Freed from posing as a vampire in dingy convention halls, Sascha is getting some light on her face in this summer's What's the Worst that Could Happen?

It's a little-known fact that the road to Hollywood success is often littered with embarrassment and ridicule. One of Brad Pitt's first jobs involved dressing up like a chicken and handing out menus on sunset Boulevard. Before Jay Leno achieved late-night success, he was part of the often overlooked McDonald's talent-show circuit. And who can forget George Clooney and his girlie locks as George Burnette, the fix-it guy on The Facts of Life? So the stunning Sascha Knopf finds herself in good company as she explains the eight months she spent in 1996 playing a real-life version of Vampirella, a campy comic book vampire. "The character is kind of the prototype that Elvira copied for her Mistress of the Dark," she says optimistically, "but basically, the gig was all convention work. Standing around some makeshift booth in Omaha, wearing a skimpy bikini and stiletto heels while creepy boys took pictures. Ugh! It was hard to imagine I'd ever make it."

     But Sascha has made it. In addition to landing a role opposite Danny DeVito in the comedy What's the Worst that Happen?, she's co-starring in the Farrelly brothers' next film, Shallow Hal. When she auditioned, there wasn't a part for her. But the brothers who gave us There's Something About Mary were so impressed with her that they wrote her into the script.

     Still, things weren't always so easy for the Long Island, NY, native. Growing up in affluent Nassau County, Sascha, whose dad then sold auto parts, felt she was on the outside. "I shoplifted a pair of Guess? jeans just to have the right label. They were the wrong size, so I pawned them off on my sister. She didn't know they were stolen and tried exchanging them the next day. She didn't get arrested, but she was interrogated for hours by security."

     Clothing wasn't the only thing making Sascha feel different. Despite the fact that she was two years ahead in school (she graduated when she was just 16), she was the most developed girl in her class. ("I used to wear big sweatshirts to hide my chest. The boys always made fun.") To top it off, she didn't even like her name (it was Cheryl until her first year of college).

     Since moving to LA, Sascha's learned how hard it is to find Mr. Right in a town full of bleached-tooth poseurs. She's been proposed to twice, but ultimately, Sascha always finds herself spooked. "I was engaged for two weeks, with the ring and everything," she says of bachelor No. 1. "I gave it back because I wasn't in love. My parents loved him; it was a pressure thing. I didn't even sleep with him until the night we were engaged. That probably had something to do with his hasty proposal."

     Bachelor No. 2 was a different story. "I met him on vacation. He was from the Mediterranean, and he taught me to say, 'I'm drunk,' 'I love you' and 'You have a big dick' in Greek. The second he asked me to marry him was the second I was gone!"

     For now, her plans are less matrimonial. "My short-term goal is to win an Academy Award. I haven't figured out what comes after that," she says. But at least she'll never be forced back into her Vampirella heels. "My dad sold his business a few years ago. Now he owns a medical school on the Caribbean island of St. Eustatius. It's for anybody who wants to go. So if acting doesn't work out, I could always be a doctor." (BP)