Cerina Vincent is a self-proclaimed and publically pronounced hot chick. Vincent is a rising movie actress but after appearing in films like Not Another Teen Movie and Cabin Fever, she became an icon of beauty but she wasnt happy with herself. She took herself on a personal journey and found a way to love herself. Now shes co-written the book How To Eat Like a Hot Chick with Jodi Lipper which tells people in a humorous way how they could do the same for themselves.
Buy the book How To Eat Like a Hot Chick
Daniel Robert Epstein: You mentioned that you are starting a movie soon, whats it called?
Cerina Vincent: I knew you were going to ask that. I was actually just up at my agency signing contracts for that. Its called like The Prince, the something, the something, The Joker and The Queen [possibly called The Prince, the Pimp, the Jackal and the Spayed]. I dont know the exact name because they keep saying Untitled Prince on all our stuff but its a comedy.
DRE: Whats your role?
CV: I play the role of this chick Andrea whos a poker junkie. The movies half scripted and half improv, so it should be interesting. I just dont know what the name is. Im such a retard.
DRE: Whos the director?
CV: This guy Beni Atoori. Hes produced a bunch of films and I think this is his second feature that hes directing so it should be interesting. But this summer some movies I did are coming out like Everybody Wants to be Italian, which is my first romantic comedy. Its really cute. Then Return to House on Haunted Hill for Dark Castle comes out in the fall.
DRE: Where did the idea for the book come from?
CV: Jodi and I were on a plane to New York from LA watching TV and there was this dude on The Food Network on that Calorie Commando show. He was a heavy-set, middle-aged guy basically telling women how to eat like Heres a way to eat low-fat Mexican food and he gave some stupid ideas on how to make a burrito fat-free. We were like If anybody should be telling women how to make bad food a little bit healthier and more fun, it should be us. Girls that work in this business and have to look good for a job while still managing to enjoy chocolate cake and real Mexican food and blah, blah, blah, blah. So first we thought we should do a cooking show and then we decided it would be better as a book. We just started writing back and forth. We got this great agent and publishers were loving it. But it ended up not selling because neither of us are nutritionists. Apparently its good to have some sort of medical degree if youre going to write a diet book. So we said fuck them, were going to do it ourselves and we decided to self-publish it.
DRE: When I first read about the book, I thought it was some humor book.
CV: It is.
DRE: Right but I assumed it was an all humor book and not actually about eating at all. But you guys really went out there and broke down what a hot chick should eat in every situation.
CV: Exactly. We dont take ourselves too seriously in the book but at the same time, we do. I think that its really funny and we joke around a lot but theres some really good advice and really good information. There are things that we do that actually work. Like Im going to eat differently at Christmas time than I would right before I start a movie. So we use our own advice and other people have also and theyve dropped weight from it and feel more confident and feel better. That was our point. Its just to make women feel good about themselves.
DRE: How is the book doing?
CV: This is only our second day of officially being on sale and were selling a lot. Its just the first in a series of books. Our next book is going to be How to Love like a Hot Chick which is about dating and sex and relationships and when youre single and when you have a boyfriend and when youre getting married.
DRE: Are hot chicks allowed to call themselves hot chicks?
CV: Well, yeah to a certain extent. You dont want to walk around and boast and be overly confident and make other people feel insecure. Thats not hot. Were talking about just feeling good about yourself. I was naked in movies and my boobs were all over the internet and I was in Maxim, FHM so to the world I was considered a hot chick but I didnt feel that way. I felt completely insecure for a couple of years because women put a lot of pressure on themselves and we get really confused about whats beautiful and whats not. Once I figured out that it really doesnt matter what anybody else thinks about me, I started to feel empowered. Once I rewired my brain, better work came, I started making more money, I started choosing better guys, I got into a relationship where I fell in love with somebody. All those things change when you feel good about yourself and I think thats what were trying to say but in a witty way.
DRE: So this is like a humorous version of The Secret?
CV: I havent read The Secret but I know a lot about it. Jodi and I both live our life that way. We really believe that what you say comes true and the power of positive thinking, all that stuff.
DRE: What made you stop caring about what people thought of you?
CV: It was a culmination of a lot of things. When I first started off in this business as a young girl, I had an eating disorder. I was really thin and I spent my whole life trying to not eat or drink, be skinny and be in the gym for a million hours a day. I dont know how I did it but I woke up one day and realized that this was not that important. Theres more to life and I was missing out. Jodi and I both are really hard workers, we were working our asses off at very young ages and were trying to make something of our life. Then in our spare time, we were worrying about what we were eating, what we were not eating, what diet we should be on and how it would be better if I looked like that. We wasted so many years being insecure or what we call in our book, LSE which is low self-esteem. Together we had to help each other and we got our shit together and then our lives changed so we decided to write a book about it.
DRE: When Cabin Fever came out you began to get more attention. Was it being more prominent that made you say I really need to take control of my life?
CV: Yes, it was. When I took off my clothes in Not Another Teen Movie, it was a huge decision but I wasnt really prepared, at the age of 21, for the aftershocks of that. Like how I was going to feel and the same thing with Cabin Fever. Theres a lot of lascivious energy throughout the business thrown at you and a lot of attention is paid to your body and it starts making you obsess about it even more. One day I woke up and I was like, I have got to get some control or I am not going to continue to work. Like I said, I wasnt having any fun.
DRE: In the acknowledgments you say that sometimes you dont need to be a hot chick. Sometimes you just want to eat like a regular chick.
CV: When you have an eating disorder, your worst fear is for someone to tell you youre fat. When I rewired my brain and stopped taking tons of diet pills, working out excessively and eating healthier, I gained 25 pounds really quick. I went from a size zero to a size six and the casting directors noticed it.
DRE: How long ago was this?
CV: Close to two years ago. It was for a period of like six months where I felt sexier inside, yet I was a little bit bigger. My boobs got out of control but I wasnt upset at all. I was still getting callbacks for swimsuit commercials, I just wasnt super skinny. But my manager started getting phone calls saying, Shes put on weight. She looks heavier, she looks different. For a girl with an eating disorder, thats her worst fear come true. So in the acknowledgements I was thanking my manager for sticking by me while I had that those few months.
DRE: But is it something you never completely get over?
CV: I think that a lot of women, whether they are in this business or not, are sensitive about their body. So theres absolutely those days where I completely panic if I have to do a scene in a movie or a photo shoot or something. Im like, Oh my gosh, am I okay? Am I good enough? I think that most girls go through that in life. We have to constantly check ourselves and ask why we are thinking that and why we care what other people think.
DRE: Ssometimes we see a new actress in a breakout performance and she looks great. Then as time goes on we keep see her get thinner and thinner. So that is pressure from casting agents, managers for them to lose weight?
CV: Yeah Im like, You got the job, why are you a zero now? But I think its a combination of a lot of things. It can just be yourself. I cant stand watching myself of on TV or in movies. Its like listening to your own voice on the answering machine. It just feels weird. I was at a screening of the romantic comedy I was in and I was like, Wow, is that what I really look like?
DRE: A lot of the book seems to say that if you eat this way you might get a better kind of guy. Do you look at it that way too?
CV: Yeah, I completely think that. When you start loving yourself and when you start just feeling good about yourself and when you start feeling beautiful, youre going to look for a guy thats going to mirror that back to you. When were totally insecure and we look in the mirror and we tell our boyfriends, Oh my gosh, Im fat, Im not going out, what can he do? He cant make you feel beautiful. I think that when we feel good about ourselves, we wont tolerate anything less than somebody treating us well.
DRE: How do you like self-publishing?
CV: We started out not having any idea how we were going to do it and its a big challenge but its been fun. Since weve published the book, we have people coming to us saying Ive always wanted to write a book. How did you do it? So were thinking about maybe starting a little publishing company and helping other people publish their book.
DRE: Did you ever think about doing it as an ebook?
CV: No because I think that our book is really cute and it is for women and girls and we like to buy things because its got cute packaging. Were going to do a series of books that will feature a different beautiful little pin-up girl and itll be really sexy and fun and cute. Were more focusing on how this is going to be fun for a girl to have in her hand or to give to her girlfriend or give away at bachelorette parties.
DRE: When I publish this interview on SuicideGirls, I think the response is going to be positive. But I can see some people that might have the wrong idea in their head since the book, of course, uses the phrase hot chick a lot.
CV: We did a radio interview last night and a woman there was like, How dare you. With all the problems that are going on with our youth and everything they have to see on TV and magazines, you write a book on how to be hot. We were like, Wait! No! Read the book. What were saying is, quit the stupid dieting circle. Quit looking at fashion magazines and stupid tabloid magazines and all those skinny celebrities. Were telling them to stop in the book. The title might be a little bit controversial but one of the first things we do in the book is tell the reader that they are a hot chick. We might get a little backlash from the title but all publicity is good publicity. We didnt really ever think about that. We just thought it was a cute catchy title.
I had a friend that was a mentor to me during my mini depression. She pulled me out of my misery and really taught me how to embrace myself. If a woman is lucky she has somebody that comes along and holds their hand through times of crisis. We wanted to be those girls to other girls.
DRE: I read an article that said that in your movies you show a bit more skin youre your Italian Catholic family would like. Im sure your family supports you but were they ever like, Hey, we didnt take you to that Miss Teen USA thing for you to go be naked in movies.?
CV: My parents are cool and are proud of me but I come from a very large Italian Catholic family and they are by no means perfect. Weve had a lot of shady shit go on in my family, but I guess its their way of showing that they care about me. We have that holier than thou thing going on, but I love them more than anything. I did Howard Stern once and they were not happy about that. When I say they, I mean a few extended family members. Theyre all proud of me though. I have a brother and when he was in college, Not Another Teen Movie was out in theatres. He was joining a fraternity and to fuck with him at one of their parties, they had my boobs from Not Another Teen Movie paused in all of the rooms. So its things like that. I have a little sister thats 18 and wants to be an actress and I want to set a good example.
DRE: You probably get offered a lot of horror films. Is the genre something that you enjoy?
CV: I really wasnt into horror movies before I started in the business, but since Ive been doing them, Ive grown to like them and the horror fans are great. Also now that Ive worked on them, I know theyre all fake. Ive actually started to write horror movies. Ive got a manager and a writing partner named Ben Waller. Theyre trying to sell me as the Scream Queen who writes horror films. So thats been fun. I have one that might move into production this summer so fingers crossed.
DRE: What else do you have going on?
CV: I have a pilot I shot called Wifey for VH1 and BET. I should know by June 1st if thats getting picked up and if it is then Im moving New York to do that.
DRE: Whats Wifey about?
CV: Its an hour long drama about the music industry. Wifey is the wives of music producers and rappers and things like that, so it fits very well into the VH1, BET world.
DRE: Which network is it going to air on?
CV: Both. Theyre doing this new thing. Its never been done before where theyre going to have the same show air on two different networks at exactly the same time. But we dont know if its getting picked up to air or not. Well know in a like a month.
DRE: Who is the creator of Wifey?
CV: The creator was this guy Michael Elliot and Reginald Hudlin whos also the president and CEO of BET directed the pilot. I did another pilot that I did for Showtime called Man Child but I dont think that ones going. I heard that I didnt get picked up by Showtime but now theyre pitching it to HBO or something. Everybody Wants to be Italian comes out in the summer and Im excited about that because that will be something that my big Italian family would love because its about Italians and I dont take off my clothes.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Buy the book How To Eat Like a Hot Chick
Daniel Robert Epstein: You mentioned that you are starting a movie soon, whats it called?
Cerina Vincent: I knew you were going to ask that. I was actually just up at my agency signing contracts for that. Its called like The Prince, the something, the something, The Joker and The Queen [possibly called The Prince, the Pimp, the Jackal and the Spayed]. I dont know the exact name because they keep saying Untitled Prince on all our stuff but its a comedy.
DRE: Whats your role?
CV: I play the role of this chick Andrea whos a poker junkie. The movies half scripted and half improv, so it should be interesting. I just dont know what the name is. Im such a retard.
DRE: Whos the director?
CV: This guy Beni Atoori. Hes produced a bunch of films and I think this is his second feature that hes directing so it should be interesting. But this summer some movies I did are coming out like Everybody Wants to be Italian, which is my first romantic comedy. Its really cute. Then Return to House on Haunted Hill for Dark Castle comes out in the fall.
DRE: Where did the idea for the book come from?
CV: Jodi and I were on a plane to New York from LA watching TV and there was this dude on The Food Network on that Calorie Commando show. He was a heavy-set, middle-aged guy basically telling women how to eat like Heres a way to eat low-fat Mexican food and he gave some stupid ideas on how to make a burrito fat-free. We were like If anybody should be telling women how to make bad food a little bit healthier and more fun, it should be us. Girls that work in this business and have to look good for a job while still managing to enjoy chocolate cake and real Mexican food and blah, blah, blah, blah. So first we thought we should do a cooking show and then we decided it would be better as a book. We just started writing back and forth. We got this great agent and publishers were loving it. But it ended up not selling because neither of us are nutritionists. Apparently its good to have some sort of medical degree if youre going to write a diet book. So we said fuck them, were going to do it ourselves and we decided to self-publish it.
DRE: When I first read about the book, I thought it was some humor book.
CV: It is.
DRE: Right but I assumed it was an all humor book and not actually about eating at all. But you guys really went out there and broke down what a hot chick should eat in every situation.
CV: Exactly. We dont take ourselves too seriously in the book but at the same time, we do. I think that its really funny and we joke around a lot but theres some really good advice and really good information. There are things that we do that actually work. Like Im going to eat differently at Christmas time than I would right before I start a movie. So we use our own advice and other people have also and theyve dropped weight from it and feel more confident and feel better. That was our point. Its just to make women feel good about themselves.
DRE: How is the book doing?
CV: This is only our second day of officially being on sale and were selling a lot. Its just the first in a series of books. Our next book is going to be How to Love like a Hot Chick which is about dating and sex and relationships and when youre single and when you have a boyfriend and when youre getting married.
DRE: Are hot chicks allowed to call themselves hot chicks?
CV: Well, yeah to a certain extent. You dont want to walk around and boast and be overly confident and make other people feel insecure. Thats not hot. Were talking about just feeling good about yourself. I was naked in movies and my boobs were all over the internet and I was in Maxim, FHM so to the world I was considered a hot chick but I didnt feel that way. I felt completely insecure for a couple of years because women put a lot of pressure on themselves and we get really confused about whats beautiful and whats not. Once I figured out that it really doesnt matter what anybody else thinks about me, I started to feel empowered. Once I rewired my brain, better work came, I started making more money, I started choosing better guys, I got into a relationship where I fell in love with somebody. All those things change when you feel good about yourself and I think thats what were trying to say but in a witty way.
DRE: So this is like a humorous version of The Secret?
CV: I havent read The Secret but I know a lot about it. Jodi and I both live our life that way. We really believe that what you say comes true and the power of positive thinking, all that stuff.
DRE: What made you stop caring about what people thought of you?
CV: It was a culmination of a lot of things. When I first started off in this business as a young girl, I had an eating disorder. I was really thin and I spent my whole life trying to not eat or drink, be skinny and be in the gym for a million hours a day. I dont know how I did it but I woke up one day and realized that this was not that important. Theres more to life and I was missing out. Jodi and I both are really hard workers, we were working our asses off at very young ages and were trying to make something of our life. Then in our spare time, we were worrying about what we were eating, what we were not eating, what diet we should be on and how it would be better if I looked like that. We wasted so many years being insecure or what we call in our book, LSE which is low self-esteem. Together we had to help each other and we got our shit together and then our lives changed so we decided to write a book about it.
DRE: When Cabin Fever came out you began to get more attention. Was it being more prominent that made you say I really need to take control of my life?
CV: Yes, it was. When I took off my clothes in Not Another Teen Movie, it was a huge decision but I wasnt really prepared, at the age of 21, for the aftershocks of that. Like how I was going to feel and the same thing with Cabin Fever. Theres a lot of lascivious energy throughout the business thrown at you and a lot of attention is paid to your body and it starts making you obsess about it even more. One day I woke up and I was like, I have got to get some control or I am not going to continue to work. Like I said, I wasnt having any fun.
DRE: In the acknowledgments you say that sometimes you dont need to be a hot chick. Sometimes you just want to eat like a regular chick.
CV: When you have an eating disorder, your worst fear is for someone to tell you youre fat. When I rewired my brain and stopped taking tons of diet pills, working out excessively and eating healthier, I gained 25 pounds really quick. I went from a size zero to a size six and the casting directors noticed it.
DRE: How long ago was this?
CV: Close to two years ago. It was for a period of like six months where I felt sexier inside, yet I was a little bit bigger. My boobs got out of control but I wasnt upset at all. I was still getting callbacks for swimsuit commercials, I just wasnt super skinny. But my manager started getting phone calls saying, Shes put on weight. She looks heavier, she looks different. For a girl with an eating disorder, thats her worst fear come true. So in the acknowledgements I was thanking my manager for sticking by me while I had that those few months.
DRE: But is it something you never completely get over?
CV: I think that a lot of women, whether they are in this business or not, are sensitive about their body. So theres absolutely those days where I completely panic if I have to do a scene in a movie or a photo shoot or something. Im like, Oh my gosh, am I okay? Am I good enough? I think that most girls go through that in life. We have to constantly check ourselves and ask why we are thinking that and why we care what other people think.
DRE: Ssometimes we see a new actress in a breakout performance and she looks great. Then as time goes on we keep see her get thinner and thinner. So that is pressure from casting agents, managers for them to lose weight?
CV: Yeah Im like, You got the job, why are you a zero now? But I think its a combination of a lot of things. It can just be yourself. I cant stand watching myself of on TV or in movies. Its like listening to your own voice on the answering machine. It just feels weird. I was at a screening of the romantic comedy I was in and I was like, Wow, is that what I really look like?
DRE: A lot of the book seems to say that if you eat this way you might get a better kind of guy. Do you look at it that way too?
CV: Yeah, I completely think that. When you start loving yourself and when you start just feeling good about yourself and when you start feeling beautiful, youre going to look for a guy thats going to mirror that back to you. When were totally insecure and we look in the mirror and we tell our boyfriends, Oh my gosh, Im fat, Im not going out, what can he do? He cant make you feel beautiful. I think that when we feel good about ourselves, we wont tolerate anything less than somebody treating us well.
DRE: How do you like self-publishing?
CV: We started out not having any idea how we were going to do it and its a big challenge but its been fun. Since weve published the book, we have people coming to us saying Ive always wanted to write a book. How did you do it? So were thinking about maybe starting a little publishing company and helping other people publish their book.
DRE: Did you ever think about doing it as an ebook?
CV: No because I think that our book is really cute and it is for women and girls and we like to buy things because its got cute packaging. Were going to do a series of books that will feature a different beautiful little pin-up girl and itll be really sexy and fun and cute. Were more focusing on how this is going to be fun for a girl to have in her hand or to give to her girlfriend or give away at bachelorette parties.
DRE: When I publish this interview on SuicideGirls, I think the response is going to be positive. But I can see some people that might have the wrong idea in their head since the book, of course, uses the phrase hot chick a lot.
CV: We did a radio interview last night and a woman there was like, How dare you. With all the problems that are going on with our youth and everything they have to see on TV and magazines, you write a book on how to be hot. We were like, Wait! No! Read the book. What were saying is, quit the stupid dieting circle. Quit looking at fashion magazines and stupid tabloid magazines and all those skinny celebrities. Were telling them to stop in the book. The title might be a little bit controversial but one of the first things we do in the book is tell the reader that they are a hot chick. We might get a little backlash from the title but all publicity is good publicity. We didnt really ever think about that. We just thought it was a cute catchy title.
I had a friend that was a mentor to me during my mini depression. She pulled me out of my misery and really taught me how to embrace myself. If a woman is lucky she has somebody that comes along and holds their hand through times of crisis. We wanted to be those girls to other girls.
DRE: I read an article that said that in your movies you show a bit more skin youre your Italian Catholic family would like. Im sure your family supports you but were they ever like, Hey, we didnt take you to that Miss Teen USA thing for you to go be naked in movies.?
CV: My parents are cool and are proud of me but I come from a very large Italian Catholic family and they are by no means perfect. Weve had a lot of shady shit go on in my family, but I guess its their way of showing that they care about me. We have that holier than thou thing going on, but I love them more than anything. I did Howard Stern once and they were not happy about that. When I say they, I mean a few extended family members. Theyre all proud of me though. I have a brother and when he was in college, Not Another Teen Movie was out in theatres. He was joining a fraternity and to fuck with him at one of their parties, they had my boobs from Not Another Teen Movie paused in all of the rooms. So its things like that. I have a little sister thats 18 and wants to be an actress and I want to set a good example.
DRE: You probably get offered a lot of horror films. Is the genre something that you enjoy?
CV: I really wasnt into horror movies before I started in the business, but since Ive been doing them, Ive grown to like them and the horror fans are great. Also now that Ive worked on them, I know theyre all fake. Ive actually started to write horror movies. Ive got a manager and a writing partner named Ben Waller. Theyre trying to sell me as the Scream Queen who writes horror films. So thats been fun. I have one that might move into production this summer so fingers crossed.
DRE: What else do you have going on?
CV: I have a pilot I shot called Wifey for VH1 and BET. I should know by June 1st if thats getting picked up and if it is then Im moving New York to do that.
DRE: Whats Wifey about?
CV: Its an hour long drama about the music industry. Wifey is the wives of music producers and rappers and things like that, so it fits very well into the VH1, BET world.
DRE: Which network is it going to air on?
CV: Both. Theyre doing this new thing. Its never been done before where theyre going to have the same show air on two different networks at exactly the same time. But we dont know if its getting picked up to air or not. Well know in a like a month.
DRE: Who is the creator of Wifey?
CV: The creator was this guy Michael Elliot and Reginald Hudlin whos also the president and CEO of BET directed the pilot. I did another pilot that I did for Showtime called Man Child but I dont think that ones going. I heard that I didnt get picked up by Showtime but now theyre pitching it to HBO or something. Everybody Wants to be Italian comes out in the summer and Im excited about that because that will be something that my big Italian family would love because its about Italians and I dont take off my clothes.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
paulnikon:
PaulNikon is a fan.
drake:
Heh, I like the phrase "mini depression." 