THE DEVIL IN MISS CHRISTENSEN

Sure, she looks like an angel, but this month in The Banger Sisters and Swimfan, Erika Christensen has fun with her naughty parts.

“For the longest time, I was the girl next door,” says Erika Chritensen, who made her big-screen debut in 1997’s Leave It to Beaver. “You can’t be dangerous. You can’t do anything wrong.” Trading sex for speed-balls as Michael Douglas’s daughter in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic shattered that stereotype. “Now I’m playing a bunch of crazies,” she laughs.

The ingenue, who turns 20 this month, continues her walk on the wild side in The Banger Sisters (opposite Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon) as a high school valedictorian who spends prom night with her head full of hallucinogens. She also stalks a Speedo-sporting jock (Clockstoppers’ Jesse Bradford) in the Fatal Attraction-esque thriller Swimfan.

Despite her dalliance with dark roles, the Seattle-born Scientologist isn’t content to just be Hollywood’s good-girl-gone-bad, but she has to admit that it’s pretty fun. “You have to play a murderer at some point,” she giggles. “Now I can check that one off the list.”

— Kristen Lootens