By Stephen Christopher
A
ctress Leven Rambin nestles into one of the cushy chairs at the Café Luxe that perch right on Rodeo Drive and orders an iced tea with no ice. She’s wearing some Van shorts, a pair of high-top Chuck Taylors, and something she slept in the night before—for which I thank her for dressing up for our interview. On her right leg, she’s sporting one gnarly gash. “I was surfing and slipped on these rocks and cut my leg up. Yeah,” she says again, surveying the damage. “It’s pretty bad.” Her new real life as a surfer girl began only six months ago when the naturally blonde former Texan was working on the film Mavericks. The movie stars Gerard Butler, and the monstrous sixty-foot waves that swallow surfers in Santa Cruz. “You have to be a bit of a psychopath to ride these,” Leven warns. “If you fall, it’s literally like falling off a building onto concrete, and then you drown.” The producers hired legendary California surfer Ashley Lloyd to school Leven, and even though filming ended, Leven’s love for the sport didn’t. “Next week, I leave for El Salvador on a surf trip and to build a high school there. It’s a getaway for a charity called Surf for Life.” Leven’s next ride may be an even wilder one. The 23-year-old, who, between age 14 and 18, cut her teeth playing an autistic child on All My Children, is about to embark on one of those Harry Potter–type blockbuster teens-in-a-crazed-frenzy trilogies playing the role of Glimmer in the much-anticipated movie T he Hunger Games. To the premiere on March 23, she plans to wear something really chic. “Like the beautiful Valentino gown from our shoot! I think it was hand-sewn silver over chiffon. I love it!” This leads to Leven sharing her most embarrassing red-carpet moment. “I was
sixteen and living in New York. I wore this misguided yellow silk halter-top with tuxedo pants. I thought it was super-chic and super-sexy and sleek, but it was so not cute. So I’m on the red carpet and I owned it and I worked it, and now I still can’t live it down. It was not my personality, and it came off a little slutty. And, oh yeah, I got a lashing from my agent, the fashion press, and my mother.” What her mom is happy about is that Leven survived that auto crash about a year ago. “I got T-boned, flipped twice, and landed upside down in my first car, a Nissan Rogue. The other guy was speeding in a Honda and I was crossing the intersection. He hit me with enough force to flip me twice. I remember screaming in my mind, ‘Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!’ I was thinking I’m dead. My heart was racing, my mind was screaming, but I felt this peace in my soul. I felt like I was going to die, but oddly, I was okay with it. I fell out of my driver’s seat and landed in the passenger seat upside down, pinned by two airbags. I opened the door upside down and got out of the car. I was wearing a dress and heels and was glistening from the broken glass, but had no broken bones. I felt God’s hands were protecting me—like I was being held. I felt safe.” Leven’s voice thins. “It was pathetic that it took a near tragedy for me to wake up to God’s involvement in my life. God was present in the whole thing, and I’m superconnected to Him.” Given the opportunity to be anyone, Leven lets her committee decide. “I’d be Wonder Woman. My friends always send me photos of Wonder Woman. They say, ‘This is you, this is you!’” And after seeing the photo of that car she walked away from, who could argue?
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