Full Speed Ahead:
From her love of mobile homes to her steady climb up the Hollywood ladder, it's clear that actress Taryn Manning likes to get around.

Actress Taryn Manning would be completely happy to spend the rest of her days in a nice trailer in the middle of nowhere. When she walks into the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Sunset Blvd and orders an iced soy latte, she's sporting a patch on the back of her fitted demin jacket that reads, "God Bless Your Mobile Home." "I grew up in a mobile home," says the 22-year-old. "It was me, my mom and my brother, and we lived in a trailer park in Arizona. It was like a neighborhood, with 360 trailers all surrounded by a wall of oleanders. I loved it." So while the rest of Tinseltown aspires to a mansion in Beverly Hills, Manning would rather have a mobile abode on a little patch by the ocean. "I'd keep it simple, but real ly dress up the land so it looked rich, since I'd only be inside to eat and sleep."

Judging by her choice of digs, it's no surprise that Manning likes to stay removed from the Hollywood scene. "I prefer to keep myself out of it." She currently lives in Silverlake, home to alternative rock ers and artists, and her house was once described by an interviewer as looking like most of its furnish ings had been found in the trash. She lives with two friends that she's known for years, and spends her spare time flexing her musical muscle in Boomkat, a band put together with brother Kellin. Right now she finds fronting a pop/trip-hop group much more exciting than going on endless acting auditions. "We've been rehearsing like crazy because we're to perform in a few weeks. I rap, but not in a hip-hop way. It's more flowing," she says. And with songs like the recently penned "Crazy Love", in which she expounds on her extreme affection for everything gtom grande vanilla lattes to her strong mother and deceased father, it's obvious that this girl likes her mind on overdrive.

"I just always have to be doing something creative," says Manning of her multiple pursuits. "Plus, I find the whole acting thing becomes easier when I focus some passion on something else, like music, because if a project doesn't happen, I have something to fall back on." She sounds genuinely humble, which makes you think her resume must consist of nothing more than a couple of B movies and a Clearasil ad (her skin is flawless and freckled), but it's actually pretty plump. Starting out in TV on Fox's critically accla imed Get Real, she bounced to other small parts in The Pratice and indie flicks like The Specials and Gus Van Sant's Speedway Junky. Earlier this year she was Kirsten Dunst's side kick in Crazy/Beautiful, and she's soon to be seen in the star-packed White Oleander (the film features Michelle Pfeiffer, Renee Zellweger, and Robin Wright Penn), playing an acid-dropping fost er kid. She also landed a lead role in the as-yet-untitled Britney Spears road-trip project. "I play thi s girl who drives cross-country after having been date-raped. Most people are expecting this movie to suck, but when I first read the script I thought it was really good. It's going to be huge."

Does she worry about being typecast as a misfit? "For now it works for me because I haven't really had time to clean up my act and people my other side. By nature I'm a quirky person, and although as an act ress I can play many parts, sometimes it takes a while for those parts to come out." Plus, considering the overwhelming number of L.A. transplants who never make it past waitressing, Manning is happy with her lot. "I've dealt with so much stuff since I've moved here that I don't really get let down anymore. I've learned how to do this and not let it drive me crazy." One way is to not to give a crap about the critics. She remembers a time when the style polics slaughtered her after she showed up at a movie premiere in a cut-off Levi's denim skirt, knee-high gym socks, black shoes, and an 80's T-shirt.

Another trick for surviving Hollywood: Get a really big trash can. "One year I saved all the scripts from every audition I went on. The way it works is that they give you a white script for the audition and then, if you get the part, you get a pink script," she says while twisting her Louis Vuitton dog tag. "Anyway, I had this pile of white scripts that was as tall as me, and this pink pile that had like four things in it. It was so depressing to see my year summed up in these two uneven piles that now I just throw everything out."

In a town known for its pathologies, Manning seems to have it mentally together. Even her idea of moving up the acting ladder is logical. She divides actresses into four groups. The first are the nobodies, the second are the almost-made-its, the third have made it but nobody know if they'll still be around in fi ve years, and the last - well, that's reserved for the likes of Julia Roberts. "I'm in the second tier and trying to creep over the wall to the third," she says, laughing.