+ + + Wilmington Star :: October 12, 2008 5:18 PM
High on Hilarie: 'One Tree Hill' actress is busy as the bees in her upcoming film
By Amy Hotz
When "One Tree Hill" began filming in Wilmington six years ago, Hilarie Burton settled in quickly. She bought a home, became a regular at an independent bookstore and even started a band with some guys she works with.
But getting comfortable didn't mean getting complacent in her career. In addition to her role as music lover Peyton Sawyer on the CW teen drama, Burton has appeared in a handful of films, including "The List," a drama that filmed in North Carolina a couple of years ago. . This month, Burton can be seen in an upcoming episode of the HBO series "Little Britain USA" and on the big screen in "The Secret Life of Bees." Both were filmed in Wilmington.
"I joke that I'm the local girl for hire because pretty much everything that comes to town I'm like, 'I'll do it. I just want to work in town, thank you. I don't want to go to L.A., I don't want to go anywhere else. Anything that comes through town, sign me up,' " she said.
Before the U.K. sketch comedy spin-off of "Little Britain" came to town this spring, Burton already had heard a great deal about it from the drummer in her band, who also works as a crew member on "One Tree Hill."
"So I watched it, and it's hilarious. It's great. I grew up in geeky theater circles, so sketch comedy and improv is always something that I've been into, and was actually the first community that I became friends with here in Wilmington," she said.
That might come as a surprise to fans accustomed to the actress' regular character on "One Tree Hill" who's known as a brooder with deep, delicate feelings.
In the "Little Britain USA" sketch, Burton plays a lesbian on a college campus. This becomes a big problem for one of the show's regular characters, Daffyd, who flaunts his sexuality in revealing rubber and leather outfits and refuses to accept he's not the only gay on campus.
Burton says her close friends will find this performance much more in tune with her true self.
"All my training in acting is in either classical acting or in comedic acting," Burton said. "My acting coach in New York was this great comedic Broadway actress, June Stein, and so when I got cast in this weepy teen drama, everybody thought it was hilarious. They were like, 'What? You cry every day? OK. Pretty funny, Hil.' And I joke that I don't cry in real life, either, because I just get it all out at work."
Taking a break to do comedy was a great relief, she said, "You can only cry so much. My tears are running dry."
But she saved plenty of tears for "Secret Life of Bees," a film based on the novel by Sue Monk Kidd.
Burton, a Virginia native and huge fan of the Southern Gothic genre, read the book soon after it was published in 2002. At that time, she was living in New York and feeling very homesick for anything Southern. The book, she said, got her through "a sad winter."
She was so impressed with the writing, that when she moved to Wilmington a year later, she gave a copy to "One Tree Hill" co-star Sophia Bush.
"I handed lots of copies of that book out. It really spoke to me and I've always been obsessed with beekeeping, for whatever reason, I love bees. Which is random," she said. "I still hope people read the book but, the movie's pretty damn good, guys."
"Bees" is about a young girl in 1964 South Carolina (played by Dakota Fanning in the film) who is grieving for her mother and is being physically abused by her father. To escape, she runs away with her nanny (Jennifer Hudson) to a group of beekeeping sisters. Burton plays the mother in flashback scenes that are crucial to the plot.
"A lot of my stuff's in photography, too. It's like I exist as a memory. And that's a weird thing to play, to play memory," she said. "One of my best friends from New York and I . . . as we were growing up in New York and making plans and stuff, our whole thing was, 'The best performance and the best project should be able to be watched on silence, should be mute. If you can't tell your story without exposition and without all the chatty stuff, then your story doesn't stand up.' So for me I'm pretty much a mime in this movie."
Of course, the book and the movie reflect the Virginian's love for Southern culture and literature. Burton said Southern female characters, especially, are very important to her.
A little bit of the big city followed her into the role, however. Burton spent the beginning of this decade working as a VJ for MTV in New York, and during that time, she became one of the first people on MTV to interview Alicia Keys, who plays June Boatwright in "Secret Life of Bees." She also interviewed Queen Latifah (August Boatwright) while working for the network.
All the extracurricular stuff is done for now. Burton is dabbling with her own independent production company, Southern Gothic Productions, but focusing on the sixth season of "One Tree Hill."
When it wraps in March, that may be the end of another phase in the actress's life. Her contract is up at the end of this season and a seventh season has not yet been ordered. But, for Burton, one thing always seems to lead to another.
"We've spent the entirety of our 20s here on this show. And it has been an awesome, awesome experience and an awesome run," she said. "And I would work with the same team again in a heartbeat. But what they've done is, they've educated me enough to be able to build this new thing."
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