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Credit: Paramount Pictures
Among millennials, Varsity Blues has a lasting footprint as an icon of the 1990s. It wasn’t exactly a box office smash when it arrived in theaters, and it’s not exactly a great film, but anyone growing up that era can’t read the words “I don’t want your life!” without mentally hearing James Van Der Beek’s Texas twang. Of course, also part of the movie’s legacy is Ali Larter’s famed whipped cream bikini, and Larter recently looked back on that scene with a quarter-century’s worth of perspective.
The actress is now best known for her role opposite Billy Bob Thornton in the Taylor Sheridan-created Paramount+ series Landman, but she took a moment to reflect on what was one of her first movies during an interview with Entertainment Tonight. She was shown an interview clip of herself from 1999 talking about her nearly-nude scene (which was actually filmed with shaving cream), and her reaction watching it two-fold: she first had to close her eyes, and then she noted how the moment had an unfortunate on her family members. Noting her character’s strong efforts to seduce James Van Der Beek’s Jonathan “Mox” Moxon, Larter said,
Really went after that kiss! Jeez. My son, my father, I’ve scarred them for a lifetime. My husband…
Ali Larter got her first on-camera roles in the late 1990s with single episode appearances on shows including Suddenly Susan, Chicago Hope, and Dawson’s Creek, but she pivoted to movies in a big way in 1999 with three memorable movies: Varsity Blues, the remake of House On Haunted Hill and Drive Me Crazy staring Melissa Joan Hart and Adrian Grenier. After that came the Final Destination franchise, Resident Evil sequels, a main role on Heroes, and now the female lead on Landman.
From the start of her career, Larter has managed to consistently get work, but when she was asked about a message she would send to her younger self, it was a suggestion for finding some serenity. She looks back and remembers the late 1990s being an “exciting” time in Hollywood, but she also apparently put a lot of pressure on herself. She said,
Just breathe, baby. You know, this business is so hard when you’re kind of figuring out who you want to be as a young woman. I was very lucky actually, I feel, to be coming up in Hollywood at that time. It was a very exciting time in LA. But I look at it and I just think I was really hard on myself and nervous a lot, and I just would tell her, like, ‘It’s all going to be okay, baby.’
The second season of Landman just wrapped up earlier this month, but fans need not fret about the future of the Norris family, as a third season renewal was confirmed in the middle of the run. If you’re looking to catch up or simply want to rewatch the show, all you need is a Paramount+ subscription.