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HOLLYWOOD -- At one time, Jennifer Love Hewitt wouldn't be caught dead in a cemetery.
"I refused to go because I always thought they were scary," explains Hewitt.
The 26-year-old star of such films as I Know What You Did Last Summer, TV's The Audrey Hepburn Story, Garfield and this summer's sequel is en route to a cemetery from the set of her CBS drama, Ghost Whisperer (Friday, 8 p.m. ET/PT). She produces and stars in the show as an antiques store owner who talks to the dead.
As her van passes through the gates of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hewitt, whose breakthrough role was playing Sarah Reeves on Fox's Party of Five, smiles. After shooting graveyard scenes for Whisperer, cemeteries "don't feel scary to me anymore. There's something very calm about sitting in a cemetery, listening to your iPod alongside your fellow man."
This afternoon, her eyes are drawn to the headstones -- many dating to the early 1900s. "I wonder who these people were, how they died, and what their stories were," she says. "I look at them hoping they are at peace and didn't have any unfinished business."
Therein lies the premise of her show. Hewitt plays Melinda Gordon, a woman who helps the dead deliver messages to loved ones. Averaging 10.6 million viewers, Whisperer is holding its own against ABC's Dancing with the Stars.
In researching the role, Hewitt sat with medium James Van Praagh, who is a producer on the show, and believes she made contact with her friend Alan, who died when she was 12.
"Whether you believe or not, the smile this 'magic' puts on your face is worth everything in the world," says Hewitt of her character's abilities. People worry that when they die, "it's all over and you don't get a say in it. We try to say in our show that maybe you go on to something new."
Hewitt hopes to die in her sleep in her 80s, "when I'm still kicking with some energy and lots of wrinkles." When her time comes, she wants her children to choose her resting place. "If they'd like to come visit me at a place like
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