Does Maria Menounos ever sleep?
In addition to balancing two reporting jobs on two coasts — she has a regular gig on both the Today Show and Access Hollywood–and running the charity she co-founded, Take Action Hollywood!, she’s got a blossoming acting career (costarring with Jamie Kennedy in the ’80s-nostalgic breakdancing comedy Kickin’ It Old Skool in April) as well as a nascent producing one (her film In the Land of Merry Misfits premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival the same month). How does she do it all?
“I just don’t have a social life,” says Menounos, 28, with a hint of her signature laugh, the giddy bray that has disarmed many a celebrity, from Johnny Depp to David Letterman. “When I’m done with my work, I go back home to my dogs.” (She has four.) “Some people would be going to dinner right now; I’m going to watch the Celtics game and then go to sleep.”
Menounos is, apparently, still a Boston patriot after all these years. (And a true b-ball fan: She hosts weekly games for the Access crew.) The daughter of Greek immigrants, Menounos struggled to learn English in school while helping her parents earn money by working as a janitor on weekends at various nightclubs around Beantown. “Every Christmas, every New Year’s, every Easter, every Thanksgiving, every birthday, every holiday, we worked,” Menounos says. “That’s all we ever knew.” So the work ethic was ingrained–Menounos later helped pay her way at Emerson College by laboring for five years at Dunkin’ Donuts. “When I started there I was a size three, and when I left I was a size…eight? And then I went to college and that turned into a 14.”
Yet Menounos still presents something of a contradiction, not quite conforming to the traditional rags-to-riches story. Yes, she was once Miss Massachusetts Teen USA (presumably before quite so many donuts were dunked), and yes, she found success hosting Entertainment Tonight and being a spokesperson for Pantene. But Menounos has never forgotten her misfit roots–among other things, she’s spent the last 10 years keeping alive a film project that celebrates those she considers to be her fellow square pegs in round holes. In the Land of Merry Misfits, a whimsical fantasy directed by her longtime friend and manager, Keven Undergaro, will unspool at Tribeca after a decade-long struggle. Menounos was 19 when she joined the project as a production coordinator, helping her fellow filmmakers raise funds by selling sausages at carnivals and working on less than two hours of sleep a night. Since then, she has invested her own money to keep the project going. “It’s a story about overcoming all odds,” she says. Rather like her own.
Despite her hectic schedule, Menounos shows no signs of slowing down. When asked what one thing she’d most like to do in the future, she answers, “I look forward to having my own talk show. And maybe a sitcom? It’s so hard to pick!” It’s just a feeling, but somehow we think she’ll do both.
–Anna Kaufman
