Just what is an Imogen Poots, anyway? Well, not counting the wicked British wit, the Cameron Diaz smile and the sultry gaze that evokes an illicit union betweeen Amanda Seyfried and Scarlett Johansson (just humor us), quite a bit, actually. The native Londoner first broke as a fleet-flooted teen outrunning zombies in 28 Weeks Later. Then came a flashback to ancient Rome with Michael Fassbender in Centurion, a jape with Michael Douglas and Susan Sarandon in Solitary Man and a sojourn through the moors with Mia Wasikowska in Jane Eyre. She recently filmed the drama A Late Quartet, sharing the screen with heavyweights Christopher Walken and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and this season, she returns to horror, helping to stake some vampire ham (Colin Farrell) in the latest take on Fright Night. Despite the impressive CV, there’s one sign of Hollywood success Poots has yet to experience: the paparazzi. Currently shooting the drama Greetings from Tim Buckley, she remains blissfully anonymous. “Oh my God, the paparazzi here have no clue,” Poots says. “I’ve never had a run-in. I’m sure they just think I’m some sort of road sign.”

Source: L.A. Times Magazine

Imogen Poots does a mean Charles Bukowski. She’ll also do a pretty convincing Allen Ginsberg. “They’re on my iTunes,” she says, “you’ll be listening to Depeche Mode, or something, and then it’ll be like, ‘I saw the best minds of my generation…’ It’s awesome.”

So begins a surprising interview with the incredibly surprising star of this August’s Fright Night. We certainly weren’t anticipating sitting across from someone we’d last seen on-screen in intense hair extensions and supplementary boobs swapping Faulkner and Leonard Cohen quotes or discussing various means of remembrance.

Rushing into the diner at the Standard in West Hollywood, the London-based actress immediately dives in, extolling her well-considered philosophies with a combination of confident intensity and early-20s squirminess. The scenery makes her uneasy; the stark white of the restaurant reminds her of a somewhat nightmarish experience she had while staying at the Mondrian in New York. The two days spent in her lavishly bare hotel room with nothing to do was a sort of a worst-case scenario for her: “I called up my brother and said ‘I’m feeling really weird,’ and he said ‘Well, you have to do something. Find a catharsis.’ I went to an art shop on Canal Street and I bought these stencils and started doing huge stencils [on the floor of] my room. [I thought,] I’ve got my stencils; I’m going to be fine.”

Later in our conversation, it becomes clearer why a few extra days with an empty schedule in a stimulus-free room would create such panic. “It’s that terrifying feeling of being numb,” she says, “That’s the fear. You end up seeing so many cool places and finding out interesting things or meeting people that blow your mind, or leave you cold, or whatever. But when you feel numb, that’s such a terrifying prospect.” It’s this trepidation that keeps her feverishly running in and out of art shops and bookstores wherever she goes. While filming Fright Night in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she bought so many used books that she had to have a friend ship them back to her in the U.K. “I find a lot of things uninteresting, so when [I] can find something that holds [my] attention, or curiosity, I suppose, that’s a good thing…I think it’s important to have other things that you’re interested in to feed your mind.”

Source: Foam Magazine

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