;#039;re gonna keep them at your sides the whole time? MM: Exactly. So, she was kind of reminding me that this was real and even though everyone&amp;#039;s got your back, at the end of the day, you got to put your hands in front of your face. That was kind of the moment where I was like, &amp;quot;Oh, yeah. Okay. Pay attention.&amp;quot; ESQ: Didn&amp;#039;t you have a kid during filming? MM: I shot the movie before I got pregnant and then I did some of the reshoots six weeks after I had Gavin. ESQ: That&amp;#039;s got to be crazy to come back. MM: It was pretty nuts. It was like, I could either do it when I was nine months pregnant or after. [Laughs.]  ESQ: And how&amp;#039;s it going, being a mom? MM: Oh, it&amp;#039;s awesome. I love it. My son, he&amp;#039;s almost seven months now, so he&amp;#039;s laughing and smiling and it&amp;#039;s just the best thing ever. It&amp;#039;s so exhausting. It&amp;#039;s all those things you hear. It&amp;#039;s the hardest thing you&amp;#039;ll do, it&amp;#039;s the best thing you&amp;#039;ll do. That&amp;#039;s exactly what it is. I think the hardest thing at this point is just the sleep deprivation. But being a mom and raising him is the best thing ever. ESQ: You probably get this a lot, but do you ever think about as he grows up and seeing some of the work you&amp;#039;ve done? Has that crossed your mind yet? MM: Oh, totally. And it will definitely play a role in what I do in the future. Or what I won&amp;#039;t do. ESQ: So we&amp;#039;re going to be seeing a little more of the conservative side of Marisa Miller? MM: Well, it will evolve a little I think. I mean, I have a close relationship with my dad and, you know, you have to laugh through things. I mean there were a lot of times when, like, Sports Illustrated would come out. My dad would talk about it for two seconds. He&amp;#039;d be like, &amp;quot;You look great, hon.&amp;quot; Then we&amp;#039;d move on to what&amp;#039;s next. ESQ: It&amp;#039;s gotta be awkward. MM: Super-awkward, but at the same time we just laughed about it and moved on. I think he comes at it from the perspective that I was very athletic in high school and I&amp;#039;ve always been like a healthy person. So that&amp;#039;s always the angle: &amp;quot;Looking healthy!&amp;quot;  Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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