A PALE VIEW ON THE HILLS

In defense of Audrina Patridge, and other reality babes.

Deny it all you want, but you probably know who Audrina Patridge is, if only due to the sheer amount of hours MTV airs The Hills, on which the actress has appeared since 2006.  Yes, the actress. Patridge, unlike her castmates on the show, was chasing the Hollywood dream, an aspiring starlet toiling away as an assistant at a photo studio.

"Right after I graduated, I moved straight to Los Angeles and just started going to auditions and castings," she says, fresh from a jaunt to Vegas for her brother's 21st birthday. "So I was laying out by the pool and Adam DiViello, the producer, approached me about this new show he was doing and if I was interested and blah, blah, blah. And he said he was from MTV,  and I was like, 'Wait a minute, is this a dating show? 'Cause I'm not interested.' "

After five seasons on a "scripted drama", Patridge can be seen this fall in her first feature film, Sorority Row, a remake of the 1983 horror movie The House on Sorority Row, which co-stars Rumer Willis, Briana Evigan, and Carrie Fisher. Patridge's character, Megan, gets murdered ("It's a very gory death," she says) and her fellow Theta Pis seek revenge. "[The original film] kind of reminded me of, like, I Know What You Did Last Summer or Scream, and there really hasn't been a horror film like those since I was in my early teen years, so it was really exciting. There's lots of suspense. It's going to keep people guessing and jumping, 'cause no one really knows who the killer is until the very end," says Patridge."And there's lots of hot girls in it. Sorority girls."

While the horror genre clearly inspires her, a couple of recent situations, including an Internet photo mini-scandal and a break-in at her home, would send most people running for, er, the hills. Yet Patridge, undeterred by these setbacks, is about to get a reality show all her own, with reality-super producer Mark Burnett.

"Once I was done with The Hills, I kinda wanted to be done and just focus on movies and acting, and that's it. Since it's going to be my show, I can incorporate all that into it. I'm also producing on it," she says. So, if you're still feigning ignorance about her identity, you won't be able to for much longer.
--HOLLY SIEGEL

Plus: We interviewed Lauren Conrad
And Whitney Port
And doesn't Audrina look a bit like Lindsay Lohan?



This story was published on August 13, 2009.