A model minus makeup is just a face with possibilities. That thinking may be solace for Plain Janes, but for Anna Smith, the new Guess? girl with the femme fatale figure, well, she’s just plain gorgeous.
In town for the recent unveiling of Victor Skrebneski’s steamy ’93 Chicago International Film Festival poster (for which she posed with hard-bodied Chicago model Mark Kleckner), Smith greeted the press perched on a bar stool in the V.I.P. room of Crobar, the North Side dance club. Dressed in a black, spaghetti-strapped decollete dress, Smith’s femininity is what was once euphemistically described as “statuesque.”
With the bare-chested Kleckner by her side, high camp and dead-on sensuality definitely were in the air as Smith descended Crobar’s grand staircase to Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra.”
Then, grabbing a rope in both long-gloved hands, the 5-feet-11-inch tall, size 12 Smith unleashed a huge version of the poster, throwing her arms overhead into a big “V,” a gesture Marilyn Monroe would have appreciated.
A quirky bio
Smith’s brief career reads like something an MGM publicist would have dreamed up when Dean Martin and the Rat Pack were roaming the lot.
A soft-spoken, 25-year-old single mother of a 7-year-old boy, Smith hails from tiny Mexia, Texas, where she worked as a Wal-Mart cashier before hitting the big time. Just over a year ago, she spotted an ad for Playboy models and sent in a few Polaroids. Three days later she was in California, posing for the magazine’s March 1992 cover. Two months after that she got the centerfold treatment.
Guess? advertising director Paul Marciano, who helped launch the careers of such megamodels as Claudia Schiffer, Care and Otis, saw the layout and had Smith come to a Guess? shoot in San Antonio last summer. He decided on the spot to star her in the company’s eye-catching black-and-white Jayne Mansfield-esque ads.
Chilling out
But, it’s the day after the Crobar party that Smith sheds her movie star image. Relaxing in the Presidential Suite in the Swiss Grand Hotel downtown, where the “tub is as big as a pool,” Smith wears a nautical stripe top with red pants, her hair swept up. Sipping Gerber Baby Juice, her media-hyped incandescence dims to its natural wattage. “Last night was a blast,” Smith enthuses. “It was just so exciting. I love fans.”
But Smith has yet to take herself too seriously, projecting instead an innocence that makes her seem almost indifferent to success. Anatomy may have destined her to play the sexy role, but Smith has no problem with her pinup girl image. “It really fits me. I think it’s really glamorous. I’m totally into it.”
Lose the Doritos
She’s quick to point out that she wasn’t always good-looking. “I was really skinny and flat-chested before I got pregnant. Then I got up to 211 pounds and, like double-F boobs.”
Although she managed to drop some weight, getting a modeling agency’s interest wasn’t easy. “They always said, get down to 125 and darken your hair. I did darken my hair. And I cried and I cried and I cried. I wouldn’t come out of the house. It was so humiliating. I wouldn’t see my friends. I kinda gave up. Then I saw the Playboy ad and I said, `Well, I’ll try one more time to get myself out there.’ I did. And it worked.”
Celebrity snobs
With her career a year old, Smith still is learning about the not-always-nice fashion world. “The photographers have been great. They’ve never tried to pick up on me. Other models though, I don’t think they like me very much. I was at an AIDS benefit. A lot of models showed up. I tried to talk to one and she just looked over her shoulder and turned away. Everyone ignored me. I felt so . . . fat. They made me feel like I didn’t belong there, maybe because I’m modeling and I’m a big girl.”
Smith’s measurements (39-26-39) and enviable eating habits (“I live on chocolate truffles and love Belgian waffles in the morning, with lots of whipped cream”) may make not endear her to her rail-thin colleagues, but she charms with her good nature and looks.
“Her body is more realistic,” said Guess? spokeswoman Leah Levy Soltas. “Since the campaign began in December, we’ve gotten a tremendous amount of mail from women who identify with Anna who has, frankly, generous hips.
“I don’t think her celebrity status has hit her yet,” said Levy Soltas. “She’s very open and honest and considering that this whirlwind has just started, I think she’s handling everything very well.”
A second career
Like most models, Smith has set her sights on a film career, landing a role in “The Hudsucker Proxy” with Paul Newman and Tim Robbins, which is currently being filmed in Chicago. “I play Tim Robbins’ girfriend and some other guy’s girlfriend. I get to have two guys. When one loses his money and the other guy gets richer, I switch,” she said.
Despite her down-home demeanor, Smith is finding it’s a big bad world out there. “I’m gonna get me a big ol’ bodyguard. Cause one day I was getting out of the limo and this lady, she scared me. She goes, `You’re so ugly!’ I freaked out.”
Somehow, Smith even laughed off this unpleasant experience. “Um . . . I think I’m gonna like having a bodyguard, cause I really hate carrying my luggage.”
