Yasmine Bleeth
FHM
Interview

"Wow! Number 12!" exclaims Yasmine Bleeth, having just been informed of her 1998 position in FHM's 100 Sexiest Women in the World list. "But am I going up or down? You British are so fickle." In fact, the former Baywatch star has slipped slightly from her 1997 high of number six. But she needn't worry - despite being out of sight for the past 12 months, shooting the features that should elevate her to proper movie-star status, Yasmine's British fans still deluged our postroom with votes. In this instance at least, Hollywood's mantra - that popularity in a red swimsuit translates into disaster at the box office - doesn't look like holding up.

Yasmine's rosy career prospects shouldn't really surprise us. Despite spending three years in the Baywatch camp, the five-foot five-inch brunette never fitted the bouncing bimbo stereotype. While many of her co-stars spent their free months stripping for Playboy and hauling themselves round the party circuit, Yasmine chose to develop her acting, taking serious roles in a series of low-budget independent features and TV movies. So when the time came to make a break from the world's most-watched show, she could boast a resumé which consisted of far more than prancing about the Californian coastline in slo-mo. You'd never know from our pictures, but she doesn't even bother going to the gym anymore.

Three weeks after her 30th birthday, Yasmine is at home in Los Angeles, feeding the pet frogs her boyfriend Richard Grieco brought back from the golf course ("He knows I have an affinity for frogs. They get an awfully bad rap"). It's a rare break from a hectic programme - she has already filmed three features this year, the most eagerly-awaited being David Zucker's comedy BASEketball. The first film to star South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, BASEketball sailed through test screenings in the US, with praise for Yasmine's performance at least matching the more predictable acclaim heaped on her hip collaborators. Just a year after filming her last episodes of Baywatch and two years after her first FHM cover shoot, it seems the doe-eyed beauty is already heading straight for the celebrity A-list.

I think it came the second time I had to fight off a shark as part of a storyline. I mean, how many different ways can you actually rescue someone? The writers did try to give me 'meaningful' storylines, where I saved Aids victims or homeless kids, but there was only so much they could do.

Have you noticed any big differences between working on a television show and on a feature film?

The film set is a lot slower. You arrive in the morning, then have to wait around for eight or nine hours before they even call for you. The pace of a TV show or a TV movie is much quicker, because they've only got a month to shoot two hours of film. On BASEketball we had 11 weeks. BASEketball is about two guys who become famous by creating a new sport.

Have you ever invented any games of your own?

My girlfriends and I used to invent a lot of weird stuff at school. While the boys were playing cowboys and Indians, we'd pretend to go to the drive-in and practise kissing on each other with our hands over our mouths. The first hickie (lovebite) I ever got was from a girlfriend. All the really advanced girls would come to school with hickies; we'd get jealous, so we'd copy them - except we'd end up with them in weird places like on the back of our hands. We didn't know you weren't supposed to get hickies on your hand. I also did things with my Barbie dolls - they were my first sexual experiments.

Er, what kind of odd things?

I remember my grandmother walking in one day and being very shocked when she looked inside the dollhouse to see Barbie's face in Ken's crotch. I think she passed it off as an accident - like Barbie had slipped or something.

Barbie used to help us illustrate FHM's Position Of The Month. Sadly, she was forced into retirement a few months ago...

And now you use wooden dolls instead. I don't like those as much. You can't tell which one's the guy and which one's the girl. I remember reading FHM in the hair salon and not being able to figure it out. Of course, I liked Barbie much better because it was reminiscent of my childhood.

BASEketball is your first big film role. Who do you play?

My character is this uptight, prissy woman who runs a healthcare programme for what the movie calls 'living-impaired' children - which basically means they're all dying of terrible diseases. It's a parody of the Starlight Foundation, which grants dying kids their last wishes. Matt and Trey's characters fight to win me over, but I'm a little bottled up.

The plot sounds like it's in suitably bad taste. Has working with Matt and Trey warped your sense of humour?

Well... I really enjoy the kind of base jokes that South Park specialises in. I love the fact that they kill Kenny every episode, and that whole thing of boys throwing up on girls when they get nervous is really funny.

Presumably it's not so funny when it happens in real life?

Nobody's ever thrown up on me in real life. Unfortunately, I have done it to boys a couple of times. I threw up on my current boyfriend about a year ago. I'd had a little too much to drink and he had his arms round my neck to comfort me. I just opened my mouth and this huge projectile of vomit came out. I really thought our relationship was over. Maybe that's true love - you can throw up on your partner and they still want to be with you.

We've heard you're a mean poker player. Didn't you enter the US Championships a couple of years back?

That was on a total whim. A friend of mine was co-hosting the event in Atlantic City and he asked me to be a celebrity entrant. Up until that point, I'd played maybe once or twice in my life. I didn't even know the rules. And we were going to be playing Texas Hold'em, which is known as the Cadillac of poker games because it's the most complicated. So my friend gave me about an hour-long lesson and I ended up coming 28th out of 113 entrants. And these were people who played poker for a living.

What was your secret?

I was just very lucky. Also, people didn't expect anything from me. You know, here was this little chippy from Baywatch who'd never played before, so everyone assumed I'd be awful. At one point I had about $25,000 worth of chips in front of me. I've got a taste for poker now, although I prefer playing at the casino rather than at home, because the stakes are higher. It's no fun with 50-cent bets.

You turned 30 in June. Does getting old bother you?

Not at all. I really believe that we get better as we get older. My mother's from France, and in French culture women aren't even considered adults until they're 35 or 40 years old. When you're in your twenties, you're still a girl.

What about kids? Are they good or evil?

I think kids can be the meanest creatures on Earth. Especially when they first start going to school. Can you imagine being five years old and being called Yasmine when everyone else has a name like Jane, Mary or Heather? I was known as Spazzy Yazzy. I also remember when I was 13 or 14, I went away for two or three months to do a movie. When I came back to school, everyone was acting really strange around me. Finally, one of my girlfriends told me that everyone thought I'd gone off to have a baby. That was horrible.

So you wouldn't fancy having kids of your own?

Well, I do love kids, but you have to be ready to give up your whole life for them - and I don't know if I'm ready to do that. I'm still a little selfish.

In your last FHM interview, you told us you'd never had a proper job in your life. So what's the worst piece of acting work you've ever done?

Probably the most humiliating job was an infomercial I did about eight years ago. It was for the Psychic Network. I filmed a testimonial about how I'd called up my psychic and she'd predicted my whole future. The producers had told me it was just a test, but it ended up being huge - it was on TV for three years. That was so embarrassing.

I take it you're not a great believer in spiritualism.

I'm the last person to believe in that stuff. I completely sold out. People would even recognise me in the street as the Psychic Network girl and ask my advice about whether they should call up for a prediction. And I'd be like: "No, no, no. Don't ever call up."

During your first year on Baywatch, you also starred in a CD-rom game called Maximum Surge. Didn't that title strike you as sounding a bit like...

A porno thing? It never crossed my mind at the time, but I guess it does, doesn't it? But it wasn't sexual at all. I played this vigilante who was trying to save the world from aliens. They didn't even dress me sexily. It was fatigues and tank top.

While we're on the subject of porn, have you seen Pamela Anderson's home video?

Do you think I'd admit to it? Pamela's my friend and I would never invade her privacy like that. But you can't imagine how many times people have tried to get me to see it. It's even on the pay-per-view hotel channels now. I'm sure she looks fabulous, but I don't want to see my friends in that situation. Not unless I'm watching in person.

I beg your pardon?

Oh, now. I said what I said and that's the end of it.

In FHM this month, we've got a feature on how to defend your home. Are there any elaborate security measures in place at the Bleeth residence?

We have a massive alarm system, but until recently I never turned it on. But my dad's house down the hill has just been burgled, so I do try and set it up now. The problem is that almost any movement will activate it, so it keeps going off in the middle of the night. The other day I went out through the garage instead of the front door and the whole super-dooper alarm went off.

Can you remember your first-ever boyfriend?

Yeah, I was 12. He was from Argentina. His name was Julio. Hang on a minute, that's wrong. There was a boy before him. Eric Knight.

Shame. Julio sounds much more exciting...

Eric Knight was from South Africa. We were together for a couple of months, which seems like a long time in sixth grade. I dumped him for a guy called Jodie.

Jodie? I thought Julio was next.

No - there was this blond boy, Jodie. I was only with him for a week.

If a guy was to ask you out on a date now, where would be the best venue?

He should cook me dinner at home. It's easy to take a girl out, so cooking at home shows real effort. Or if he can't cook, he should come up with something inventive, like taking me on a picnic some place romantic.

There was a story that during a temporary break-up with your boyfriend, Richard, he heard you were dating someone else and sent you hundreds of roses to try and win you back. Is that true?

No. We have broken up a couple of times, but he actually sent me the roses while he was away working on a movie. The joke among the girls on the set was that he was sending them to kind of pee on his territory. After all, he sent them to my workplace, not my home. We were together at that point, though. If I was seen out with other men, I don't think my boyfriend would send me roses. He'd probably send me death threats.

Finally, in FHM we run a cooking feature called Drunken Delights, which are meals people cook when drunk. Have you got a recipe you'd like to share?

I don't get that hungry when I'm drunk. The munchies tend to come if you smoke pot. One day I had such a craving for macaroni and cheese I got some Cheezwizz - processed cheese in an aerosol can - and squirted it onto hot pasta. So my Drunken Delight is Cheezwizz and macaroni.

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