Funny Joke from a Beautiful Woman

About the Jokester: We knew we liked Melissa Sagemiller the moment she told us how her high school modeling career came to its abrupt end: “My junior year, they told me, ‘You're going to Japan .' And I said, ‘Actually, I'm going to the University of Virginia to drink beer.'” She's been making shrewd career decisions ever since, eventually landing a role on the Emmy-nominated Showtime terrorism drama Sleeper Cell . Sagemiller currently stars in The Guardian as the girlfriend of Coast Guard rescue diver Ashton Kutcher. “He got pneumonia; I didn't even get my hair wet,” she admits. Next spring, you can see her in Mr. Woodcock , a comedy about a guy desperately trying to keep his mother from marrying his sleazy former high school gym teacher (Billy Bob Thornton). Filming brought back difficult memories: “I had this gym teacher who would drink cartons of milk and yell at us with it all over his lips. I don't drink milk to this day because I was traumatized. It's always the gym teachers who are freaks.”

--Sarah Z. Wexler

Published in Esquire, October, 2006