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Anna Faris chats comedy, Hollywood and “What’s Your Number?” – Metro US

Anna Faris chats comedy, Hollywood and “What’s Your Number?”

Though she’s well known for comedy, Anna Faris would argue that “What’s Your Number?” is something of a departure for her. “I had never really done a romantic comedy before,” says the actress, who first rose to fame in the “Scary Movie” franchise. “Usually I get offered these roles that are crazy and broad, that don’t seem like very real characters. And this seemed like a very grounded character. And it was such a strong script. I normally get sent really bad pieces of s—.”

The new film also marks the second time (after 2008’s “the House Bunny”) that Faris has served as executive producer on one of her projects — but she doesn’t think you should read too much into that. “I came on as an executive producer, which really doesn’t mean much. They pretend to ask your opinion,” she says with a laugh. “I mean, they asked my opinion about a lot of things. Sometimes they listened and sometimes they didn’t.”

One of the areas where they apparently didn’t listen to Faris was on her character’s look. “I had a look initially that I wanted to present as Ally. I wanted her to be a little chunky and a brunette and a little just sloppy — like unemployed, tennis shoes. But then there was a lot of disagreement about that element,” she says. “I understand that visually, it’s fun to wear nice clothes and nice heels, and I get that she has a rich mom so that’s how we justified her Prada shoes, but I don’t know. I’m sort of yearning to play the sloppier characters and to play characters that are a little more real, just more relatable.”

The number question

The plot of “What’s Your Number?” gets kicked off by Anna Faris’ character reading an article in Marie Clare about how the more sexual partners a woman has had, the less likely she is to find love. Faris — who says her mother forbid her from reading magazines like that growing up — wonders how much good or harm those types of articles are doing. “Is this archaic? Why do we still feel guilty about sexual experiences?”

As for the number question itself? “I feel like it’s more important to a woman what a woman’s number is — to themselves — than what a man really thinks about it,” Faris suggests. “It’s a question that young people ask themselves a little bit more. Because I think as you get older you realize that nothing good can come of this line of conversation. But yeah, it’s unfortunately a conversation that we’re still having.”