CHRIS NEUMER: I know you first got into modeling because of a skiing accident. How did that all work out?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: I had a skiing accident. God knows where I would be if I didn't have that accident. I was in a downhill race and going really fast. They have this big jump in every race and I didn't go down early enough to cover myself. You have to get down in a crouch right before the jump. I didn’t get down fast enough and I came flying right up and boom, I landed on my shoulder. I think I had a concussion. After I hurt my shoulder I kind of lost my appetite for racing. My mom wasn't really keen on it anyway, but after the accident she wouldn’t let me race anymore. My dad was the guy who was pushing me. He was the captain of the local ski team. I think he wanted two boys and instead he got two girls.

CHRIS NEUMER: So he just pretended you girls were boys?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: Exactly. And then finally when I was in senior high I wanted to try to find out what it's like to be a lady.

CHRIS NEUMER: And that seems to have been treating you pretty well.

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: Oh, yeah. I never planned to be in business, but I always knew I wouldn't be skiing the rest of my life. And I knew I was going to get out of my village. That I knew.

CHRIS NEUMER: What are you working on now?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: I'm doing a play tomorrow night at this theater here in LA and I have to meet with the director and have him approve what I wrote.

CHRIS NEUMER: Which play are you doing?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: It's called Pieces.

CHRIS NEUMER: For some reason, I’m thinking of the candy, Reese’s Pieces.

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: No pieces, like pieces of ass. [Ed. note: The play is actually called Pieces of Ass] The show was really popular in New York and now they came to LA for one month. A couple of nights a week they have a celebrity guest come on and do a five minute monologue in it. This is what I'm going to be doing.

CHRIS NEUMER: What is your monologue going to be on?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: Basically it's all about how hot chicks are perceived in life. I'm going to talk about some of my experiences when I first came here to the United States six years ago. I was kind of naive and barely spoke English. It’s what happens in a couple of examples.

CHRIS NEUMER: This play is all about how attractive women are perceived?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: Yes.

CHRIS NEUMER: So, how are attractive women perceived?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: Oh, you know... I'm just speaking from my own experience, but being tall, blonde, buxom and Swedish, most people think I’m not too bright. It's obvious that people think that. I don't mind it. I'm just kind of playing it up and enjoying it. I make fun of myself too. I honestly don't care. Some girls are really sensitive about that, but I know who I am and I have fun.

CHRIS NEUMER: It's interesting that you can turn it like that. It seems that most women strive to be tall, beautiful, blonde and busty. Here you are and it seems people are giving you a hard time for being the ideal.

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: Well, I guess. I can't speak for everybody. I wouldn't think everybody would think that I am this perfect creature, but some people might think that. It's funny that the biggest thing I get from people is, “Oh my God, you’re not that stupid!” People immediately expect because of the way I look that, “She must be so fucking stupid.” I like to see the surprise on people's faces. It becomes, “God, she's actually quite smart.” I like to surprise people that way.

CHRIS NEUMER: It's certainly better than being thought of as incredibly brilliant and coming off as being sort of average. I've talked with many of other actors and people in entertainment. A lot of them are afraid that they are going to get typecast, that they will be identified as one thing and they will then be stuck with it. Do you ever find that being blonde and beautiful is like an anchor around your neck or prohibits you from doing certain things that you want to do?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: Yeah, obviously it has, but why should I work against it? This is who I am and what I am about. I think you should try to use it to an advantage and not try to work against it. People in [LA], all my agents and some of my managers are always saying, “You have to change, you have to change. You have to be this. You have to be that.” I'm like, “Guys, this is who I am, this is what I look like and I do what I can do.”

CHRIS NEUMER: What kind of changes are they looking for?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: They want you to cut your hair really short or cover your boobs. Should I shrink myself too? Cut off a couple of centimeters? I think you should be proud of who you are and use it to your advantage.

CHRIS NEUMER: Do you ever have to work on crafting the image of Victoria that America knows? I'm assuming that you are more of a real person than we see in the Stuff Magazine or Playboy.

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: I don't wake up in the morning thinking, “God, I'm such a hot chick. I'm such a babe,” if that’s what you mean. I want to play up that image and I try to live up to it everyday. Unfortunately the work that I do and the way the public perceives me is that I'm the hot, tall blonde. So, of course, I play it up. Especially in the photo shoots, I’ll play it up, you know what I mean? I’ll work with it, I’ll click it on. I turn it off when I go home. That’s when I can go back to being casual and as natural as I can.

CHRIS NEUMER: I was looking at some of the other interviews that you have done and I was interested in how you react to some of the questions you get asked. I wrote down some of the better ones here. One of them was, 'Would you ever consider being with a woman?'. Another was, 'How often do you wear a bikini?' A third was 'Who has the nicest butt you've ever seen?' If I tried asking these questions of a woman on the street, I figure that I would get slapped. I think if I asked those questions during an interview my career would quickly end. Do you ever have a knee-jerk reaction to questions of that sort, like, “What the hell are you talking about?”

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: Of course I do. [Unfortunately] I just play around with it. I mean I don't give away everything. It’s kind of like, “You really want to know this?”

CHRIS NEUMER: You said earlier that there have been some questions that have floored you. Is there an example of one that you can throw forth?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: The English press always tries to blow things up and they always want you to push them. They say, “I know you like sex with other women. You like this, you like that.” They’re not even questions really. Maybe I said half of what [they print] and they want to blow it up even more. Yeah, I've had some crazy questions.

CHRIS NEUMER: Are you ever tempted to throw in references to Shakespeare or to make a reference to Ibsen's A Doll’s House and say that you kind of feel like Nora in certain cases and be left looking at a reporter with a blank stare?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: I haven’t but you are giving me good advice there. I'm going to pick that up from you, okay?

CHRIS NEUMER: Feel free. I read somewhere that you said that you much preferred acting in films to that of TV. You said TV was a job and films were essentially a paid vacation.

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: No, I never said I preferred one over the other. I just said that I really enjoyed doing the movies I’ve done because, so far, they’ve had these incredible [locations]. When I did Boat Trip it was around the Greek Islands and when I did Out Cold it was up in Vancouver and around the mountains in Canada. So far the [locations] that I have been on have been just amazing.

CHRIS NEUMER: So a lot of that has to do with the location?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: Yes. Most of what I've done is comedy and I think it sets a special tone on the set because if you are doing a comedy, the ambiance is different from maybe doing a drama. You know what I mean? It's light and fun and the places I've been are just amazing. That's why you probably read that. I've been lucky thus far and I've been going on great vacations to make my movies.

CHRIS NEUMER: If you were shooting a depressing suicide drama over in the middle of Czechoslovakia or the former Czech Republic, that would be a different story?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: Probably, but that would be challenging in its own way. I've never done that so it would be an experience in its own.

CHRIS NEUMER: Now is there anything that you strive to do? As you've said, you have done a lot of comedy. Is there any sense that you want to broaden your horizon in that respect and take on a dramatic project?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: I wouldn't mind. I would definitely want to have that challenge. I would welcome that. It's a matter of proving it to yourself. It's an amazing sense of fulfillment if you take on something like that and you can actually do it. I don't care about proving to others; I want to prove it to myself that I can do it. It's more about the self-fulfillment.

CHRIS NEUMER: That brings up an interesting point. I've been looking at what you have done in your career so far; you've sung, you've been a Playmate, you've co-starred opposite an Academy Award winner in Boat Trip, and I saw recently that you even had a doll made in your likeness.

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: Isn't that crazy?

CHRIS NEUMER: It’s varied. But I thought of all these things that you've done and wondered, do you find any of the accomplishments more satisfying than others?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: It may sound strange, but I love singing. For me, it’s more of a hobby than anything. I don't think I could ever make a career out of it. It was one of those things that I was so lucky to get a record contract with EMI when I did. I loved doing that. It was such a great challenge, but I could never see myself making a full-time career out of it. I still do a lot of modeling and all that stuff and that's great. I've got to ride it out while I can because it's not going to last forever. I think the transition to acting is more long-term career. I would say it is more fulfilling for me to do the acting than anything. Just no more dolls.

CHRIS NEUMER: I know a lot of other top models have attempted to bridge the gap between modeling and acting. Not a lot of them have succeeded. I don't know if you remember when Cindy Crawford tried to do an action movie. I think it was back in '95 and it just flopped! It seems like a lot of models try to turn to acting and it doesn’t work out. Is there an inherent stumbling block between modeling and acting?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: I think it should be looked at on a more case to case basis. That's what I believe. There are so many amazingly beautiful women out there and they don't all have a great personality. It just depends. I think Cindy Crawford had a great personality and maybe she was too well known as a super model. She was the biggest super model in the world. I think since she was so big of a super model that that was all people could see her as. It's not going to work for everybody.

CHRIS NEUMER: No, that's true. Do you do or have you done a lot of runway modeling?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: I did some when I was in college, years ago when I was anorexic. I'm too big of a girl now, I wouldn't fit into those clothes.

CHRIS NEUMER: Did you find that before the show you had to get in character for the show? Did you find that was at all similar to getting into character on a film set?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: Every fashion show has a theme and you have to do whatever the designer wants for the show. Part of it is definitely getting in character.

CHRIS NEUMER: Is there a place you go to get into character or do you just look at it as sort of pretending or just putting on an aloof air?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: I was Inga from Sweden. I could do it with my eyes closed.

CHRIS NEUMER: By the way what's with that? I was going to bring it up later, but since I have the opportunity now I’ll ask; what is with the inordinate number of characters you’ve played who are named Inga or Ingrid?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: I guess I have it written on my forehead. The only place in the world where I've played roles with more depth is in Italy. I've done three movies there, the last two in lead roles. One time I played Kim Novak. That was amazing. I had to get into her character. I had to watch her old movies and I had to do it in Italian.

CHRIS NEUMER: Are you fluent in Italian?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: Yes. I speak Swedish, French, Italian and a little bit of English. That's only four. When you grow up in Sweden, you have to have a second language no matter what. Two is a given. But I’ve dubbed three movies in Italian. I studied the script so I knew it by heart. That's the only place where I’ve gotten a chance to prove myself. There I get a chance. The work I've done here in America is more the Inga role. I want to prove I’m not Inga.

CHRIS NEUMER: What do you think the difference is between the Italian films and the American films? Is it just a difference within the culture or is it the director?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: Things tend to be a little biggerthere. They are such a different type of people. With the Italians everything is big. They just love anything beautiful. If you’re beautiful in LA, it is almost harder. In Italy, they don't judge you just by your looks. They will give you a chance. They feel if you are only beautiful you have a chance to do more. I've gotten the chance to do three movies there. It's been really really good for me to act there. I just hope there would be more of that here in the United States.

CHRIS NEUMER: Monica Bellucci is Italian and also spent time modeling, tying into both conversation strands. She has been doing outstanding work recently, not necessarily in American projects, but she has done a lot of French and Spanish things and does a fantastic job. Would it appeal to you to stay out of the limelight in America, but continue to work in Italian, English, French productions?

VICTORIA SILVSTEDT: If I could do what she is doing, acting in a lot of European productions, I wouldn’t mind. I don't feel like I have to have a break-out in America to be satisfied. I'm not desperate for that. I have an upcoming project in England. It looks like I'm going to be doing the TV show called Denial which is kind of a Sex in the City copy. We're going to start somewhere early in ‘04. Once again though, I'm going to be playing the hot model who comes to London. I'm going to be a model in the business. It's a bigger role which is good, and I'm not going to be named Inga. And that's a really good thing.