Ellen’s practical approach to fashion makes her a bit of a maverick in glammed-up modern Hollywood. While she is willing to play the game— “I get that it’s part of my job,” she says— she does so in a way that keeps the attention squarely on her acting, not on what designer dress she is wearing on the red carpet. When asked about her attire, she says, “I’m a bum, really. This”— meaning, work— “is the only time I get dressed up.”

Even in the midst of fame, Ellen insists on staying grounded. “I absolutely adore acting,” she says. “But I also know that this is a fragile industry, and I don’t want to attach my happiness to it. I still think about going to school, to study psychology or art history. I couldn’t do it now, of course. I think it’s a matter of the grass is always greener…” she muses, but stops herself. “Not that I don’t think that the grass I’m on right now is completely green. It is.”

Ellen is focusing on the more tangible side effects of her success. “>From this point on,” she says, “it’s just about looking at all these new opportunities. It’s cool to be able to try a whole bunch of things.” Starting this month, two films that Ellen shot before Juno are coming out: Smart People, in which she stars opposite Dennis Quaid and Sarah Jessica Parker as an “arrogant, bitchy Young Republican,” and the drama The Tracey Fragments.

Ellen’s “post Juno” movies will probably begin to hit theaters in 2009. “People expect me to do some kind of gritty look-at-me-I’m-such-an-actor thing, but that would have felt contrived,” she says. Instead, she’ll join Cillian Murphy in the psychological thriller Peacock before strapping on skates to play a Roller Derby girl in Drew Barrymore’s feature directorial debut, Whip It. The May 2008 issue of TEEN VOGUE is on sale nationwide on April 15.

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