Surf Suvari

Have you ever had a sip of rum and found yourself in the presence of a Hollywood babe on a tropical island? Well, for once it’s not just a lurid dream. Come October, a few likely lads from Ireland will be landing on the shores of a Caribbean island. There, they will get to rub shoulders with none other than American Beauty and American Pie star Mena Suvari.

The 32 year-old actress and model was recruited by Captain Morgan to work as the official reporter for The Captain’s Island Challenge, which pits teams of friends from 14 countries against each other, in a battle for a $15,000 bounty.
To represent team Ireland, potential contestants must negotiate a number of hurdles. We won’t bore you with too much detail, but here’s the pack drill: five ‘keys’ have to be found in promotional packs of Captain Morgan, or won in challenges posted on Captain Morgan’s facebook.com/CaptainMorganIreland page. Once the keys are collected, challengers are required to post a video of themselves, explaining why they (of all the contenders!) deserve the chance to go to the Caribbean. If the Captain is suitably impressed, the winner jets off to paradise with two friends from October 9 to 14 to compete in the grand final.

Mena Suvari will also be getting hands-on, interviewing team members and reporting on events as they unfold.
“It was something that just came to me,” says Mena of the impending Caribbean adventure. “I hadn’t been too familiar with the Captain’s Island Challenge, but I was always familiar with Captain Morgan. I lived in the Caribbean when I was younger. I vacation there a lot and have a lot of friends who live and work in Jamaica – so it was something that really excited me.”
This time last year, Mena indulged in one of her other passions by getting involved in the world of reggae. A long time fan of Caribbean music, Mena helped produce Future Sounds Of Reggae, a compilation album featuring a range of reggae artists from around the globe.
“There are a couple of volumes that are out now on iTunes and we’re working on a third one,” she explains. “The whole concept was really to highlight how reggae has influenced people globally. This small island has had such a huge influence on the music industry. There’s something about the genre and the music that really speaks to me.”

Music projects, modelling for Lancôme and her upcoming Caribbean adventures notwithstanding, Mena remains as committed as ever to her day job. She recently completed the fourth instalment of the American Pie saga, American Reunion, which brings original cast members like Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan and Seann William Scott back together, with Mena reprising her role as Heather. Picking up where American Pie: The Wedding left off, it will hits the screens in April, 2012. Mena is confident that it will match the hilarity of the original.
“It was an amazing feat that they were able to get the original cast and bring us all back together again,” she proffers. “There are a lot of new characters as well. I think it’s hilarious. We had such an awesome time working on the first one. I knew with the first American Pie, we were bound to do another one. But the good thing about American Reunion is it’s really picking up after American Wedding and it’s that original cast. Yes, it’s been 10-plus years – but at the same time, as soon as we came back together, it was like we’d never been apart.”

In fact it’s almost 12 years since Mena made her Hollywood breakthrough, at the age of 20. It was 1999 when both the Oscar-winning American Beauty and the original slice of American Pie were released.
“It definitely changed my life,” she says of that momentous year. “I’m so grateful that I had that opportunity that a lot of people never get. I was so young and I worked on American Pie right before I worked on American Beauty. They came out back to back and I honestly thought every movie made $100 million. I just had no concept of the business and what it really meant.”
Since then, among a total of 37 Hollywood excursions in all, she has starred alongside Sienna Miller in Factory Girl and opposite Jack Huston in an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s posthumous novel The Garden Of Eden. She also starred in seven episodes of the TV series, Six Feet Under.

Now she’s all set to reacquaint herself with the Caribbean – and to keep an eye on a few lucky Captain Morgan fans, who will doubtless be taking on their most challenging role.