In my opinion, I think everyone wants to be famous. I know from working in a modeling agency, that everyone wants to be a model.I also know that almost every model wants to be an actress. Knowing all this, always amazes me when you meet a young girl who makes it to be a successful model. It's even more amazing to me when she becomes a successful actress.

I secretly have been waiting to meet Izabella Miko all week. Word through out the agency was that she would be coming to New York to promote her new movie The Forsaken, a vampire thriller starring herself, Johnathan Schaech and Kerr Smith. Face to face we have never met, but since I started working at this agency, she was always a name that came up in the course of discussing Q Management. Even as I'm typing this article I have yet still to met her. She has been between Tonight Show interviews with Jay Leno and Jane Magazine photo shoots along with various other Forsaken events. I have seen her in the media everywhere from popping up in Cosmopolitan to E! She was photographed by Patrick Demarchlier as one of Harpers Bazaar's Young Hollywood Actresses of 2001. Between all that, she manages to squeeze in some phone time with me.

Izabella at the age of 14 came to New York and to Q from her homeland in Poland, not speaking a word of english. An accomplished ballet dancer, she had accepted an invitation to dance with the New York City Ballet. After travelling a rigorous schedule touring the world, she suffered an injury which drew her ballet career to a close. She returned home to Poland and began her acting career with a role in the feature "Lithuania, You are my Motherland". Finding her calling in acting, she returned to New York in 1999 to study at the Lee Strassberg Theater Institute.

While here she decided to pursue some modeling to support herself while she attended classes. She met with almost every modeling agency in New York. Being 5'7" they had all told her that her chances of becoming a successful model were unlikely and they would be unable to represent her. Her Polish agency sent her to meet with Jeffrey Kolsrud at Q. Seeing her innocent face and not really being able to say no to such a charming young girl, he took her on. After helping her work on her english and grooming her for being in front of the photographer's camera, she began working with such high profile photographers such as David LaChapelle, Joshua Jordan, Mauella Pavesi and Ellen Von Unwerth.

In late 1999, she went to her first audition for an American film and landed a much sought after role in Jerry Bruckheimer's Coyote Ugly along side fellow models turned actresses Tyra Banks and Bridget Moynahan. Playing the role of the heartbreaker Cammie in the film about the infamous New York City dive bar where the girls that worked there were as strong and exciting as the liquor they poured, proved to be her big break. After her splash with Coyote Ugly, the scripts for her next movie came pouring in.

"I've turned down a lot of roles after Coyote Ugly," Miko tells me. "I wanted something different. They sent me sexy bimbo roles which weren't that great. I wanted to develop as an actress."

So Izabella waited until she found the role as Megan in J.S. Cardone's The Forsaken. She plays a dazed and frightened hitchhiker, who becomes the center of the film because she is the hidden key to fighting a gang of vampires. A role in which she doesn't utter a word, not until the very end of the film.. "I liked the part a lot. It was very different. I always try to find roles that are interesting and different. Girls my age, don't get many great roles. Most young actresses are not very mature, that's why the roles aren't very mature. In The Forsaken, I had to show everything physically. What I needed to say, I had to say with my body, especially my eyes."

For such a young actress Izabella is extremely passionate about her film career. She takes it all very seriously. "After The Forsaken, I've received scripts for more thrillers, but I don't want to do that again. I think because of the pending SAG strike, many actors took a role, just to work. I was shocked by what people were taking. I would rather have gone back to modeling, than to take some of the film roles they offered me. I would have felt like I was cheating my craft. Like I was offered Playboy right after Coyote Ugly. Cover and inside. They just offered it to me again, now double and triple the money. And even though I would like the money, I know its not right for me. I want to have no regrets."

In between her press tour for the Forsaken, Izabella is trying to lay low and prepare for her next film which hopefully will be a Casino-Soprano like drama in which she plays a dark disturbed femme fatale. She is taking care of her new yorkie puppy Lela, which is only three pounds and watching as many movies as possible. "I try to figure out, what I want to do next. What type of roles I want to play. I watch the actors studio all the time. I have a TIVO, so I have like three hours a day of it to watch. There's tons of premiers and parties that I have to go to and I work out all the time. It's not about being skinny. It's about being healthy. When you work 12 and 15 hour days on the set, you need to be healthy."

"It's all very different from modeling," admits Izabella, who gave me the run down of her weekly schedule. "With modeling, you have 9 castings a day and the next day you know if you have the job. In acting it's about meeting, then meeting again, then a screen test, then meeting again. You really get one job out of the 50 or 60 you audition for. I have about 2 or 3 auditions a week. I meet with my dialect coach 5 times a week to work on my Polish accent and also with my acting coach twice a week. But, mostly I'm travelling between New York and Los Angeles. Sometimes someone calls me and says, 'Izabella you need to be in LA tomorrow' and I'm on the plane."

Even with being one of Hollywood's most sought after young actresses, Izabella Miko still holds a big place in her heart for Q Management and for Jeffrey Kolsrud who she speaks to often. She promises me that she will try to make it in next week and show off her new puppy and in her sweet soft voice says bye. "Tell everyone there I will see them soon."

by Ken Loo