When it comes to recent cinema’s most iconic images, the beautiful, rose-draped form of Mena Suvari from American Beauty is at the top of the list. It’s the kind of oh-so-innocent image that this forever-young actress has been toying with ever since her breakthrough role as a vulnerable cheerleader — the kind of girl who is sweet and beautiful on the outside, but whose enticing smile holds troubling stuff. Now Suvari literally goes to town with her erotic appeal as Sandy Murphy, a stripper who seemingly conspires with her lover to murder a Las Vegas gambling magnate (Matthew Modine) in Sex & Lies in Sin City: The Ted Binion Scandal. And if the nursing home worker she plays in Stuck might seem a bit more demure, try telling that to the homeless man (Stephen Rae) who’s impaled on her car’s windshield and parked inside her garage until he hopefully expires, in Stuart Gordon’s acclaimed thriller.

Both projects are based on real-life skullduggery and offer Suvari the chance to walk on the wild side — a place far different than the modeling and commercial work that launched her career at the age of 13. The exotically named daughter of a psychiatrist and nurse, Suvari’s early work included roles in Kiss the Girls, Slums of Beverly Hills, ER, and Chicago Hope before 1999’s one-two punch of American Pie and American Beauty, award-winning roles that made Suvari popular with both teen and adult audiences.

Since then, Suvari has varied her work from splashy Hollywood films like Rumor Has It, Beauty Shop, and Domino to such eccentric indies as Edmond, Factory Girl, and Spun, yet the actress has never coasted down the kind of “America’s sweetheart” road she could have taken. It’s a choice that’s never been smarter than in how Suvari uses her appeal to map her morally conflicted roles in Sex & Lies and Stuck. But whether it’s an ex-stripper desperately trying to prove her innocence or a woman hit with some truly bad luck, Mena Suvari’s thematically linked roles let the actress combine erotic appeal, deviousness, and flawed humanity to show the soul inside the mask.

Daniel Schweiger: Did you try to track down the real Sandy Murphy before you played her?

Mena Suvari: No, I didn’t try to track her down. If anything, I was concerned that she was going to track me down, especially after this! Sandy’s now out of prison and living in Southern California, and I joked that she was going to put a hit out on me if she thought I portrayed her in the wrong way. Because of the pending lawsuits involving this case, we had to change dialogue on the set and shoot different versions of the ending. It was a bit challenging because Sandy had to seem somewhat devious. We didn’t so much soften her character as make her more ambiguous.

DS: What do you think you discovered about Sandy and her case while making Sex & Lies in Sin City?

MS: There’s a great book called Murder in Sin City by Jeff German which really explained the case. Sandy was in her early 20s when she came to Las Vegas with $13,000 and gambled it right away. Then she met this woman who made costumes for the girls at Cheetah’s strip club. Sandy started to do lap-dances there and made a lot of money, and that’s how she met Ted Binion. He was temporarily clean from his heroin addiction and going through a divorce with his wife. Ted had Sandy over to his house where his wife and daughter were. It was a big mess, but Ted offered Sandy a sense of security, and I think they really care about each other. She wasn’t necessarily using him for his money. You have to know that there were huge, traumatic events that happened to Sandy. She was raped twice and literally thrown on the side of the road and peed on. So she found someone who could just help her out and care about her, and Sandy was certainly living the kind of life she’d never had before, even if she argued with Ted and experienced this whole drug world he was into. In the end, Sandy got tired of it. The other defendant, Rick Tabish, was in it for the money. He had a family in Montana and was struggling with really bad business decisions. He met Ted Binion, who hired him to build this underground vault to hide his silver. The bad luck for Ted was that Rick was this young, handsome guy. Sandy was sexually deprived and Ted was a mess. He lost control of his casino, which is what he lived for. No one really knows what happened between the three of them.

DS: Do you think they killed Ted?

MS: I don’t think Sandy and Rick murdered him, but I believe they were there with Ted when he died, because the whole house was in an unusual state. The curtains to their bedroom were drawn, and the dogs acted like something was wrong inside of the house. Sandy’s car was also parked in a different place than usual.

DS: Yet because of your performance, you actually end up “liking” Sandy anyway.

MS: That was hard because there was a version I was given in the beginning where Sandy was more snotty and money-grubbing, and then we had to make changes to make her character acceptable to everyone. How do you do that? It was hard.

DS: Sex & Lies in Sin City was directed by Peter Medak, who made the classic ghost chiller The Changeling, as well as the terrific gang drama, The Krays, among a memorable film resume. What was it like working with him?

MS: It was wonderful. Peter is such a sweet, smart, and confidant man. Though he’s been doing this for a long time, he was always sure to give me a lot of opportunities to go with my own ideas. It’s nice to be able to work with somebody who has that kind of stability on set. It turned out that Peter is also really good friends with John Irvin, whom I worked with on The Garden of Eden. One of the best moments of my career was sitting on either side of Peter and John, listening to their director stories. I’m thinking, “What can I learn from them?” I don’t think actors focus on old-school experience like that in this city. It’s all about “How much are you going to pay me?” or “Sure, I’ll do that. I don’t care if the material’s good or not.”

DS: Before Stuck, no one had seen you play a character quite like the violently conflicted Brandi Boski…and your performance certainly helped the film get a lot of good reviews.

MS: I’m drawn to complex characters like Brandi, and I loved working on Stuck. It was like guerilla filmmaking in the way that Stuart Gordon shot it. I’ve worked on films where you had to be exactly on a mark and watching the light. It was nice not being able to think about that here. In a way, it was like acting for the stage, which is something I’d like to pursue, because even though the camera is in the room, Stuart’s approach really let the performers interact and get into the scene. As disturbing as Stuck was, I still found myself trying not to laugh through a lot of it. There’s a lot of uncomfortable humor in it, and I’m fascinated about the human behavior that lets us react to a film like that. When I first read Stuck’s script, I was literally gasping out loud. I can’t tell you how many times my jaw hit the floor. I really wanted to do it, especially after working with Stuart on Edmond, but my agents blew it off. I think it was because I’d done American Beauty and now I was going to be “the pretty girl.” Maybe I look like that when I put on a bunch of makeup, but I’ve never felt like that. I have more sides to me. So here they were asking me why I wanted to be in a film like Stuck. I got along great with Stuart. He’s a father with three daughters. He talks so quietly and he’s so sweet, yet Stuart has the darkest, most twisted mind, and I love that! If I don’t look like someone who appreciates that on the outside, it doesn’t mean that I’m not like that on the inside. I mean, I’m fascinated by books like Maggots, Murder and Men, which is about forensic psychology. I’ve felt such a divide between my work and my own interests in the 16 years that I’ve been acting, but now it’s becoming more about those sensibilities, and that’s why I loved working with Stuart. He’s really about the work and the characters.

DS: How do you personally identify with Sandy and Brandi?

MS: Since I never really studied acting and I don’t have that “lingo,” when I’m asked a question like this, I think people want to hear me say, “Well, this is my process…” But I have no idea what that is. For me, it has always been an organic exploration of my characters and learning about myself through them. I certainly got to rage in Stuck, especially the scene where I beat up this girl who my boyfriend is cheating with. I started saying, “I can totally kick your ass!” and ended up with, “Well, I don’t really want to hurt you,” even if she was encouraging me to go for it! I want to experience as much as I can, especially with characters that are so complicated that you can jump from one extreme emotion to the next. I think that’s realistic. I mean, why would Brandi do these things? She works in a care facility. She treats the patients well and has a house and a dog. So are we all capable of doing the horrendous things that she does? How far do you have to be pushed to go into that kind of animalistic behavior?

DS: On that note, you certainly make a great stripper as Sandy.

MS: It’s been a growing experience — to not be afraid anymore in my life, in any area. You can’t think about doing a scene like that. You just have to go for it. I was very nervous and excited about being on the Cheetah’s stage, especially when a lot my girlfriends said, “Oh, yeah! I can go up and down on the pole,” but I didn’t know how to do that. I worked on it for three days with my friend Liz to choreograph the scene, and practiced to Prince’s song “Cream.” It’s pretty challenging because you can’t close the set for it. I remember this one guy on the side of the stage who said, “You’re getting better with every take!” [Laughs] It’s all about learning to let yourself go.

DS: You’ve done The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which is based on a book by Michael Chabon (Wonder Boys). Do you know when it will be coming out?

MS: I love that movie. It went to Sundance and the screening went great, but it wasn’t bought there. It’s a tough economic time for independent films like that. Nowadays, you have to have things like crazy animation to get into a movie theater. It’s sad.

DS: Tell us about The Garden of Eden.

MS: It’s based on an Ernest Hemingway novel that takes place in the late 1920s. It’s about an American woman named Catherine and her writer-husband David who honeymoon in the south of France. She begins to question her identity and sexuality, and when Catherine meets another woman, she starts to play games with their relationship. It’s an amazing story about our personalities, interests, and loves. Hemingway struggled with writing it for years, and the story ended up being released posthumously when his wife Mary brought two shopping bags full of loose-leaf pages to the publisher. So even though the book that’s out is the publisher’s interpretation of how The Garden of Eden was supposed to go together, it’s still a beautiful book.

DS: What appeals to you outside of the film world?

MS: At the beginning of the year, I became the U.S. Goodwill Ambassador for AMREF, which is the African Medical and Research Foundation. I became involved with it when we were shooting The Garden of Eden in Spain. I told my co-star, Caterina Murino, how I was working with H.E.L.P. Malawi, and she mentioned AMREF, which I’d never heard of. I was shocked when Caterina told me that they didn’t have a U.S. Ambassador yet, even after they’d just celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2007. So I took on the ambassadorship and went to Africa in February for a few weeks. I think we’ll be going to Washington next year. I’ve also been working with a friend of mine to put out a reggae compilation album we’ve produced. Hopefully it will be released by next year.

DS: You have certainly taken a more interesting route from the kind of “mainstream” films you could have done after American Beauty and American Pie.

MS: At first, I had no concept of that, but now I think I understand more about the roles I’ve decided to take. I could never work on something that was just a job, even though it’s rougher than ever now for independent films with this economy. I seem to be more aware of the dialogue and the story when I read a script for an independent film, as opposed to reading scripts for huge blockbusters where I don’t feel that depth. It’s not about how big of a celebrity you are when it comes to getting work, which is weird to me. So I love sticking to my roots when it comes to choosing the characters I play. It’s always about the emotion I get from them.

Sex & Lies in Sin City: The Ted Binion Scandal premieres Saturday, October 25th at 9:00 pm on Lifetime Networks, while Stuck gets its DVD debut on October 14^th.

Find out more about AMREF here.