Photo: WireImage
If Alison Pill is supposed to be the ugly girl in Neil LaBute's new play, reasons to be pretty, is there really any reason for the rest of us to even try? When director Terry Kinney sent her the script, she told us at last night's opening-night party, "I read it and I went, Oh, thanks a lot, Terry. Great, I'm the ugly chick." That wasn't the first time that a role made her a little self-conscious about her looks, though; Pill told us that on the set of Dan in Real Life, the makeup artist put Whitestrips on her teeth without a word. "I thought it was normal until I asked the rest of the cast, and they said, 'No, I have no idea what you're talking about.' It was horrifying. I just kept thinking, Oh well, I guess my teeth are horrible to look at. Eventually I did it on my own at home." Now, in her role as the so-called ugly girl, Pill says she's been receiving not only great reviews — including a flat-out rave in this morning's Times — but lots of people coming up to her and reassuring her that she is, in fact, very pretty. "It goes to the heart of everyone's insecurities, including my own, and they're easy lines to say because Neil has written a girl who has the same questions that every woman has of how they're perceived by the outside world," she said. "So I mean, I didn't actually say to [Kinney], 'So you think I'm ugly?' I just kind of avoided that question." —Nina Mandell
