A Souped-Up Hot Radha

Most people don't know Radha Mitchell yet. After taking the independent film scene by storm seven years ago, she's just now starting her rapid ascent up the ladder in Hollywood. But because she doesn't end up in the gossip pages like her countryman Russell Crowe, even those who have taken notice of the very private 32-year-old Australian don't know much about her except for two little details she has let escape: She's a vegetarian and she like yoga.

She's not a vegetarian of note, or particularly into yoga. Those are simply the two things that she has been willing to talk about so far. "I just don't feel comfortable selling my personal life," Mitchell says in a thick Australian accent during a day of interviews for her latest film, Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda, in which she plays both title characters.

But it's hard to avoid these conversations when you're on the verge of stardom. Moving between interview rooms, she passes costar Chloe Sevigny in the hall, who asks how it's going. "They all want to know what I have against meat," Mitchell says with a grimace and a shrug of her shoulders, while toting along a beet-red beverage like an advertisement for Vegetarian Times.