The good girl

Move over, Mischa. The real babe on The O.C was doe-eyed, lush-lipped Rachel Bilso n. She has a new movie coming out and, as Georgia Lewis discovered, the oh-so-sweet Miss Bilson won’t be checking into rehab any time soon.

February 2008

“Oh my goodness!” It’s the sort of phrase your mother might say if she is mildly horrified. Or something a prim school teacher will say when her class is misbehaving but she can’t use a rude word. And it’s also the phrase that constantly falls from Rachel Bilson’s perfectly formed mouth.

Rachel, 26, was in town for the Dubai International Film Festival and when I asked her how she enjoyed her experience in the glitzy desert city, the first thing she said to me was: “Oh my goodness!”

“It’s amazing what you guys are doing there,” she enthused as if I was personally labouring on the multitude of construction sites, resplendent in a blue boiler suit. “Oh my goodness, all that building and the Palm islands. I rode in a helicopter and got to see the city by air.”

As well as marvelling at the city of a million cranes, Rachel also did the desert safari thing when she was in Dubai and rode a camel which, unsurprisingly, she said was “something I don’t get to do every day.”

Desert shenanigans aside, Rachel was in Dubai with boyfriend Hayden Christensen to support the premiere of The Edge Of Heaven and Sharon Stone’s AIDS benefit. She was photographed looking seriously glam all over town but didn’t spend too much time hanging out in Dubai’s bars and clubs. “I didn’t get to experience much of the nightlife because of the big time difference,” Rachel said. “I just wanted to be in bed by five o’clock.”

Hopefully she’ll be up for a bigger party when she has a premiere of her own to attend–she’ll be on the red carpet again soon with the premiere of her forthcoming film Jumper. Co-starring with her boyfriend, Jumper is not a film about wintry knitwear.

It is actually a sci-fi thriller about a young man who has the ability to teleport himself anywhere – a jumper. The plot gets a little freaky when he discovers this strange gift has existed for centuries and there is a war going on between jumpers and those who want to kill them. Rachel plays Millie, the girlfriend of Davey, the troubled time traveller.

Rachel’s sweeter-than-mango-lassi side again came to the fore when asked why she took on the role. “Oh my goodness, the director was Doug Liman and I’d do anything to be involved in a film with him, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” she said. Liman was the executive producer of Mr And Mrs Smith, director of The Bourne Identity and also directed two episodes of The O.C, the show that launched Rachel to stardom.

“It has everything,” Rachel said of the film. “Action, adventure, a love story, great special effects, it looks great…”

Jumper is her first big feature film – her big break was her role as the brilliantly bitchy Summer Roberts in The O.C and up until then, her CV mostly consisted of guest roles and TV commercials. But now she is a bona fide celebrity and regular feature on the best-dressed lists of women’s magazines and the most-sexiest lists of men’s magazines, how does she feel about being public property?

“Oh my goodness, that was so weird to suddenly be in the spotlight, it’s something you never quite get used to,” she said. “[The media can be] very intrusive and you don’t get much privacy but you come to terms with it because it comes with the territory.”

Rachel has become used to her private life becoming public property – last year she broke up with Adam Brody, her boyfriend of two years and co-star on The O.C and now with Hayden Christensen on her arm, her relationship is again in the public eye. But she is doing her best to keep her private life private by not commenting to the media on her relationships.

Nor is it likely that you will see Rachel’s picture splashed all over the tabloids in less-than-classy style like many of her young Hollywood counterparts. While Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan have been snapped by the paps sans knickers, Rachel is adept at always looking sexy but in a way that you could take home to your mother. Her O.C co-star Mischa Barton was hogging the limelight as the show’s main babe and stylish-girl-about-town but now her tiara is tarnished by a drink-driving charge with the obligatory unflattering mug shot. No such shots exist of Rachel. And it’s highly unlikely that she’ll be doing any Lindsay Lohan-style stints in rehab or rushing into inappropriate 55-hour Vegas marriages a la Britney. Instead, Rachel has made a point of not becoming a ubiquitous figure on the Hollywood party scene.

“I stay away from that, I’d rather hang out at home,” she said. “Most of my friends are my childhood girlfriends.”

With that sort of sensible attitude, she’s definitely the girl you could take home to meet the folks without fear of embarrassing dinner table faux pas. Add a disarming modesty and an ambitious streak that is tempered by a desire to have a family and she truly is a genuinely good girl. “A family is my number one priority,” she said.

But what about her career? At the moment, Rachel is contemplating her next move and deciding what project she will do next. All she will say is that she is hoping it will be another film.

Does she dream of the kind of acclaim that comes with winning an Oscar? “Oh my goodness!’ she said once more, as if the thought of thanking the Academy had never crossed her mind. “I just want to do a good job and succeed to a certain level.”

What? No talk of a burning desire to star in a Wim Wenders film or hibernate at an obscure New York acting school to finetune her craft in between doing off-Broadway plays? Nope. In fact, when she’s not acting, she is supporting The Art Of Elysium, a charity that allows seriously ill children to express themselves through creative projects. And not only does she attend the glam gala fundraising events, she actually visits the hospitals to see the kids who benefit from the projects.

This is a sweet, down-to-earth actress who just happens to be blessed with a face and body that the camera loves. Oh my goodness.

• Jumper opens in the UAE February 7.