TV's naughty hottie goes a-haunting in comic ghost film
The makeup artist moved like the Flash. The hair stylist fluttered like a butterfly, hovering until every detail fell into place.
As Eva Longoria Parker prepared for her Daily Herald close-up, the buzz of cosmetic attentiveness slowly died away.
"I'm short," the actress said with a self-deprecating tone. "Lower the camera!"
She effortlessly slid onto the sofa in a room at Chicago's Four Seasons Hotel. She looked as elegant as the posh fixtures.
More Coverage Video Dann Gire chats with Eva Longoria Parker
There she sat, in the flesh!
The naughty hottie from ABC's hit series "Desperate Housewives." The international face of L'Or#233;al Paris. One of People magazine's 50 most beautiful creatures in the universe. The No. 1 woman on Maxim magazine's "Hot 100" list for two years.
How does a pretty girl from Texas take all this adoration?
"I take it and I run," Parker said. "I love it. I think it's flattering. It's nice, especially when it's given by the readers or the fans. Those are always the best awards to me, rather than a blue panel of people who give you the other awards.
"That Maxim thing and all that sexy stuff? Tony is probably the most proud. Hey, that's my wife!"
Tony, of course, would be Tony Parker, guard for the San Antonio Spurs basketball team, and, to some men, the luckiest guy on the planet.
He married the actress last year. She turns 33 in March, and there's nothing stopping them from pursuing a family.
"Tony and I very excited to start a family," she gushed.
Any specific number of children in mind?
"As many as God will give us," she said.
Any names picked out?
"We're always talking about names," she replied. "But I'm not telling you any of our names!"
What the exquisitely packaged actress will talk about is her new movie, a romantic comedy titled "Over Her Dead Body" opening Friday. She plays a woman killed by a falling ice sculpture on her wedding day. A year later when her fiance (Paul Rudd) starts to fall in love again, Parker pops back in to put the kibosh on the romance.
"The tricky part of playing a ghost is continuity," she explained. "Like, would she knock on the door? Because she just walked through the door last time. We also had to consider blocking. The natural thing for humans to do is walk out of the way of things. She wouldn't do that. There's no touching. And would she sit on a couch? There's a lot of questions like that."
Did she study any classic ghost romance movies such as "Blithe Spirit"?
"I did study Patrick Swayze in 'Ghost,'" she laughed. "No! Just kidding! It's a little Shakespearean when you have the ghost character and that's the person stirring the pot or moving the story along. #8230; It's a pretty classic story."
"Over Her Dead Body" comes from writer Jeff Lowell making his directorial debut.
"He was great," Parker said. "Because Jeff was the writer/director and to have that person on set, he was really open to improv and ad-libs. Let's rehearse this and What do you think? He was totally open for discussion on everything. That lends itself to a really loose set. And you need that for a comedy. You need that freedom to organically experience the physical comedy, to organically experience some throwaway lines that might be funny. You can tell on the screen we were having a very good time."
Parker still appears to be having a good time as Gabrielle in "Desperate Housewives" as well. Does she have any ideas about where the writers should take the series?
"I don't want control of the story!" she said, almost surprised. "That's why the writers are very important and they should not be on strike. We should pay the writers what they need! I have no desire to persuade the writers to have Gaby do something. I trust them 100 percent. I love how they've written her in the past four years. And I've had no influence on that!
"The only thing I would ask is if I get pregnant in real life, that it would be great if Gabrielle was pregnant, too, because it's just too hard to shoot around that."
Anything she'd like to share?
"No, I'm not pregnant!" the actress said tersely. "I'm not."
So much for those tabloid rumors.
Speaking of bumps and grinds, Parker admitted she doesn't have a fascination with work the way some of her fellow actors do.
"I definitely work to live. I don't live to work," she said. "I can't wait to get off the set so I can go home to my husband!"
If Parker were killed by a falling ice sculpture in real life and came back as a ghost, what would she do if Tony tried to hook up with a new woman?
"I would haunt Tony," she said without missing a beat. "Yep. He's not moving on."