All this and Devon too
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All this and Devon too, Flaunt Magazine Issue 45 Devon Aoki's hands are bruised. This fact alone rings a bit weird, since her lifestyle as a model demands she take scrupulous care of her body. And the fact quickly grows weird- er when she casually mentions that the bruises were inflicted by the recoil of the glocks and uzis she fired yesterday. What the hell was she doing packing such heat? The answer is acting. Or, more specifically, training for acting. She'll be appearing as an undercover agent, with a French accent, alongside Jessica Biel and Meagan Good in an upcoming, as yet unnamed, sexy action movie sort of project. And, as anybody knows, a secret agent who can't stylishly unload an uzi into a party of bad guys will be of little help accomplishing missions impossible. Aoki's first foray into semi-automatic gun- play comes hot on the heels of another first: street racing. As is perhaps growing obvious, 2003 seems to be Devon's year of liv- ing dangerously. Practically everybody is familiar with Aoki's rise into the interna- tional modeling community seven or so years ago, propelled by her unique look-a mix of a Bavarian/ English mother and a Japanese father-and key high. fashion friendships with Kate Moss and Chanel clothing design- er Karl Lagerfeld. But this world was not enough, and being beauti- ful in frozen photographs bleeds easily and quickly into being beau- tiful in motion pictures. A few music videos later and she's play- ing a hot speed racer named Suki (with Paul Walker and Ludacris) in 2 Fast 2 Furious, with John Singleton ("One of my favorite, favorite directors," she gushes) shouting dramatic guidance over the din of roaring motors. Devon's days of thunder have arrived. The sequel to 2001's summer smash vehicle finds Aoki in her first real role tearing through the steamy streets of Miami in a custom supercharged Honda 2000. It also required her to talk to poles. "It's so funny," she explains. "I was supposed to say a line to Paul in one scene, and he wasn't there. So I had to do it to a pole with tape on it. And I was looking at the pole and I was like, 'Okay, the pole is Paul, the pole is Paul. Look at the pieces of tape, those are his eyes." Aoki's years of perfect poise on countless catwalks clearly left her with a certain lithesome grace uncommon in novice thespians. Judging from her debut performance, you'd think she'd been pretending poles were Pauls all her life. But being bad-ass in a sure-fire booming blockbuster is only one achievement in her ceaseless series of brave new projects. Aoki's already established a record label, called The Commission, to release the R&B- based ballads she's been singing with increasing regularity. She also runs a clothing line out of Japan, though she admits the responsibility is a little daunting because, as she puts it, "You don't want someone to put on a pair of jeans and find out they're made backward." Unless, of course, they're intended for Kriss Kross, which is, with rare exception, never the case. Overall, the amount of ambi- tion Devon Aoki exudes is straight-up staggering, especial- ly considering that she can't yet even legally drink. Really, it's a family trait. Her dad's a damn Guinness Book of World Records regular, having flown across the Pacific in a hot air balloon, ridden sharks, piloted solitary subma- rine missions, and founded the Benihana restaurant chain. And her brother, Steve, runs Dim Mak Records, a cool indie label spe- cializing in noisy rock bands. The Aokis, it's obvious, aim high. But right now it's the bridge over the river Model-Turned- Actress that Miss Devon is trying to cross successfully, as many who treaded that path before her failed to survive the transition. Her ideal- ism is still largely intact, and bodes well for her future, for it seems to allow her to see connections where others do not. Comparing model- ing to acting, she backs up and gets deep: "There's some things that are very similar, in terms of just being a human being. You sort of act your whole life, so I think the idea of pretending or acting is kind of a familiar means of expression to every- one. I mean, you probably acted a little bit, right?" My heart stops. I pause, reeling. Flashback to our seventh-grade adap- tation of A Wrinkle in Time. Myself, a riveting young Charles Wallace. Wow. Beautiful, talented, gun-savvy, and psychic? That's Devon on earth.
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