Like her character in "Made of Honor," Michelle Monaghan had a male maid of honor and a destination wedding.
In August 2005, she and graphic designer Pete White were married in Queensland in his native Australia with her best friend -- a man -- at her side. In the romantic comedy opening today, her character Hannah asks longtime pal Tom (Patrick Dempsey) to be her M.O.H. at her nuptials in Scotland.
"I thought, well, gosh, I can totally identify with this. He didn't try to break up our marriage at the 11th hour," she said of her attendant, "but I liked the idea that somebody was touching on it. That aspect of the story rang really true to me."
As in the movie, her M.O.H. wasn't expected to wear a dress but donned a beautiful suit for the ceremony before 80 guests.
"We got all my family and friends over there, and it was sort of a week of festivities. The finale of the festivities was the wedding, and it was really pretty informal and really, really beautiful, of course, as anyone would say about their wedding," she said in a recent interview from Los Angeles.
It appears that weddings are edging out proms as a popular movie theme. Katherine Heigl was a perennial bridesmaid in "27 Dresses," while Eva Longoria was killed in an accident on her wedding day in "Over Her Dead Body."
Next week, Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher will play strangers who marry after an alcohol-fueled night in "What Happens in Vegas." Come mid-July in "Mamma Mia," Meryl Streep's daughter will invite three strangers to her wedding to answer the question, "Who's my daddy?"
And for good measure, "The Accidental Husband" will feature Uma Thurman as a love expert torn between two men.
"Made of Honor," however, is the only romantic comedy to transport cast and crew to Scotland's Isle of Skye and Dunvegan Castle -- said to be the oldest inhabited castle in northern Scotland.
It took hours from landing to location. "You can drive for miles and not really see anyone," the actress said. "It's probably one of the most magical places I've ever been, just mountains of green hills and fields of wildflowers, and it was really like a page out of a fairy tale."
And the fairy tale came complete with Dempsey, one of the princes from "Grey's Anatomy" and "Enchanted." He has joined that exclusive George Clooney Club, the one where women want to date the members and men want to hang out with them. Or be them.
"What's really interesting about Patrick is he's probably one of the most self-deprecating people that I've ever met," and he takes all the chatter about his looks with a grain of salt. He's a "guy's guy," she says. He races cars and motorcycles but "loves his wife like the dickens and loves his kids."
As with "When Harry Met Sally ...," the comedy weighs the risk of a man and woman stepping outside the comfort of the friend zone.
"She's not necessarily honest with him completely about her feelings. She's resigned to the fact that, listen, I don't want to risk telling him how I really feel about him and ruining what we do have," Monaghan says of Hannah.
"I'd rather just keep it as it is and he's not ready for a commitment, anyway. I think it takes a different turn when my character does leave and then there's a real emptiness there for him. He has second thoughts."
This weekend, it will be the battle of the movie genres and demos as "Made of Honor" opens against "Iron Man," starring Robert Downey Jr., Monaghan's co-star in the black comedy "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang." Both will mark the official start of the summer movie season of 2008.
Two years ago, Monaghan was part of the "Mission: Impossible III" juggernaut that jump-started the summer of 2006 (although with "only" $48 million). She played Tom Cruise's fiancee in -- at that point -- her biggest and most commercial movie.
"Aside from all the personal attention he was getting, it was a massive publicity tour. I had never been on a big European tour to promote a film. For me, it was a learning process just for that. I thought, 'Gosh, if I can get through this, I can do any film.' "
Since then, the fashion model turned TV and film actress portrayed Casey Affleck's detective girlfriend in "Gone Baby Gone," the woman who wowed newlywed Ben Stiller in "The Heartbreak Kid," and, in a small drama called "Trucker" that premiered during the Tribeca Film Festival, a trucker estranged from her 11-year-old son. The actress learned to drive an 18-wheeler for her role as a woman who decided she wasn't cut out for motherhood and took off, only to be forced 11 years later to meet and try to establish a relationship with her son when her ex-husband falls ill.
In late September, Monaghan will play a single mom alongside Shia LaBeouf and Billy Bob Thornton in "Eagle Eye," a race-against-time thriller about how pervasive technology such as GPS devices, ATMs, cell phones and surveillance cameras can be used against people.
"I think after 'Eagle Eye,' people will probably feel a lot differently about these devices. ... Supposedly, 200 cameras catch a person walking down the street."
It is a role in which an ordinary person is thrust into extraordinary circumstances, much like the former farm girl from Iowa.
First Published: May 2, 2008, 8:00 a.m.
