Too Good Lookin' For Brooklyn

New York native Dina Meyer poised to be 'female Jean-Claude Van Damme'

By Wilder Penfield III
Toronto Sun

HOLLYWOOD -- Here's one to watch.

Dina Meyer, 27, got her acting start in Beverly Hills 90210, playing 12 episodes as a two-timing professor opposite Luke Perry.

Then she got her movie start: Two days after she wrapped $26-million Johnny Mnemonic opposite Keanu Reeves, she signed on as the heart of $65-million Dragonheart opposite Dennis Quaid.

"Dina could be the female Jean-Claude Van Damme," says Quaid, with apparent approval.

Now she is shooting Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers in Wyoming. Yes, she is a trooper. With a great many men.

On her day off, I ask: What has she learned from all this work as a warrior?

Not so much, she feels. "I'm normally very physical ... pugnacious ... feisty ... combative ... looking for a fight," she says. "I have an older brother who basically made me what I am today." And, yes, she adds with a superbly symmetrical grin, he has the scars to show for it.

What about her career as a lover? Has she resisted falling for her leading men?

"Well, I didn't have to resist falling for Dennis," she says, "because he's married-with-child."

Has that ever stopped a movie actor?

"Well, you know what? I'm one of those few that have morals. Call me kookie, but ... I'm so family oriented ... I would hate to come between anybody else's happiness and home."

Her dad has "a wholesale/retail auto parts supply and repair shop in Queen's," where she was born and raised and took dance classes.

"My parents never spoiled me, but they always believed in me, and said that whatever I want I could have -- if I worked hard enough. That has made me very motivated and driven."

They also insisted she get a college degree. In Business.

Dragonheart was an eye-opener, amazingly cosmopolitan, she says tautly of six months in Slovakia. "We had 20 different nationalities working on the set. So things may have moved a little slower than normal. It was very interesting."

Then, suddenly histrionic, a flashback: "I love my countreee! I want to go home and have a salad. Howcum they don't have any lettuce here? You order a Caesar salad and you get some green pepper, cucumber, and a yellow slice of cheese. Mmm-mmmm. But better that than fried fat with oil gravy ..."

She is serious about fit. "Not sports. I'm a gym person. The weight lifting, the treadmill ... all the hamster toys, whatever I can get my hands on. I love to jump rope, bike, dance classes. It's a two, two-and-a-half hour process five, six times a week.

"Though not now. I'm way too tired. All day I'm running around with a 30-pound vest on, in very thin air, carrying a 22-pound rifle. The extra 50 pounds is a workout in itself."

A couple of times her looks have actually been a problem, professionally. She has been dismissed as "too pretty."

"But I can be ugly!" she snarls, demonstrating increasingly contorted gorgeousness. "I can be uglier! I can be the ugliest!"

Starship Troopers will bring her first nude scene. "Me and a bug," she jokes. Then, more sombrely: "No, there is a love scene, yes there is. I hope we have nice sunny days because the first time we don't, I'm getting naked, unfortunately."

She is resigned, and contracted, and ambitious. "I'd like to do everything except triple-X erotic films."

But she refused to shear her head for Verhoeven. She says her hair took too long to grow. "Makeup?" she yells from behind a shield of fingers. "Special effects? We can make talking dragons -- just make my hair disappear!"

Then, "And I'll let you give me boobs."