Isla Fisher in ELLE

[Eli]

My scanner doesn't work properly, so I only have the digital scan, which is a fairly small image.. But I typed up the article, so hopefully you'll be able to enjoy the article as well as the pictures from the scan

Isla Fisher broke into comedy and stole the biggest laughs in Wedding Crashers. Now, as the lead of Disney's Confessions of a Shopaholic, she's soon to be a classic Hollywood comedienne.

Though "newcomer" is a tag that's frequently pinned on Isla Fisher, it's somewhat off the mark, a bit like an American tourist sticking a flag into a Sydney Airport runway and claiming he's discovered a land where dogs hop on hind legs. True, the flame-haired 32-year-old is new blood to us Yanks.

Until her big "Who is that?" moment as the bipolar nymphomanic who brutalizes Vince Vaughn into loving her in 2005's Wedding Crashers, she existed here solely as the romantic appendage to Borat and Ali G creator Sacha Baron Cohen.

But a good chunk of the English-speaking world already knew Fisher, who got started at 12 doing commercials and Children's TV in Perth, Australia.

Britain's Soap Opera Digest crowd remember her big break in 1994 playing troubled teen Shannon Reed on Home and Away, the exported Australian soap that's featured ontime nobodies such as Guy Pearce, Naomi Watts, and Heath Ledger. (It's tough to forget a teenager like Shannon, who, in three years, suffered a bout of anorexia, remembered she'd been molested by a dirty uncle, propositioned a married man, and finally blew town with her lesbian lover.)

"That show was like an apprenticeship," Fisher says.

"Some of the lines were so laughable, you'd really have to work harder that you ever will to make them even seem realistic." (Toughest sell: "Wild horses wouldn't drag me away from you.")

So it's fair to say that in only meeting her now, we're getting the best of Isla (pronounces eye-la) Fisher. For this, we offer props to the 6'3" Cohen, who, when he's photographed next to his 5'3" fiancée, conjures memories of those Guinness Book world's tallest meets world's smallest photos.

When the couple met in 2002, Fisher's post-soap carreer as dramatic actress wasn't exactly catching fire. "I was disillusioned," she says. "I was auditioning and getting many less than enthusiastic responses. Then Sacha said, 'You're the funniest girl I know. You should be doing comedies.' And I though, Wow, that's inspiring coming from the funniest man in the world." As luck would have it, reading for the part of Gloria, Wedding Crashers' "stage-five clinger," was her first audition with this new lease on her career.

And now - fresh from feasting upon some big roles in movies such as Hot Rod and Definitely, Maybe - Fisher hopes to exploit Hollywood's new, post-Sex and the City glow for female-anchored comedy. "Women can be as broad as men can and so many are wasted playing the eye roller or the love interest," she says.

"There's so many funny women - Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Sarah Silverman, Anna Faris - and there's an audience of women who are desperate to go out and see other women be funny."

Fisher will get her own laboratory to test this theory when she stars as Rebecca Bloomwood in Disney's Confessions of a Shopaholic, based on Sophie Kinsella's novel about a compulsive shopper facing back-breaking credit card debt. Kinsella has written five Shopaholic books, and considering that the film's producer Jerry Bruckheimer sheperded three whole Pirates of the Caribbeans with the sole source material being a single Disneyland ride, look for about 250 sequels if enough women show up on Shopaholic's opening weekend. "Somebody saw an early cut and told me 'God, I haven't been so excited about an actress since I saw Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman,'" says Bruckheimer, obviously an interested party but with a track record for letting little-tested actors carry pricey movies, as he did with Will Smith in Bad Boys. "Isla is such a gifted actress and comedienne. Clearly she's going to be a star."

Perhaps before making Shopaholic XXII: Electric Shopaloo, Fisher will have done a little shopping of her own - for a wedding dress, considering that she's got a one-year-old baby, Olive, and a six-year-old engagement. "No," Fisher replies when asked if there's a date for the big day. Well, mazel tov nontheless on that conversion to Judaism she's been undertaking; any happy by-products of the new faith? "I do make a mean chicken soup," she says. - Andrew Goldman

| Q: What actress made you laugh as a kid? A: Goldie Hawn. What's the most surreal business conversation you've had? For my nude scene in Wedding Crashers I had a body double who was to appear as me, so I was in this very formal conference call with my lawyer about my nudity rider. The language was hysterical - you know, "The left nipple's fine, but not the right nipple." What was the worst thing you ever heard after an audition? The casting director for that movie First Daughter with Katie Homes rang my agent and said, "She just wasn't funny." My response was, I didn't know it was a comedy! I read the script and there wasn't a single joke in it. I mean, forgive me for not Houdini-ing some bloody comedy out of thin air! What photo shoot do you most regret? None. When I was in my early twenties and trying to reinvent my image, I did a couple of bikini shoots and an FHM cover. Afterward, I sort of regretted it, but now, believe me, I'm grateful. Once you get to a certain age, it's like, Really? My thighs once looked like that? Fantastic! |

[Jen]

Thnaks so much for the whole article, Eli.

It's so great that she's doing well in the US.

"Some of the lines were so laughable, you'd really have to work harder that you ever will to make them even seem realistic." (Toughest sell: "Wild horses wouldn't drag me away from you.")

^ Awesome quote! She seems really down-to-earth.

[**Julie**]

Thanks for posting.

[Laura]

Thanks Love Shannon, wish she could return.