Bobbi Starr, Andy San Dimas Cast in Mainstream Film 'Drive'

HOLLYWOOD—Two of adult's current biggest names, Bobbi Starr and Andy San Dimas, will make their mainstream debuts in the big screen adaptation of the James Sallis novel Drive, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson, Valhalla Rising) and co-starring Hollywood luminaries including Ryan Gosling, Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston and Christina Hendricks.

Both represented by talent agent Mark Spiegler, Starr and San Dimas shoot their portions of the picture this week and next.

"I'm the wife of an abusive husband, and my character is horribly fucked up and trapped in an abusive marriage," Starr told AVN. "I have battered wife syndrome. Basically, one of the main characters comes in, witnesses me and my husband fighting several times, and then one night he just gets fed up and threatens to kill my husband.”

Though San Dimas doesn’t know as much about her character at this point, she is plenty thrilled to have been cast.

“I auditioned for this movie a few months ago,” she said. “About 40 different industry babes were there auditioning as well. I walked in a little intimidated—I’d never read for a mainstream part like this. I memorized my script in five minutes and gave it my best. I honestly thought I had no chance, especially when I didn’t hear back from them for so long. When Spieg called me with the news, I was stoked!”

Why the call for all the porn actresses? Explained Starr, “[Refn] said none of the girls in the casting had any portion of reality that could mesh with the character. The main character [being played by Brit actress Carey Mulligan] is a woman who gets high off of really dangerous experiences. She hangs out with criminals and gangsters and stuff like that, and she gets adrenalin off of that. And so he told the casting director, ‘I only want to see strippers, hookers and porn stars.’”

What impressed Refn enough about Starr for him to cast her, she related, was her seemingly antithetical nature to the part. She said Refn told her, “‘You are engaged in this world, but externally you don’t look it. And verbally, you don’t act like it, and you don’t dress like it.’ He said he saw a couple of girls that had skirts where you could totally see their vaginas, and their tops left nothing to the imagination. He said, ‘But you walked in, and you’re buttoned all the way to the neck!’ I was like, ‘That’s called style.’”

Drive is slated to premiere in early 2011.