22 JANUARY 2002
Lara Flynn Boyle has a busy life, starring in hit show the The Practice, shooting the sequel to Men In Black and making time for boyfriend Jack Nicholson. And the former Twin Peaks actress unabashedly enjoys her life as a Hollywood star.

“I have great opportunities and I take them,” she told the Daily Telegraph. “I’m not married, I’m not engaged to anyone, I don’t have any children and I don’t make apologies for the fact that I make absurd amounts of money.”

“I’m a bad girl and I love it,” says the waifish actress, who admits she used to be a “nice girl” to compete with the Sandra Bullocks of the world. “Then I thought, I’m just going to do my thing. Maybe people won’t like it, but at least I’ll be able to sleep at night.”

Being “bad” seems to suit her bad boy beau Jack Nicholson just fine as the pair have recently rekindled their on-off romance – a relationship that has been grist for the Tinseltown rumour mill for the past two years. “Of course people are fascinated by him,” she says of the screen legend. “I understand that. I’m fascinated by him, too.”

Despite being one-half of a high-profile Hollywood couple, Lara says she keeps the trappings of fame in perspective. “I don’t have a stylist, I do my own make-up and I think that people who have all these assistants around them forget real life,” she says. Which explains her reaction when Jack, at the beginning of their relationship, would have his assistant ring her on his behalf. Lara’s response? “I would say, ‘Tell Jack to call me himself.’”

Says the actress: “It takes a confident man to be attracted to someone like me.”