By E.C. Gladstone, Photographs: Roberto D' Este

Styled by Sue Tsai

otally still doable."

Yes, I'm talking about Téa Leoni. But don't hate: The quotation is actually from Téa, who is herself quoting director Brett Ratner from a few years back.

"What do you do with that one?" Téa asks with a husky chuckle, recalling Ratner's backhanded compliment during the filming of The Family Man. "I hadn't realized that I had potentially crossed over for a certain sexually active male demographic— that it would now be surprising if I was 'doable!'" Surprising or not, looking across the sofa at the 41-year-old actress, in her production offices atop Santa Monica beach, it can't be denied. Despite entering her third decade in Hollywood (as she points out), the girl's still got game.

She's also still very much "off the market," having just celebrated her tenth wedding anniversary with fellow actor David Duchovny ( The X Files). Which is like a golden jubilee in Hollywood years.

"I don't know, it's weird with David," Téa tells me. "Something just seems to be right. I love his mind. And I love raising kids with him. It's not luck, though; we're conscious of what we want and taking care of it. But I don't know that I could make this work with anybody else. He just might be 'the one.'"

This mother of two (Madelaine West, eight, and Kyd Miller, five) also has the kind of career that many would envy, incorporating comedy and drama, indie films and blockbusters. In her latest film, You Kill Me, she plays a never-take-no-for-ananswer businesswoman who inspires an alcoholic hit man (played by Ben Kingsley) to sober up. The classy dark comedy is a textbook example of summer-season counterprogramming.

That she can shift between projects like this and 2005's Fun With Dick and Jane, the previous year's Spanglishand House of D(Duchovny's writing/directing debut), Deep Impact and Jurassic Park III (which, honestly, she considers to be some of her best acting work) says much about her strengths and versatility. Leoni's mid-'90s television series, The Naked Truth, is still regarded as being in the "brilliant but cancelled" vein, and '96's Flirting With Disasteris a well-established cult classic.

Consider most of her co-stars, too: Before Kingsley, she toe-to-toed with Al Pacino, Woody Allen, Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler. Not too shabby, as the latter might say.

And yet, because Leoni has clearly never been among the most fiercely selfpromotional actresses (you didn't see a TMZ item about her recent jury duty, did you?), there is still much that's little-known about her life. Even though Téa herself bemoans, "Nowadays, every interview you've ever done is on the Internet, every move you've ever made is on YouTube, every shit you've ever taken is on eBay," it's doubtful many could pass a trivia quiz about her.

"I grew up in a conventional household," says Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni, of the Park Avenue Pantaleonis. Though she admits to a certain amount of privilege in the family led by corporate lawyer Anthony and wife Emily, Téa says, "We just liked to eat our food, take a walk and go to bed." No doubt Téa gave them fits when she once stated her ambition was to be a tollbooth collector. Growing up, she had mostly typical interests—piano, ballet, sports, even Sailboarding—but never stayed on any one path. "I always wanted to be extraordinary at something, but it could never hold my interest long enough." She and Tom usually only interacted when they were fighting (paradoxically, they are now best friends).

Téa had a particularly close relationship with grandmother Helena ("mummum" to her), a former Broadway (and sometimes silent-film) actress who retired at 28 to start and run the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. "My grandmother was my idol. We were very close; she was always a great listener, a great, sage person to have in a girl's life. She was also the first person I was drunk in front of. She didn't bust me!" Though Helena often referred to young Téa as "Sarah Bernhardt" for her dramatic tendencies, they never actually talked about acting. "She wasn't impressed by doing it or by others who do it," Téa says ...

For the full story, Subscribe to Vegas Magazine now!