'Sin Eater'
Having arrived on the Hollywood scene in style as princess to Heath Ledger's armour-clad hero in A Knight's Tale, Shannyn Sossamon is soon to be reuniting with Ledger and director Brian Helgeland for a second, albeit, unrelated adventure.
The Sin Eater stars Ledger as a Catholic clergyman helping the NYPD with a series of occult homicides. As the mystery unfolds, evidence begins to point towards a long-forgotten religious order, taken to absolving people of their sins in a very final manner. "It starts filming in Rome on January 14," Sossamon told Empire Online. "I play Lucy, the lead girl. Heath plays a priest and I'm a girl who he once performed an exorcism. They're kind of in love but they can't… you know. She's just a little out there and is trying to save him from something that is worse than death."
The extremely amiable actress, who was famously 'discovered' while Dj-ing at Gwyneth Paltrow's birthday, has certainly filled her slate for the near future. Eschewing the usual wash of teen movies that most up-and-coming actresses must endure, Sossamon has lined up a number of intelligent projects to add to her already impressive CV.
She's recently finished work on The Rules of Attraction based on the novel by American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis, and Sossamon is adamant that this is not your average love story. "God, it's so fucking weird. There's no real friendship, there's no real love. That's what's funny about the film, that's it, there's no beginning and no end. It's just a little slice of someplace somewhere. And not a good slice, everybody's in it's just really, really gross. Not gross in an over the top exaggerated way but in a mind way, they're really dysfunctional."
True to Ellis' somewhat cynical take on human interaction, the film takes a slightly warped look at relationships and boasts performances from infamous porn star Ron Jeremy - "I had absolutely no idea he was this porn legend," - and Dawson's Creek lead James Van Der Beek. " James has been doing Dawson's Creek for so long that he's got this built up 'I wanna fucking do something else' energy, and the character he plays is Patrick Bateman's little brother, Sean Bateman, so that's a really dark character, very different for him. I'm really glad I got to be in the film that's going to show everybody just how talented James Van Der Beek is. He's brilliant in this movie."
Ellis' second novel, The Rules of Attraction provides a first (and brief) look at fledgling killer Patrick Bateman, something Roger Avary's film will also feature. "he does make a little appearance," confesses Sossamon. " But I forget whether Roger wanted that to be a surprise or not so I probably shouldn't say. He wouldn't tell us until after we'd finished filming it. It's not Christian Bale. I really think he should have done it though. I think that would have been really hip… and kinda cool."
Clearly making a good impression on her directors, Sossamon will be reuniting with Avary, once her second bout with Brian Helgeland is finished. She will be reprising her role from The Rules of Attraction in an adaptation of Ellis' most recent book, Glamorama. "I'm playing the same character. But she's a little older, and I think a little more together."
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