Alone in the Dark with Tara Reid

Tara Reid (American Pie, National Lampoon's Van Wilder) has been a regular at Sony's PlayStation 2 celebrity parties and she's now taking the next step into the videogame realm by bringing life to a virtual character. The 29-year old actress, who most recently appeared in NBC's "Scrubs," took some time out from her shooting schedule to talk about videogames.

Gamestar: Talk about the character you play in this videogame adaptation

Tara Reid: I play Aline. I say Aline, but then some people say Eileen, but I mean it's spelled Aline. Anyway, she's a really interesting character. She is extremely smart. She comes from a family where she never knew her father. Her mother was from France. She was born in Boston and she studied in school all about anthropology and she was at the top of her class. She loves artifacts and she's become one of the best experts in the world in Abcarny, which is an old Indian tribe. She does this research and she's trying to put these pieces together to try and find out well, they're not really sure what it is and what they’re figuring out, but they know that strange things go on with it. So she's the expert. She can read all the symbols on all the Abcarny pieces and the artifacts.

GS: How is Aline involved with Edward Carnby?

TR: She and Carnby [Christian Slater] used to date a while ago and they were really good friends, and then he was missing in South America and she thought he was dead. She wasn't sure where he was. And you know she got even more focused in on her work, and so she doesn’t like to think with her heart, she likes to think with her head. He's the one person that she thinks with her heart about. When her boss is away looking for these different pieces, Carnby comes and sees her, and at first she's really mad at him, and upset, and really pissed, but there's passion still there, and you can tell there are still feelings there.

TR: Can you talk a little about the story?

Carnby brings this missing piece, the key of the Abcarny, that fits all the other pieces together, and they start figuring things out. His character was an orphan when he was a younger kid and something like a weird phenomena happened that no one could really figure out. They didn't really know whether it was aliens coming down or what it really was, so basically they got obsessed and they got implanted with these worms. And they’re trying to figure out why these worms were implanted in their spines, which turned them into zombies.

Christian’s character, his worm died when he was little. They didn't know whether he got electrocuted or something, but he's the only one that's not bad, so there's something with the Abcarny and the worm and all that together that they are trying to put the pieces together. So it’s kind of like a big mystery that everyone plays a different role in. It's like a great action thriller that takes you on a great ride.

GS: What do you think of this role?

TR: First of all, I've never played a doctor in anything. It's more of an adult, mature role for me, so I've never had to memorize the kind of vocabulary words like the ones I've had to memorize. But it's a lot of fun, I mean there's a lot of research that I did on the character—a lot to do with the game Alone in the Dark. I read the history on who they said she was, and I filled in the blanks with a lot of things they didn't answer and I made them myself. And you know, it's just a really fun, great role, and there's so much action in it. She's a really strong woman. She's not afraid to fight back and to figure out what this mystery is.

GS: Have you played the video game?

TR: Yeah, yeah, yeah I got the game. I first read, it's amazing if you go on the internet and you look on Alone in the Dark, they exactly explain what each character looks like and their stories together and where they're from and it's just really bizarre, it's really cool, and the games pretty cool, too. And now putting it into real life is something that I've never really done before and it's really fun.

GS: Do you play games in your free time?

TR: I like games. I mean, I don't have a lot of time for them to play them, but to be a part of a game is pretty cool, I'll definitely learn how to play Alone in the Dark pretty good.

GS: Would you ever be interested in starring in a videogame?

TR: I would love to be in the game, like a cartoon character, an animation, I would love that, like if people could play me. You know what I mean—I could kick butt and figure things out I think that would be really neat.

GS: What was it like working with director Uwe Boll?

Oh, he's awesome. He's German and he has a pretty heavy accent, but once you start to understand it, it's great. He's very good with detail. He knows exactly what he wants. It's different than working on other types of films. The details are so important in this one, whether it's the gun and bullets and artifacts. In other movies it's more about crying and all the emotion. Here it's all the details that make up everything in the film, which is interesting and a lot of fun.