Love is in the air at the cinema and beautiful actresses Amber Valetta and Eva Mendes talk to Steve Pratt about acting alongside Will Smitth.. when they're not discussing gardening, constipation and being dumped by a date on the dance floor.

INTERVIEW a glamorous Hollywood actress and what do you expect to talk about? Perhaps parties, frocks, leading men. You certainly don't expect to discuss composting and constipation. Model-turned-actress Amber Valletta did find time to mention her latest movie, Hitch, in which date doctor Will Smith tries to fix up her beautiful heiress with an unconfident accountant.

In real life, Valletta is married to Olympic volleyball player Christian McCaw who, like her, comes from Oklahoma. "I saw in him something that I was looking for, he's really grounded. I tend to be more fly by the seat of my pants. He's honest and good. Then there was this incredibly funny, sensitive person, and I thought that was really sexy," she says.

They first went out on a Christmas Eve. He took her to church the next morning and they went to her family Christmas party. Then fate stepped in. A friend with whom she was going on holiday in the Bahamas cancelled and Valletta asked McCaw to go instead. "We made a pact to keep it platonic, that we would just get to know each other. We wouldn't have sex, just mess around. He knew my family and I knew his, so there was no way he could be creepy. I figured if we didn't like each other we would just go our separate ways on the island. No big deal." The only problem was their bungalow had a bathroom right off the bedroom and she was embarrassed to go to the toilet. "I could urinate, but couldn't do the other so I got constipated," she confesses.

"He said one thing to me that was so powerful and I knew I'd found someone who was like-minded. A woman asked him if I was his wife and he didn't correct her. That was great. I had a boyfriend for two years who wouldn't tell me he loved me which drove me crazy."

The couple have a four-year-old son Auden and Valletta reckons her body has never recovered. This is not obvious to the observer, although an actress who doesn't appear to have put on any make-up for the press she's a rarity.

"My body is never going to be the same," she says, pinching a minute roll of stomach fat. "It will never look like it did when I was 22 or 25, but I so don't care." She has help with her son but not round-the-clock. "I like being a mom and cooking for my husband," she says. There's also her obsession with gardening. "My new year's resolution was to start composting. In California, it's unheard of not to have a gardener. I pull the weeds and trim. Twice a year I have them come in and do an overhaul," she says.

Hitch co-star Eva Mendes was wearing make-up, as you'd expect from an international spokesperson for Revlon cosmetics who appears in their print and TV advertising campaigns. She's also actively involved in the company's commitment in the fight against breast cancer. "That really keeps you going when you're an actress and feel you're selling yourself all the time. When you have a cause like that and you're part of it, it's real," she says

Like Valletta, she hardly conforms to the typical Hollywood leading lady. She first came to the attention as Denzel Washington's leading lady in Training Day. She starred with him again in Out Of Time, followed by 2 Fast 2 Furious and the Farrelly brothers comedy Stuck On You. Next she'll star opposite Nicolas Cage in a film of the comic book Ghost Rider.

Pairing Mendes - "made in Cuba, born in Miami, raised in Los Angeles" - with Will Smith was a step forward in Hollywood screen politics. "It's hard to make a movie with a black male lead and a Latin female lead without it being an ethnic movie. We managed to do that. It feels really good that people are ready for it. Now studios know it's not a risk that's going to create so much more opportunity for everybody," she says.

To play a gossip columnist in Hitch, she did think about calling up real ones in New York for advice. As someone who tends to give away too much information about herself in conversation, she decided that would only give them something to write about.

"I don't get a kick out of reading those gossip magazines, I like the photographs," she says. "When I started buying them for the role I started reading them as part of my research, and I didn't like that because I was in some of them.

"I don't mind so much because they're not true and I don't put myself out there. If I do the parties, it's for work reasons. I'm not one who goes to premieres just to be seen. I go to my own premieres and that's it. I don't go to high profile restaurants where there are paparazzi snapping away. I steer clear away from it."

Dubbed by a men's magazine as the sexiest woman in the world, she has no need of a date doctor because "I have somebody in my life". It hasn't always been that way, like the time she was 17 and asked a boy out on a date. "He picked me up to go to the dance. Not too much conversation was happening, but I'm trying to keep it going," she recalls. "Everybody got their picture done there but he didn't want to do it. We started dancing and then he said, 'Eva, hang on I'll be right back, I have to go to the bathroom'. He never comes back. He dumps me at the dance."

* Hitch (12A) previews in cinemas today and goes on release tomorrow.

Published: ??/??/2004