Tara Reid had been terrified: Just days ago, she found herself sitting across from Gwyneth Paltrow, reading for a part, when the insecurity set in. “ ‘Can I hold my own with her?’ ” she recalls asking herself. “ ‘Is she going to be mean to me? Is she going to like me?’ ” Reid, sitting in a Cuban restaurant in Manhattan, grins. “Then I fucked up one of my lines, and she saved me,” she says. “I was blown away. Gwyneth is so cool.”

The 25-year-old actress didn’t get the part, but she’s okay with that. “I’ll do a good movie by the time I’m 30, for sure,” she says. Which is not to say that this month’s Josie and the Pussycats, a campy adaptation of the Archie comic, in which Reid plays Melody, the clumsily innocent drummer, is a bad picture—it’s just that Reid has bigger plans. As she puts it, “I need to work with a Cameron Crowe.”

Thus far, the New Jersey native is doing just fine: After an audacious appearance in the Coen brothers’ 1998 comedy The Big Lebowski put her on the map (she tells Jeff Bridges’s character, “I’ll suck your cock for $1,000”), she traipsed through such teen hits as Urban Legend and American Pie before earning good notices last year for her role in Robert Altman’s Dr. T & the Women, in which she played Richard Gere’s daughter. But it’s not just the work that’s been keeping Reid in the public eye; it’s her personal life as well. Her recent engagement to TRL host Carson Daly assures her of occasional spots on MTV—as well as in the jealous hearts of 13-year-old nymphets everywhere—and her reputation as a party girl has prompted cynical concern for what’s been diagnosed by one media outlet as “chronic social disease” (i.e., the psychological need to go out every night).

“I’m not perfect,” she says in her coquettishly raspy voice. “I do drink. I do smoke. Carson can’t go out and get messed up, he can’t smoke in front of kids—he’s the face of MTV, and he has to be good. But me? I can.” She pauses. “I want to be good; I don’t want people to say, ‘I smoke ’cause Tara Reid smokes.’ That’s not cool. And I am going to quit smoking, for my health.” And anyway, since getting engaged, Reid prefers staying at home with Daly (“I like getting Carson to myself”) and preparing for their summer wedding (Josie costars Rachael Leigh Cook and Rosario Dawson will be bridesmaids). She’s also looking forward to getting back to work—in a few weeks, she’ll reunite with the cast of American Pie for this summer’s sequel. But that movie will mark the end of an era for her. “I’m not doing the teen thing anymore. It’s time to step it up,” Reid says. “One day, I hope to win an Academy Award, you know. I think I have it in me.”