Blake Lively On Her Big-Screen Roles & Her Hollywood Icons

Blake Lively may play a glamorous Manhattanite on “Gossip Girl,” but her next role finds her on the other side of the tracks.

“It was crazy,” she told Esquire’s February issue of her role in the September-due Ben Affleck directed “The Town,” in which she plays a poor woman who, in one scene, is assaulted.

Sounds like a role far away from the Upper East Side.

“I can snap into Serena very easily. The way I dress as Serena is pretty much the way I dress as me. I’m living in New York City, shooting in New York City,” she told the mag. “I’m in a comfort zone.”

But she’s ready to step out of it, also lining up a starring role opposite Ryan Reynolds in the 2011 superhero summer movie “Green Lantern,” and she said she’s learned to trust her instincts when it comes to choosing her projects.

“It’s like when you do SAT questions,” she said. “Go with your first choice. It’s been proven that your first choice is often the right one… ultimately it’s a movie. It’s not like I’m a doctor.”

But she’s pleased with her choices – her last film effort, “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee” — brought her into contact with some of her “iconic women” at its New York premiere.

“Somebody said… ‘Can you take a picture with Penelope [Cruz] and Marion Cotillard?’ And I just about died,” she said. ”Penelope Cruz I just think is like it.”

And while taking on her “The Town” role was a stretch, she said she was able to stay confident.

“I just watched ‘Dog Day Afternoon,’ and I thought, I want to quit acting,” she said. “But it’s also something that I love. I think that you’re just gonna do it your own way.”

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