Bell du jour: Read our interview and go behind the scenes on our L.A. cover shoot with actress Kristen Bell

Before the year is up, Kristen Bell will have starred in six movies, a new hit TV show and one viral YouTube video. Dennis Hensley catches up with Hollywood’s newest MVP.

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View the photo shoot »

Cover story: Bell de jour
ByDennis Hensley.
Photographed by Doug Inglish.
Styled by Hayley Atkin.

Kristen Bell’s favourite Hollywood pastime isn’t shopping on Rodeo Drive, starting Twitter feuds with other stars or even basking in the perpetual sunshine. It’s being able to “walk out my front door and climb up a mountain in the middle of the afternoon.” So that’s what we’re doing, hiking through the same corner of L.A.’s sprawling Griffith Park where Bell and her best friends have their regular “venting hikes.”

“We talk about our issues and we get in a workout. By the end of the hike, one of us has figured out the other’s problems,” says the 31-year-old Michigan native, who rose to fame as TV sleuth Veronica Mars before moving on to movies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Couples Retreat and, most recently, Big Miracle. “Now, let’s get those glutes!” she exclaims, charging up a steep, grassy hill. “That’s my number one target area. I want a bigger butt. I just think butts are beautiful.”

These days, Bell is surrounded by plenty of well-toned glutes. Her latest small-screen role, as a cutthroat management consultant on the racy Showtime series House of Lies, has her in the best shape of her life. But it’s Bell’s acting range that is being pushed to the limit, as the show has her outside her rom-com comfort zone. “Our brilliant creator, Matt Carnahan, thinks all this dark stuff’s very funny,” says Bell, whose character, Jeannie, spends part of each workday deflecting the advances of her Armani-clad boss, played by Don Cheadle. “Matt’s got real issues in his past that he writes about. Maybe this show’s his catharsis, because it got a lot darker than I anticipated, but in a great way.” Case in point: a scene where Jeannie parties it up with her horndog colleagues in a strip club. “That was nerve-wracking because I’m so aware of the victimization that can happen [in places like that],” says Bell. “But the girl I was dancing with didn’t give a lick that she was topless, so why should I? And she had a great set of boobs,” she adds, laughing, “so no one was suffering.”

Closer to Bell’s smart-girl-versus-clueless-dude sweet spot is this month’s Movie 43, a star-studded comedy produced by Peter Farrelly of There’s Something About Mary fame. “My segment is about Gotham City speed-dating,” she explains. “I play Supergirl, Justin Long plays Robin and Jason Sudeikis plays Batman. Batman is cock-blocking Robin when he’s trying to get a date and, you know, chaos ensues.”

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