TORONTO — Leelee Sobieski has joined the movie-of-the-month club.
The 19-year-old actress, who has played Joan of Arc and a latter-day Kubrick Lolita in her short career, is breaking out in a big way with the thrillers "The Glass House" and "Joy Ride" and the independent drama "My First Mister," all arriving in theaters just weeks apart.
The flurry of films — one in September, one in October and one in November — is just a coincidence, Sobieski said in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, where "Joy Ride" premiered.
"They were much more spread out when they were shot, and they just kind of appeared, boom, at the same time," said Sobieski.
She's a bit concerned about the over-exposure. "But on the other hand, I think it's kind of exciting that people are going to see me in all these different types of characters at the same time," she said.
Till now, Sobieski was best known for the title role of the television miniseries "Joan of Arc," which earned her an Emmy nomination, and a small part as a teen temptress in Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut." Her other film credits include the dramatic romance "Here on Earth," the comedy "Never Been Kissed," the asteroid flick "Deep Impact" and the literary drama "A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries."
Her full name is Liliane Rudabet Gloria Elsveta Sobieski, representing, respectively, the names of her French grandmother, Iranian godmother, other grandmother and her mother's name translated into Polish. Her father is a painter and her mother a writer.
Sobieski, who just began her first semester at Brown University, was growing up in New York with no aspirations to act when a casting director spotted her at the cafeteria of her private school and suggested the 11-year-old give it a try.
She met with the casting director's assistant, and "I was really, really terrible," Sobieski said. "I went home and thought, I'm really, really bad. But maybe I could take some acting classes. Maybe I'll be good. Who knows?"
So she took drama lessons, went to auditions and quickly began landing TV roles. Sobieski made her feature-film debut in the Tim Allen comedy "Jungle 2 Jungle."
"I started making films, but I didn't really know if I liked it yet," Sobieski said.
"Then more and more you get bitten by the bug. You get infected. You just end up kind of loving it. It's such a different lifestyle. There's so much adrenaline. Things are always happening. It's always kind of organized chaos."
Fluent in French, Sobieski recently completed the French-language film "L'Idole" and just finished shooting the TV miniseries "Uprising," about the Jewish rebellion in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.
In "My First Mister," which opened last winter's Sundance Film Festival, she dons a black wig to become a gloomy, Goth teen who develops an unusual friendship with her buttoned-down boss (Albert Brooks) at a clothing store.
Sobieski co-stars with Paul Walker and Steve Zahn as motorists terrorized by a murderous trucker seeking revenge for a CB-radio prank in the darkly humorous "Joy Ride."
With "The Glass House," she plays a teenager unraveling sinister doings by her guardians after her parents are killed in a car wreck.
"Glass House" director Daniel Sackheim said Sobieski has remarkable self-possession for an actress still in her teens.