`I didn't party my way to success,' `A Knights Tale' star says.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

MIAMI _ A couple of years ago, a complete unknown with a fierce look winds up at a birthday party for Gwyneth Paltrow. She's just there DJing. Actually, she's there because she's hanging with a friend who's DJing. But she takes a turn at the turntables.

A casting director sees her from across the star-filled room and decides on the spot she's the girl who will play Heath Ledger's lady in the just-released medieval action-comedy "A Knight's Tale."

It's a fab Hollywood yarn, but Shannyn Sossamon, the girl it happened to, hates having to recount it. She's sinking in her seat, picking the anchovies out of her shrimp caesar and trying to talk you out of hyping that piece of her narrative.

``They just needed a story. I mean, it's cool to have a story like that with Gwyneth Paltrow's name attached. But I think it's kind of a bad story. It did kind of happen _ the casting director didn't actually approach me at the party, she got my number from my friend and called me later. But I had to audition.''

Sossamon is worried people will see her as some Hollywood party girl who got into the movies without paying her dues.

``People are going to think, `Oh, a pretty girl who hangs out with celebrities goes to a party and gets put in a movie even though she never acted before.' That sucks because there are a lot of people who are passionate about acting and have worked at if for years and my story makes it sound like I wasn't trying at all.''

Sossamon, 22, would rather not see herself as an overnight success even though Variety announced her casting as ``a development that is as close as it gets to Lana Turner's discovery at a drug store counter.''