Spotlight

Carly Pope’s  #@%** Role

She’s the actor with the pious-sounding name who’s appearing in the year’s raunchiest titled film.

Carly Pope stars in June’s Young People F--king, a Canadian drama about five couples having sex. Pope’s character, Kristen, and her partner, Matt (Aaron Abrams), are pals who add a sexual element to their friendship.

“[Kris and Matt] have this safeguard that’s been created because they’re friends,” says Pope on the line from L.A. “They are platonic, but you quickly see under the layers that it’s not that simple.”

It’s the latest in a string of provocative parts for the 27-year-old Vancouver native. She played a militant lesbian in last year’s little-seen Itty Bitty Titty Committee and a lesbian drug dealer on TV’s Dirt.

“My résumé is starting to look a bit scandalous,” she says. “But I do feel that’s where my integrity is as an actor and as a person…I want to try and make statements about what I feel is important.”

It was while performing in a high school play that an agent saw — and immediately signed — Pope. She left for L.A. six months after graduation and promptly landed the role of geeky Sam in the WB teen series Popular. When Popular was yanked in 2001, Pope shed her geek image and landed dozens of TV projects and films. Yet, she’s never starred in anything as audaciously titled as Young People F--king, three words that make even her supportive family members flinch.

“It’s hilarious,” she says, “the first thing my mom said to me when I told her I was going to do the movie was, ‘What are we going to tell your grandparents?’ And the first thing my boyfriend’s parents said to me was, ‘We’re not going to tell his grandparents.’”