Amanda Seyfried: American Beauty

Hilarious, heartbreaking and brutally honest on screen - it's off camera that Amanda Seyfried will really knock your socks off. She talks therapy, fertility and feeling the fear (and doing it anyway).

- Martha Hayes, photographs by Matt Jones

The most fitting way to describe Amanda Seyfried today is quite simply, madly in love. She’s brought him along to our cover shoot in a spacious high-rise studio in Manhattan’s Meat packing District and is literally head over heels, bending down – in her towering metallic-pink Brian Atwood stilettos – to cup his face in her hands. She spoons jam into a tub of yogurt and feeds him using a coffee stirrer; he sits, watching her intently as she slips between outfit changes. It would all be rather disconcerting if the male friend in question wasn’t her five-year-old Australian Shepherd, Finn. Especially when he has a little accident while she’s in hair and make-up. ‘I need paper towels!’ cries Seyfried, tottering across the room in top-to-toe Versace. ‘I am so sorry!’

She needn’t apologise. While she may have had some high-profile relationships in the past decade (most notably Dominic Cooper, who she met on the set of box-office smash Mamma Mia! in 2007; more recently US comedy actor – and Drew Barrymore’s ex – Justin Long, who she’s been dating since 2013), it’s plain for all to see that Finn is Seyfried’s most enduring love. It’s entertaining to watch them in action, and sums up, tenfold, the appeal of the 29-year-old star who replaces Mila Kunis as the female lead in Ted 2 this month. An enchanting combination of the other-worldliness of Russian model Sasha Pivovarova (their likeness is uncanny – blame the wide-set eyes) and the goofy irreverence of Cara Delevingne – Seyfried is killing it on set today.

From her hilarious scene-stealing turn in cult teen classic Mean Girls (2004) to an acclaimed performance (not to mention that sex scene with Julianne Moore) in erotic thriller