Selena Gomez: Cover of "Teen Vogue" Magazine June/July 2009 (with video). One doesn't exactly expect a sixteen- year-old Disney Channel star to be a cold-eyed realist. But, according to Selena Gomez, that's exactly what she is.
Sitting cross-legged on a pastel couch in the San Juan, Puerto Rico, hotel room that has served as her home for the past seven weeks—she's been shooting a made-for-TV movie based on her popular series, Wizards of Waverly Place—the actress attempts to elucidate her only semi-bubbly outlook on life. "I actually get told that I'm a very dark person," she insists. "I like to dream, but I also like to be realistic; sometimes, when something is so nice and sweet, I just crush it. I don't mean to, but I don't want to be let down."
Selena's talking, in part, about teenage romance. But maybe because her own relationship with ex-boyfriend Nick Jonas is still simply too hot a topic, she uses a costar's love life to illustrate her point. "Like ... David Henrie is a big believer in true love," she explains. "He really believes in all that fairy tale stuff."
The irony, of course, is that so much of Selena's life is kind of magical. It's not just the wand she wields for her work on Wizards; it's that the odds of a young Mexican-American girl from Grand Prairie, Texas, ending up with her own hit television show are so vanishingly small. She started working at the age of seven, when she convinced her mother, a sometime community theater actress, to take her to an open call for Barney & Friends and subsequently booked her very first job. ("It involved a lot of smiling," Selena says of the gig. "Singing, dance routines—nothing that's going to help me win an Oscar one day.") And this June, the Disney Channel will premiere Princess Protection Program, a feature film in which she stars with her "best friend in real life" Demi Lovato. (The girls bonded while working opposite the friendly purple dinosaur, were discovered by Disney just a few years apart, and have been inseparable ever since. They even lived in the same loft—with their moms—in downtown Los Angeles when they first moved west.) "I'll be honest, I do have to pinch myself occasionally," Selena admits. "I still can't believe that everything the two of us have wanted since we were seven is finally coming true."
In the movie, Demi plays a young royal in peril who is rescued and retrained to act like a regular girl by Selena's character and family. "The story shows what friendship really means and how it can bring out the good in you," Selena says. It's a topic she knows a lot about: "Demi and I have always been there to support each other. I've probably listened to 100 of her songs, and she came to every single taping of my show the first season. We're both surrounded by adults 24/7, and we have to act professional, but when we're together we can just be sixteen—we watch movies and talk about boys and do each other's hair and makeup. We both go through a lot, so it's nice to know that no matter what, I'll always have her." Selena has also become close with Taylor Swift, the pop-country star and fellow Jonas Brother ex. "We talk every single day, and every time she comes to town, we go out to dinner," Selena says. "She has helped me through some really hard times. And," she adds, "the thing I can't stand about that girl is that she doesn't even need to dress up and she still looks pretty." Selena genuinely admires both of her friends' "cool, fun fashion" choices; she herself tends to be a bit more staid, opting for "a plain, tucked-in shirt with jeans or a high-waisted skirt," from Banana Republic, Forever 21, or Urban Outfitters. And she also seems inspired by their musical careers. As she says of Taylor, "It's kind of amazing to see someone who has sold millions of records and is still so humble."
Recently, Selena has been hard at work on her own upcoming debut album, selecting "techno-pop-rock" songs that she feels are emblematic of her life over the last year: "It's what I've gone through with heartache, friendships, and things like that. I want my fans to know me a little bit better after they hear this record." She even contributed lyrics to one cut, "Beautifully Disturbed," which she says is kind of a nickname that was given to her "by a very special person, someone really close to me who was very sweet to me." (Asked if this "very special person" was a boyfriend, she says, "Maybe." Asked if he was a Jonas, she says definitively, "No.")
Although the star is consistently closemouthed on the subject of specific former boyfriends, she's quite open when asked about the topic in more general terms. "I've seen so many people who really let this business control their life," she explains, "and it's heartbreaking. But I'm glad I went through it, because it made me realize that I don't want to live like that. I don't want to let fame stop me from being myself, and I don't want to flinch every time I see a flash." Selena admits that what she looks for in a boyfriend has changed a lot of late, as well: "I used to say that I wanted someone cute and nice, an actor too, so he'd get it. But now I think it would be good for me to date someone who's not in the business. I want someone honest, someone who's very sweet to my family and friends, and polite to the other people around me. Being cool, having a 'cool' energy, is just not attractive to me." She has even started questioning her default stance on romance, that hyper- realistic attitude she mentioned before. "I've learned," she admits with a laugh, "that I want what I deny. I want someone who is crazy about me, who treats me like a princess. I want the picture-perfect fairy tale stuff."
Watch the video behind the scenes of photo shoot of "Teen Vogue"
Related Post:
1. Selena Gomez's Teen Vogue Cover Shoot (Photos)
2. Selena Gomez: Cover of "Teen Vogue" Magazine June/July 2009 (with video)
3. Selena's Gomez "Teen Vogue" look
4. Selena Gomez cover girl of "Teen Vogue" June/July 2009
0 comments:
Post a Comment