"I had a couple of conversations with friends about whether or not I really wanted to do interviews anymore," Rosario Dawson tells me with obvious disgust in her voice. "The whole point of doing press is to reach the masses and tell them that I am working on a project and I think they should trust me to see it. If you want my opinion, I recommend you pay the ten dollars and watch this movie because I think you would enjoy it." Dawson sighs a long exasperated sigh. "I don’t think that people are going to see me in a movie because they think I’m dating Chris Judd." She laughs at the insanity of the matter and then says, "Well, if they are, then I’m not doing my job right."

It’s early in the afternoon on a sparkling summer Friday when I talk to Dawson. She is filled with her usual overabundance of energy. Not that you would get this from her roles in films like Kids, Chelsea Walls or Men in Black II, but Dawson talks faster than anyone else that I have ever interviewed. She absolutely races through her sentences. Whole thoughts roll off her tongue in single pronunciations. Unlike some people who refuse to have opinions, Dawson is not afraid to share her convictions. Regardless of whether she is chastising George W. Bush for stealing the 2000 presidential election, talking about how beautiful Salma Hayek is or discussing what a fan she is of the works of Stephen Hawking, Dawson weaves in and out of different topics with a passion for whatever it is about which she is conversing. In no time at all, we have touched on her acting career, her aspirations to produce ("I’ve already produced a short film," she states excitedly) and her aforementioned relationship with the media.

"There are some people who like to be in the press all the time," Dawson continues, returning the topic to the incestuous relationship between Hollywood, fame and the media. "To them, it doesn’t really matter if their movie is doing well. They are still really famous and that is all they care about. They are the commodity rather than their films. Me?" she asks, not stopping for a second even to catch her breath, "I don’t like doing press unless I have a movie coming out."

Dawson currently has two movies circling the globe on the festival circuit, This Girl’s Life and Shattered Glass, as well as a movie that opened September 26, The Rundown.

"I don’t feel like I am a product," Dawson says. "I’m not going to have a company named Rosario Dawson, Inc. I don’t really need to brand anybody with my name."

Certain actors have long and extensive backgrounds and training before they get their big breaks. Dawson doesn’t. As a matter of fact, she got her big break at age fifteen while sitting on the stoop of her home in Manhattan’s East Village. It doesn’t get much easier than that. Spotted by renowned photographer and director, Larry Clark (Bully), Dawson soon found herself in a supporting role in Clark’s 1995 dramatic urban tale, Kids.

Dawson had no formal acting training of any kind prior to her work in Kids and, interestingly, doesn’t look at this as a negative element.

"What I do is very organic," Dawson explains, "I’ve done a lot of stuff for the experience. I try things out just to see how they are. I try to branch out and see what else I’m interested in doing or what I’m not interested in doing."

This should be obvious by looking at Dawson’s career choices, with films as big as The Adventures of Pluto Nash and as small as Chelsea Walls to her credit.

When I question her about whether she prefers working on the big-budget blockbusters or the no-budget Indies, Dawson takes the middle road for a short while. "I really like the whole production of making a movie," she laughs, realizing that she is gently straddling the fence on this issue. "Whether you are making a big-budget or an independent movie, it’s hard to make. You have to be focused. You have to team together. And that’s what I’m interested in. I’m interested in that group mentality where you try to have all the creative juices flowing in the same direction."

Dawson’s independent roots start to show when she continues by saying summarily, "I have to be with people who really want to be doing what they’re doing. I want to be with the kids who really want to make a project, who go after it with love and are trying to make do with what they have and make it exciting and are putting a lot of energy into it." She contrasts that with, "It’s not like some regular Hollywood movie that’s just a big ego trip where you’re just getting paid to look good and then getting paid again."

Working with Spike Lee definitely falls under her creative heading. Having worked with Lee once in 1998’s He Got Game, Dawson was very interested in working with him again. "He’s very challenging," Dawson states. "I like working with someone with a vision who is uncompromising about that vision. Very few people are like that who really care that much." She laughs again and says, "I knew that I got Spike right when we were sitting together at the Berlin Film Festival. I was sitting next to him watching the movie and he was going, ‘Look at that shot. Look at the extra in the background of that one.’" She shrugs. "He so loves what he does."

Regardless of the size of the production, though, Dawson simply wants to be able to act. She puts a unique perspective on the art of acting by stating, "We all play characters and choose to adopt personas in our own lives, but I get to do that in a much more 100% sort of way." She smiles, "I do that in a conscious way and it’s really fun. It gives me the opportunity to step in someone else’s shoes. I get to know people better."

And with that, Dawson is off on another impassioned examination of her craft. "Can you change your life in one day?" she asks rhetorically, not even alluding to the fact that that idea is the principle behind one of her most accomplished projects to date, Lee’s The 25th Hour. "Absolutely, because you choose your life. It’s not like you wake up every day and say, ‘I’m a writer and this is what I do.’ You are different with everybody you meet and you choose to be that way."

She floats another scenario past me, "You may wake up one morning and say, ‘I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m going to do something else instead.’ It might not be very lucrative, but you are choosing it." Dawson takes this idea one step further. "You don’t have to be shy or angry or moody or any of those different things," she pronounces. "But you can also choose to [behave differently], because we’re thoughtful creatures."

This latest idea intrigues Dawson and she leaps. In mid-sentence she stops and says, "I like that idea. I’m being myself when I talk to my mother. I have my whole life and my priorities that come with it. All of a sudden, when I’m acting, I’m a different character with all these other priorities."

Her ability to be involved with acting allows her to step into the life of another person. "Exactly," she says. "And it’s really fun because I can see if I was born under different circumstances that I’d be a totally different person."

Despite the near constant shifting of personas and priorities in Dawson’s life, the one thing she keeps closely guarded is her own personal situation. It was this topic that got her discussing her disdain for the majority of media outlets in the first place.

She laughs off the near constant press she is getting about a supposed relationship she has with the aforementioned Judd, but the truth of the matter is that it still bothers her that she has to deal with trivial things like that in the first place.

"That kind of conversation is a waste of my time," she says bluntly. "It’s not to be rude, but it’s like, within a few minutes, you are not going to get to know me. Some of those questions are really personal questions too," she continues, genuinely surprised that people will actually ask prodding, personal questions. "I mean, these are questions that even my family or my friends don’t know about. It’s not pertinent information to be in a magazine."

"That’s not the whole purpose of having this conversation," she sighs again. "It should be about talking about how I was on this movie and I was working with these people. You want to have the inside story about it and I can give you that. Beyond that, to try to get to know who I am underneath is impossible to do and you are going to get it wrong." She shakes her head and finishes the thought with, "It’s just going to tick me off, so why even do it? Just because you can demand an answer doesn’t mean you get one."

Lee is a favorite director of Dawson’s. This isn’t just because he is challenging and has an uncompromised vision, but because that vision and his style of direction are also refreshingly original, and that meshes well with Dawson. "The 25th Hour was very introspective," Dawson says. "Everyone was kind of dealing with their own world. A lot of that takes quiet time. The camera wasn’t in your face," which is a change of pace for her. Lee’s directive on The 25th Hour included a host of ‘stolen’ shots that would be shot from across the street or from a moving camera truck as the subjects were on the sidewalk. "That’s exactly what I liked about it," Dawson states. "I think the camera angles kind of allowed for some interesting ideas to come up because it gave us the opportunity of not having [the camera] in our face."

Playing similar roles as the lead’s girlfriend, Dawson didn’t want her performance as Naturelle to mirror her performance as Lala in He Got Game and took significant strides to achieve this end. "In the book The 25th Hour was based on, Naturelle was a runner," Dawson says, laughing while remembering. "She did a lot of little things, so I started running. I really wanted to get in shape because there was a scene that I did where the camera was strapped to me and I had to be running at top speed." Dawson fails to mention that she also had to deliver several lines of dialogue with the camera strapped to her while she is running. "It didn’t make it into the movie," she says of the scene disgustedly.

Returning to running, Dawson says, "I found it an interesting idea that she runs, because Naturelle is smart and she’s beautiful and she’s lazy, you know? And running takes a lot of effort." While Naturelle swore by the activity of jogging, Dawson doesn’t quite follow in her footsteps. "Running is personal, isolating and relaxing," she begins. "It was interesting doing things in her shoes and trying to imagine what kind of person she would be." A hearty peal of laughter escapes from Dawson and she says, "It was really fun because I thought running was extremely boring. It’s really not my sport."

It was fun because it was boring? I question her on this contradiction and receive a long-winded and delightfully off-the-cuff reply. "It was fun being in someone else’s head space," Dawson starts. "If someone is really attracted to running, then they have to be within this certain kind of frame of mind." She throws up her hands about the matter, "If someone needs this kind of relaxation, then they must be stressed about something."

After nearly an hour of discussion, Dawson and I have covered her role in The 25th Hour and He Got Game, touched briefly on her role in The Rundown (which used to be called Helldorado), talked about the concept of celebrity and delved into what it is that makes acting so enjoyable for her – it’s the ability to be someone else for a short while – among a generous sampling of other topics. It seems as though the interview is about to draw to a close when we get onto the subject of Josie and the Pussycats.

"I think it touched on some really cool subjects," Dawson begins, "I mean, when you have a president in office who stole the election and cuts money on education so soda companies start putting up money [for it]. There is so much panhandling to kids and ridiculous marketing. It’s like the Laker Girls use this shampoo. I mean, who cares?" And she’s off again, on one of her patented tangents.

This much enthusiasm cannot possibly be a bad thing.