'She's Out of My League' star sees beyond romantic mismatch

Jay Baruchel and Alice Eve in "She's Out of My League."

BY GENE TRIPLETT

Alice Eve plays a gorgeous girl who goes gaga over a geek in the romantic comedy “She’s Out of My League,” which required her to neck with a nerdy-looking Jay Baruchel in several intimate scenes.

But did feigning passion for a guy with droopy socks and bad posture prove awkward or icky or dramatically taxing for the beautiful British actress? Not a bit of it.

“We hit it off pretty well,” Eve said of her leading man. “He made it clear that he wasn’t out of my league. And then we were friends. He kept telling me.”

She was speaking from the backseat of a car that was speeding her to the Houston airport, where she would hop a flight to her next stop on a tour publicizing the film, which opens today in theaters.

British filmmaker Jim Field Smith makes his feature film debut directing this screenplay by “Sex Drive” writing team Sean Anders and John Morris, about a Pittsburgh airport security agent named Kirk (Baruchel) who spots a blond knockout named Molly (Eve). She accidentally leaves her cell phone at the checkpoint as she’s hurrying to board a plane, leaving Kirk with a good excuse to call her when she comes back home.

When he returns Molly’s phone, she offers to reward him with a pair of hockey game tickets, which he accepts, completely unaware of the fact that she’s actually asking him out on a date.

It seems no two people could be more mismatched, since Kirk is content and unambitious, still hanging out with his high school buddies (played by Mike Vogel, T.J. Miller and Nate Torrence), who are now his co-workers, while Molly is a successful party planner living in a beautiful apartment, pursued by every eligible, successful and handsome bachelor in town.

But Molly, who is a “hard 10” when it comes to looks, sees something attractive in Kirk, who barely rates a “shaky five” in appearance. Seems hard to believe, but Eve thinks love really can overcome such a point spread.

“I do actually, yeah, I mean if you believe in the scoring system, then I do,” she said. “I think the thing is, like, someone can have hidden qualities. You may think they’re a five, and then they have like other things that make them a 10.”

Off camera, the London native speaks in a soft British accent not heard in the film. The Oxford graduate, at 28, already has chalked up theater credits on Broadway and in London’s West End in the critically lauded play “Rock N Roll,” written by Tom Stoppard and directed by Trevor Nunn. She’s appeared in such feature films as “Crossing Over,” “Stage Beauty,” “Starter for Ten” and “Big Nothing,” and on UK television in “The Rotters Club” and “Losing Gemma.”