Queen of the hop; By starring as Sandra Dee in Beyond the Sea, Kate Bosworth continues her reign as America's sweetheart.(Interview)

Byline: Sally Singer

Roles come to actors when they need them," says Kate Bosworth, fiddling with her grandmother's childhood ring (Bosworth's fingers are so tiny that she can twirl this minute gold hoop around her pinkie).

It is, of course, a notorious fact that for most actors, roles are most elusive

when most necessary; but when you're very beautiful and very talented, you're not like most actors. And when you're merely 21 years old and have repeatedly deferred Princeton in order to star in teen blockbusters such as Blue Crush and Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!, you may be forgiven for believing that careers are largely a matter of good karma.

This month, Kate Bosworth can be seen in Kevin Spacey's Beyond the Sea, a biopic of the doomed yet exuberant life of singer Bobby Darin. Bosworth plays Sandra Dee, America's screen sweetheart in the late fifties and early sixties and Darin's karmically challenged, troubled wife. "Kate has a wonderful sense of innocence, but also a mature face," says Spacey, who both directs and stars in the film. "I didn't see her work until after I'd hired her. She's it."

His casting of Bosworth was astute. Like Dee, Bosworth was catapulted into Hollywood at an early age; as a horse-crazed thirteen-year-old show jumper, she auditioned for Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer and landed her first role. During high school (in Boston), she concentrated on her studies and socializing ("You want to go to prom; you want to graduate"), but when the time came to go college, she instead headed to L.A. ...