There are those celebrities who choose to handle tabloid speculation about their love lives by struggling to set the record straight. And there are those who choose to ignore the chatter altogether. Ginnifer Goodwin has developed a third strategy. “I perpetuate rumors that I’ve dated people that I’ve never actually dated,” she says with a sly smile. “Dorothy Parker once said something along the lines of, ‘I don’t care what’s written about me so long as it isn’t true.’ It’s safe making.”
It’s a savvy tactic for someone who spent this past winter showering reporters with seemingly earnest proclamations about her romantic tendencies in the service of promoting He’s Just Not That Into You, a chick flick in which she played Gigi, a lovelorn girl tragically oblivious to courting clues. On red carpets and at parties, she clutched her costar in the film, Justin Long, with such affection that the tabloids reported the two were an item. Turns out they have been buddies for eight years—and that the peppy, silly Goodwin who chirped red-carpet sound bites like, “There’s always room for phone calls and cuddling. We always have room for love!” seems to have been just another role for the actress. “We were asked so many inane dating questions,” she says on an April morning in New York, her makeup-free skin so astonishingly prepubescent in its porelessness that one might wonder whether she ingests embryonic stem cells for breakfast. With incredulity, Goodwin recalls the time that she and Long were forced to give dating advice to callers on a radio show. “I don’t know why anyone would want to ask an actor for dating advice,” she says, eyes rolling. “We are not the poster children for healthy relationships.”
True to her good-girl reputation, the 31-year-old is sweet and sunny, with a Southern belle’s sense of propriety. And yet, despite the dozens of articles describing her as “bubbly,” Goodwin turns out to be remarkably grounded, astute and even sardonic. It’s a testament to her acting chops that her very substance comes as a surprise—one can’t help expecting Goodwin to exude a personality akin to that of Margene, her character on HBO’s acclaimed drama Big Love. The third and youngest of three wives in a polygamous Utah family, Margene is plucky and immature, and Goodwin says people constantly assume she’s the same way in real life. “We both have a lot of energy,” she says. “We’re both optimistic and we’re both romantics. But I am far more judgmental than she is. I read too much between the lines, whereas she reads none.” Goodwin forces a dry chuckle. “I’m exhausted by her after six months. By the end of a season, I need to shake her off.”
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