Daveigh Chase

If Daveigh Chase didn’t have bad luck, she wouldn’t have any luck at all. Take one recent week: While getting some boots repaired, the Big Love actress accidentally locked her keys in the trunk of her car; days later, at a party, she had a run-in with a candle, which resulted in her hair briefly igniting. “Having my hair on fire was kind of scary,” the 19-year-old Chase admits. “But honestly, with my kind of luck, if you don’t think it’s funny, you’re pretty much screwed for life.” Chase seems to have made peace with her own misfortunes, especially since it was a stroke of bad luck that got her into acting in the first place. In 1998, while on a family road trip from their hometown of Albany, Oregon, Chase’s mother crashed her car in Los Angeles, and was told by doctors that she couldn’t drive for six months. Temporarily marooned in L.A., 8-year-old -Daveigh was encouraged to pursue an acting dream she’d cultivated watching the children’s show Barney. It wasn’t long before the work started coming. Highlights include a small part as Jake Gyllenhaal’s youngest sister in the 2001 cult classic Donnie Darko (a role she recently reprised as the lead in this year’s spin-off,S. Darko); supplying the voice of Lilo in kidscartoon favorite Lilo & Stitch (2002); and most noticeably, playing manipulative Rhonda Volmer, the teenage wife of Harry Dean Stanton’s powerful “Prophet” Mormon leader in Big Love. “I just want to make something that I love and people will respect,” Chase says. “I want to do things that will change someone’s life, not something they’ll forget about tomorrow.”

Photo above: Daveigh Chase in Topanga, California, April 2009. Dress:boss orange. Shirt: hollywood trading company. Hat:San diego hat company. Bracelet:me & ro. Cosmetics: Shu Uemura, including Gloss Unlimited Pink Collection. Fragrance:Femme by Boss. | Styling: Moses/Margaret Maldonado Agency. Hair: Jamal Hammadi for hamadibeauty.com/The Magnet Agency. Makeup: Darlene Jacobs/Frank Reps.