In “Mean Girls,” Amanda Seyfried delivered one of the most stealthily sweet and undeniably hilarious performances of the early aughts, earning her plenty of praise, industry credibility and, she’s now revealing, the “gross” attention of men everywhere.
The actor is enshrined in pop culture history for starring in the high school comedy as the lovably clueless Karen Smith, who believes she has a special “ESPN” power to predict the weather with her breasts.
In one of the film’s most famous moments, Seyfried’s character delivers an on-air weather report, while fondling herself to boldly proclaim, “There’s a 30% chance that it’s already raining.”
Speaking with Marie Claire for a new profile published on Tuesday, Seyfried revealed the unfortunate consequence of the oft-quoted scene.
“I always felt really grossed out by that,” she told the outlet, noting that she was consistently approached by “mostly boys” who asked her if it was raining. “I was like 18 years old. It was just gross.”
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Seyfried went on to explain that she’s made choices to avoid the spotlight in her post-“Mean Girls” career, remarking, “Being really famous [young] must really fucking suck.”
“It must make you feel completely unsafe in the world,” she added. “I see these younger actors who think they have to have security. They think they have to have an assistant. They think their whole world has changed. It can get stressful. I’ve seen it happen to my peers. So, I bought a farm. I was like, let’s go in the opposite way.”
Seyfried now lives on a 30-acre farm in upstate New York with her husband, actor Thomas Sadoski, and their two children.
Despite her recent turn as Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes in Hulu’s “The Dropout” and her Oscar-nominated performance in Netflix’s “Mank,” Seyfried said she has enjoyed the perks of being “somewhat recognizable,” but never “super famous.”
“It’s been the healthiest trajectory. [It’s] not a scary spike,” she said. “I have my priorities. I know who I am. I know where I’m going. I know what it means. It means that I’m getting to do what I love.”
“Mean Girls” was Seyfried’s first-ever film role, as she had only worked on television, primarily in soap operas, before her breakout turn in the Tina Fey-directed film.
“Just hitting my mark, and all these other bells and whistles that I had never seen before, it just felt really daunting and exciting,” she said about landing the part in Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series. “I never had any expectations of anything. I was just glad to be working as an actor, getting paid to speak actual dialogue — as opposed to being in the background.”
Last year, Seyfried shared a fond memory from the film, posting a throwback snap of the cast behind the scenes, which she captioned, “#FBF weekends in 2003, baby.”
The photo served as a virtual “Mean Girls” reunion, with various cast members dropping by the comments. “Such a fun time! A great team!” Lindsay Lohan wrote, with Lacey Chabert adding in a separate message, “Ohhh emmm geeee. Wow. So many good memories.”