You know Olivia Wilde. She's the one who impressed you as the naughty nympho in Alpha Dog, the old-souled lass in The Black Donnellys, the coed prey in Turistas. She's interesting, too: She eloped with Italian prince Tao Ruspoli when she was 18 years old; she has dual citizenship in the United States and Ireland; she went to Phillips Andover and renamed herself after Oscar Wilde. But if you ask any young American male, you'll hear about the time she French-kissed Mischa Barton on The O.C., and how, dude, it was way hot.
The 24-year-old Wilde is well aware of our gender's ridiculous fixation on this moment, and even more aware of the fact that her role on Fox's prime-time juggernaut House — as a sexy doctor who works from, uh, both sides of the operating table — may not help her cause. "Most times my name is mentioned in any sort of magazine," Wilde says, "it has to add, 'known for playing the bisexual.' And now, after House, it'll be, 'known for always playing the bisexual.'" She lets loose a full-throated laugh, the sound an elegant, extroverted loon might make if it could express amusement. "I'm developing a bit of a thing here! Harold Ramis" — who's directing her in the upcoming biblical-era romp, The Year One — "joked, 'We gotta get you to make out with a girl in this movie, to keep up your record.'"
The actress is talking via cell phone from New Orleans, about to hop a plane back to L.A., where she lives with Ruspoli, a 32-year-old filmmaker. For the past two months she's been filming The Year One in Shreveport with Jack Black and Michael Cera — and bumping into pretty much everyone else in the business. "Shreveport is like the new Hollywood," she says, describing nights out at local crab shacks. "You look over at dinner, and there's Oliver Stone, or Michael Douglas. There's this invasion of L.A. people constantly demanding wheat-free pasta and diet soda."
But Hugh Laurie and the cast of House keep it more real, which is partly why Wilde — whose enigmatic character, known only as "Thirteen," will be paged regularly when the show returns this month — is boggled by the runaway ratings. "It's strange to be on this rocket ship of a show that doesn't see itself as being successful," Wilde says. "When we hear our ratings every week, I'm like, 'No way. What? 20 million people were not watching TV at the same time.'"
Wilde's questioning nature is rooted in her Washington, D.C., upbringing: Her lefty journalist parents, Leslie and Andrew Cockburn, exposed her early on to in-vino-veritas salons with the likes of Hitchens and Hersh. She was nearly kicked out of Andover — "like seven times," she reckons — and her affinity for revolutionaries (she's writing a screenplay on the subject, to be directed by Ruspoli) has recently drawn her to Barack Obama. This past winter, she braved ice storms in Iowa to barnstorm on his behalf, and her story about joining the campaign is vintage Girl Gone Wilde. "I was on the set of House with Kal Penn one day, getting really jazzed about Obama, and my phone rings," she begins. "I answer and it's like, 'Heeey, Olivia? This is Ba-rack O-bama.' I did my best to sound completely unfazed, but I apparently used the word honor like eight times in one sentence, trying to play it cool. Like, 'I'm honored, it's an honor, I'm honored, you're honored' for five minutes. And then I hung up and started screaming, 'Ooooooooohhh my God, ahhhhhhh, Obamaaaaaaaaa!!' And I realize, of course, that I did not press END, and my friend who was actually on the conversation, who's working for him, told me the next day, 'You squeaked for 15 seconds before he hung up.'" Wilde inhales sharply, out of breath — a rarity. "I'm still kind of mortified."
