She’s not sexy – and she knows it.
In a new interview, Katie Holmes broke the hearts of rueful “Dawson’s Creek” fans while discussing the lack of racy roles on her acting résumé.
“I didn’t want to be the sexy young thing,” the 44-year-old told Glamour magazine for this month’s cover story. “I am not sexy.”
“I used to have a friend of mine come to all my photo shoots to make sure that they didn’t try to make me that way,” recalled Holmes, whose breakout role as the cynical and sharp class valedictorian Joey Potter in the WB teen drama spawned her girl-next-door persona.
The show, which ran for six seasons starting in 1998, followed a group of adolescent friends coming of age in the fictional town of Capeside, Massachusetts.
It was considered risqué for its time as the series often openly discussed sex and sexuality.
“I was just 18 when we started, and I really appreciated the writing because I felt like, as a teenager, I had so many different feelings, trying to go from being a girl to a woman,” she told Glamour of her “Dawson’s Creek” beginnings.
“And I felt like [creator Kevin Williamson] had this way of putting words to those feelings. So for me, playing that role, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what that means. Oh, I get that.’ I loved doing it. It was a really fun, profound experience.”
Since the series, her career has taken a genre-spanning turn, with starring roles in comedic (“Jack and Jill”), dramatic (“Coda”), horror (“Disturbing Behavior”) and even action (“Batman Begins”) films.
In 2006, she infamously married A-lister and devout Scientologist Tom Cruise, with whom she has a daughter, Suri Cruise, now 16. The pair divorced in 2012, also marking Holmes’ exit from the controversial church.
It was recently reported that Suri’s father has “no part” in her life.
Elsewhere in the interview with Glamour, Holmes teased some of her upcoming credits, including one she described as a “smaller” project, co-written and starring just her and actor Alan Cumming. The other is a film she’ll be directing and which she is presently casting.
Holmes currently resides in New York City.
