WILD AT HEART
Thanks to her hypnotic performances in Spring Breakers and Pretty Little Liars, Ashley Benson
is firmly in play as one of Hollywood’s most wanted.
Merits aside, Harmony Korine’s naughty film Spring Breakers will be remembered for its shock value. (Teen queens Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens: not that innocent!) But the movie’s real revelation is the tertiary Ashley Benson and her unforgettable take on Brit, the ringleader of a drug-drenched Floridian murder spree executed during a school vacation.
Unlike her co-stars, Benson ended up in the film almost accidentally. Her role was rumored to have originally belonged to another actress, who bowed out of the project due to creative differences with the notoriously eccentric Korine. “I met him for the first time when I went to go shoot the film,” says Benson of the director, who hired her after watching a casting tape just before filming began. “I wasn’t really familiar with his work until I got the script. Once I did, I looked him up on YouTube. I watched some of his stuff, thinking he’d be some crazy, weird-ass director, but he couldn’t be more down to earth and normal.”
Spoken with the diplomacy of a true A-lister in training. But Benson really is primed for superstardom, and at 23, she’s already earned a decade’s worth of professional experience. On the Days of Our Lives set, where she toiled during her high school years, she developed a dogged work ethic. “I would have 80 pages to read a day, and long speeches to memorize,” she recalls. Her current day job, as proverbial high school mean girl Hanna Marin on Pretty Little Liars, requires a similar grind. “We usually start at five in the morning, and go for 12 or 15 hours,” she says, like that’s normal. “I used to overprepare my lines, and it just seemed too rehearsed. Now, I go at it last minute. I don’t even know what I’m filming that day.
Suddenly in crazy demand, Benson is getting a lot pickier when it comes to projects. “Before Spring Breakers, my schedule was so busy with the show that I was like, ‘I’ll take whatever comes at me.’ Now, I don’t, because I really want to like the project, and I really want it to be different. I love a good independent film, because there’s not a lot of pressure, and you kind of get a little more say in what you get to do with your character.”
But her breakout season hasn’t been completely fuss-free. In recent months, certain blogs have gone gaga over rumors that she’s dating Spring Breakers co-star James Franco, which he took to The Huffington Post to deny. She doesn’t go quite that far. “They say that I have 15 boyfriends right now, so I don’t really pay attention to it,” she says, a touch staccato.
Benson is down, however, to talk about her style. “It’s tomboyish,” she declares, citing a love of skinny jeans, motorcycle boots, and leather jackets. “I usually wear black and white, and I don’t like wearing high heels. I just like to be comfortable.” We don’t doubt it.