Brittany Snow knows most of us think of her as the pert, pretty blonde from TV’s American Dreams or movies like Prom Night. Even when she’s the villain in something like Hairspray, her hair is always perfect, and a smile—however fake—is always on her face. Which, she says, is probably what got her the part in the new indie Finding Amanda. “I think [director Peter Tolan] wanted the shocking quality of this is the girl you wouldn’t expect to be a prostitute.”
Yes, that’s right, Velma von Tussle’s little girl is picking up johns as a Las Vegas prostitute in Finding Amanda, which Tolan wrote and directed based on his own life experience. But this movie won’t be the first or last time audiences see Snow as a sex worker. “I’ve played a prostitute now three times. I don’t know how it’s come about that way. It’s just a matter of me growing up.” [The other two movies in which she plays a prostitute, by the way, are unreleased indies On the Doll and Black Water Transit]
Snow spends much of the movie acting opposite Matthew Broderick, who plays her concerned uncle sent to Vegas to rescue her, but sidelined by his own gambling and drinking addictions. Snow says with a laugh, “Matt’s not bad either. He’s done a few things. I think he’ll make it.” She says she knew instantly when she met him that they could work as a team, “because his humor and his energy are so different from mine. I liked that back and forth banter.” And she appreciated the unique experience of working with Broderick and Tolan together, where she says she “found myself challenging myself to keep up with them.”
As Amanda, Snow isn’t quite a happy-go-lucky prostitute like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, nor is she a down-and-out street hustler like you might see in a documentary. New to the prostitution business, Amanda maintains hope for her future, represented in the too-perfect house that she shares with her loser boyfriend. Snow says that, while Amanda’s life is not her own, “There were things in her that I think everyone can relate to.” And that’s the appeal she sees in acting to begin with. “After I play every character, I always walk away and feel a little different. I’ve experienced something that’s not my life, but I’ve made it my life.”
“It’s never easy. But at the same time, when you figure it out, you have a high at the end of the day. You want to do these challenging things all the time.”
For Snow, right now, those challenges involve a lot of independent film-- “Sometimes the characters I find the most compelling are in independent movies. With independent scripts people can take more challenges.” And she laughs off the idea that a sequel to Prom Night, which debuted at #1 this spring, might have a sequel in its future. “It was a running joke, [that we would do] Prom Night 2: Dance of the Dead. [Director] Nelson McCormick wasn’t big on the idea, but I think we can make it happen.” She laughs and smiles the big smile that made her famous, even if she’s going in new directions now. “Look for Dance of the Dead on DVD.”
