Jennifer Esposito was born April 19, 1973 in Brooklyn, NY. She made her first appearance in "Law & Order" in 1990, but she is best known as Stacey in Spin City. She can also be seen in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer playing the role of Nancy. One of her more recent successes was her role as Ruby in Spike Lee's controversial Summer of Sam in 99'.

Interview:

MAXIM: You filmed I Still Know What You Did Last Summer on location in some remote corner of Mexico, right? What was that like?
JENNIFER ESPOSITO: Horrifying. It took 11 hours to get there—the last part by donkey—and I had to get typhoid shots, malaria pills, all this crap. When we finally arrive, it’s 103 degrees and we’re surrounded by scorpions and gigantic bugs and bats. Then they put me in a room with a mattress on the floor, a broken air conditioner, and a television with only one channel in English that shows the same porno movie over and over.

M: Um…how many times did you watch the porno?
JE: Hey, it was the only thing on in English! I saw this girl in a magazine the other day and thought she looked familiar; then I realized she was one of those porno women. The worst thing, though, was the crabs.

M: [delicately] The crabs?
JE: First of all, let me just say that [Summer costar] Brandy told my crab story as her own on The Tonight Show. But I’ve got the pictures to prove it. One night I was in bed—and remember that I’m on the second floor of a hotel—when I spotted this crab coming toward me across the floor, watching me with his beady little crab eyes. I think he wanted to get in bed with me.

M: I had no idea crabs were so smart.
JE: If I moved, he moved. If I stopped, he stopped. It was a duel. Finally he scurried behind the couch. So I slammed the couch against the wall and figured it was bye-bye, crab. But when I woke up an hour later, the crab was sitting on my head! I freaked out and called the front desk, and their reaction was, “A crab? Big deal.”

M: So you’d classify yourself as a city girl, then?
JE: Sure, give me civilization. I don’t want to be pampered. I just want to be clean and have a crab-free bed and be able to eat the food. We sent a bunch of crew members home with dysentery—that’s like diarrhea times 50.

M: Do you think the producers chose this luxurious location just to achieve true horror?
JE: If they did, it was very wise. I was screaming constantly, on the set, in my room…everywhere. When you see this movie, I look authentically terrified. In the future, all my movie contracts will have a no-crab clause.

M: You play a bartender in the Summer sequel. Did you ever work behind a bar in real life?
JE: Oh, you bet. But I spent more time waitressing—by far the worst job ever created. I had to stop because I threatened a rude customer with a plate.

M: What’s the worst pick-up line you heard on the job?
JE: One night this guy actually said to me, “Your legs must be tired, because you’ve been running through my mind all night.” It was so silly I didn’t even get it. With lines like that, you might as well just stay at home.

M: I dunno…you seem like someone who’s always craved excitement. Is it true you used to lock your grandmother in her basement room so you could party at night?
JE: Just as an extra precaution. When I was 15, my parents would leave me at home alone with her, so I’d invite my friends over. She was practically deaf, but I’d lock her in anyway after she went to sleep.

M: Sensible. What else did you do?
JE: One time we all wanted to go to a club in Manhattan, and the only person with a driver’s license was my best friend from across the street. Unfortunately, her dad made her come home, but she left the keys to his car at my house, so basically…I stole my neighbor’s car and stayed out all night, partying.

M: What happened?
JE: When I got back at six in the morning, my friend’s father was out walking the dog! First I tried to tell him I’d borrowed his car to get some bagels…you know, in my party clothes. Then I pleaded, swore I’d never steal another car, and he didn’t tell my parents. I told my mother years later, and she called him to apologize because her daughter had stolen his car five years earlier.

M: You locked your grandmother in the basement and committed grand theft auto in the same night?
JE: Sounds pretty bad when you put it that way.

M: How much is your Spin City character, Stacy, the feisty, uninhibited Italian, based on you?
JE: Well, I’m Italian, but my family isn’t stereotypical. I mean, I only have one sister and we don’t yell or throw pasta at each other. My mother doesn’t even have a secret spaghetti-sauce recipe.

M: Any chance we’ll see Stacy hook up with Michael J. Fox this year? His character sure seems to get a lot of hot women, for a lowly deputy mayor.
JE: That’s TV for you. And it’s his show—he gets to do what he wants. In my case, though, they thought that would be a little much, since I work with him.

M: Enough about him. Tell me about next year’s Summer of Sam, the film you just completed with Spike Lee.
JE: It’s my dream come true. I’ve been up for every movie you can think of starring Salma Hayek or Jennifer Lopez, and now I got a big one. It takes place in the Bronx in 1977, when the Son of Sam serial killings were going on. But it’s really about the fear that takes over when people have to live through that. It was sweltering that summer—there was the blackout, too. Everyone I talk to says they were so scared, they’d run from their cars to their front doors.

M: Does your character ever come face-to-face with the Son of Sam himself?
JE: No, she’s just this neighborhood disco girl with Farrah Fawcett hair and a bit of a bad reputation. She gets involved with this punk-rock guy who makes her the lead singer in his band, The Boogers.

M: Disco to punk rock: That’s quite a musical transformation. Do you actually sing?
JE: Sing? It’s punk rock, so it’s more like screaming. We shot at CBGB with real punkers as the audience, and they actually thought we were a real band. They wanted to know when they could buy my album.

M: Hmm…Michael J. Fox and Spike Lee. You seem to have a thing about working with short men.
JE: No kidding. Are you listening, Martin Scorsese?

TOP SITES: