At 22, Miss October is ready to be noticed. Layla Harvest Roberts grew up in Los Angeles and in Mexico City, where her mother was a famed model. Layla modeled here and in Europe, and last year she made a brief splash on Baywatch. Now movie producers are after her. We cornered her for an intimate talk in Los Angeles.
Q: How did you come by your unusual name?
A: My mother was a bit of a hippie. She thought Harvest sounded pretty. Layla is for the Eric Clapton song -- the original, fast version, of course. I'm lucky Mom had good taste in music; I could have been named Chicago Harvest Roberts.
Q: You were a cheerleader at Beverly Hills High. Totally cool?
A: I was overweight and weird. They let me be a cheerleader only because I was a good dancer. Which I still am, by the way.
Q: But you're no longer overweight and weird. What happened?
A: Alicia Silverstone was in my class, and she was already famous. But I was friendless. Finally Idecided to be a model, like Mom. I lost weight, got noticed by a modeling agent and lived in Paris. Paris sucked. It's a beautiful city, but the people were mean and I was homesick. That was the end for me as a model. I quit. But then one night in Los Angeles, I was at a supermarket when a woman began following me. A lesbian, I thought. I tried to sneak away, but she came running up to my car, saying, "I'm with Elite Models! I think you're perfect!" I was back in.
Q: Now you're acting and dancing as well. You appear in the movie The Good Life with Sylvester Stallone. You vamped in Aerosmith's latest video. Why did you want to be a Playmate too?
A: It's every girl's dream, isn't it?
Q: What film roles do you covet?
A: In my cartoon fantasies I am Tara, a warrior woman who dresses in knee-high black boots and not much else. She is stronger than any man.
Q: How about sexual fantasies?
A: They're pretty much the same.
Q: How was it posing nude?
A: Wonderful. What does nudity mean? It might only mean I don't have on my favorite black vinyl lingerie yet.
---- Photography by Stephen Wayda
AMBITIONS
To act in the best films of the early 21st century.
TURN-ONS
To turn me on, a man needs to be a good dancer and a good masseur.
TURN-OFFS
People who think they are hot shots, substance abusers and black licorice.
ROLE MODELS
Al Pacino, Faye Dunaway and my mother.
MOOD MUSIC
Elvis Presley, Eartha Kitt, Barry White, Rolling Stones, Joao Gilberto and Antonio Jobim.
FAVORITE PLACE
In Greece it's so dark at night you can see every star -- you feel like part of the galaxy.
PASSIONS
Sex, Rock and Roll and Strawberry Twizzlers.
