Jessica Simpson keeps bouncing back

NEW YORK -- Jessica Simpson says it best.

"Sorry," she smiles. "I'm scattered."

Indeed, her thoughts dart around so fast, it's easy to see why she was branded an airhead on her hit MTV series, Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica. In one breath, she'll gush about her love of Dolly Parton, how Brigitte Bardot influenced the title of her latest album, and why she furnished her new home with photos by legendary photographer Jim Marshall.

She seems to be part high-society, with Louis Vuitton bags strewn around her hotel suite, and part real-world Texan, eating Mexican food straight out of a plastic takeout container. In one corner stands a treadmill; against a wall lies a bed for Simpson's 2-year-old Maltese-poodle mix, Daisy. Incense burns, Parton croons, and Simpson tries to relax. "My life is chaos right now," she says.

Professionally, Simpson, 26, is all over the place as well, but the face that sells a thousand tabloids is having trouble opening movies and moving albums. Her second film, Employee of the Month, grossed just $11.4 million in its opening weekend, good for No. 4. Her current album, A Public Affair, has sold 212,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That's a far cry from the 2.9 million copies sold of 2003's In This Skin. Her ex, Nick Lachey, is doing better with his album, What's Left of Me, which has moved 540,000 copies.

But Simpson isn't sobbing. Like a tennis ball, she says, she always bounces back. "You have to roll with the punches," she says crisply, "and not wallow."

'Growing as an actress'

She had to grow a thick skin after her very public split last November from husband and Newlyweds co-star Lachey. Details about the divorce -- both real and fabricated -- were splashed on tabloid covers week after week.

So Simpson was thankful to escape to New Mexico to shoot Employee, in which she plays a cashier at a Costco-like store who has two employees (Dane Cook and Dax Shepard) vying for her affections, during what she calls "a very hard time in my life."

Her latest role is part of her manager/father Joe Simpson's plan to diversify his daughter's career, much the way Will Smith shifted from TV and music to a respected, Oscar-nominated actor.

Simpson's movie debut was as Daisy in 2005's Dukes of Hazzard, which gave her a smokin' body but didn't exactly wow critics. Reviews of Simpson's efforts in Employee have not been glowing. (The Hollywood Reporter called her "self-conscious," while Variety dismissed her as "blah.")

To be taken seriously as a film actress, Simpson has a ways to go, says Entertainment Weekly executive editor Lori Majewski. "She doesn't have a movie career," Majewski says. "She has had two very supporting roles, but she needs a really good supporting role to make her an actress."

Her father is convinced she is leading-lady material.

"She's growing as an actress," he says. "We took a small step with Dukes, a larger step with this movie, and the next movie she does, she's going to be the lead."

That movie is expected to be Blonde Ambition, a remake of Melanie Griffith's 1988 comedy Working Girl. (Both Employee and Blonde are produced by Joe Simpson.)

Jessica says Newlyweds (2003-05), which transformed her and Lachey, 32, into superstars, helped groom her for movies. "I became so comfortable with cameras -- too comfortable!" she says with a giggle. "Taking away those inhibitions is one of the hardest battles."

But she says that although singing came naturally to her, acting was tougher. "I never thought I would see myself on the big screen," she says. "That, to me, was something so unreachable."

Now that she has made it there, she is not exactly focused on pushing the product. Ask about her forays into acting, and instead of talking up her new movie, she'll gab about the part she didn't get: Lucy in the upcoming big-screen version of Dallas.

She screen-tested for the role but "couldn't really pull it off. ... They wanted me to come back for Pam. They saw me as something more mature, and as a woman. I really thought I nailed it and had a chemistry read with Luke Wilson, who was playing Bobby."

Not quite. "All of a sudden I get a call: not Pam. Everyone was saying I was going to be in Dallas, and I didn't get the part. I did not get it. How embarrassing is that?"

But every downfall has an upside. Simpson and Wilson clicked so well that they are expected to co-star in Blonde Ambition.

There's one area she's now trying to keep private: her personal life. She says she is learning about herself as she gets back into the dating game. "I've tiptoed around into different personalities and different sort of qualities in men that intrigue me. I really don't know what I want."

But she will not disclose why her marriage ended and says nothing but positive things about her ex-husband, who did discuss the split in Rolling Stone. "I don't have to prove any reason as to why that didn't continue," she says. "I was not ever in my marriage for fame. My love remains and always will."

Her father says not dishing about the divorce was her choice. "It's so deeply personal, and you never win by sharing your pain and hurt in this kind of situation," he says.

Rumor and reality

The latest stories had her in love with musician John Mayer. Simpson says she "adores" the singer as a person and friend. She dismisses tales of her hookups with Employee co-star Cook and her Hazzard buddy, Johnny Knoxville, and says she's "definitely single. I haven't been heartbroken since Nick."

The obsession with her private life is so intense that paparazzi follow her everywhere. Simpson and Cook found ways to toy with the photographers.

"If you're near her, you're linked to her," Cook says. "We'd have lighting guys walk outside and hug Jessica because there were paparazzi out there."

When she goes out, the curvy blonde insists she doesn't notice if guys hit on her. "I'm so shy. I really am. I'm an entertainer, and," she snaps her fingers, "I know when to turn it on. But I can't do it with guys. Not unless I'm completely into the guy and we've already been intimate within our conversation, and we've connected."

As if on cue, Chet Baker singing I Fall in Love Too Easily drifts from Simpson's iPod speakers, and she lets out a little gasp and dreamily glances up. "This is my song. I fall in love too easily, I fall in love too fast. ... But that's OK. As long as you follow your heart, the result is always something amazing. Even if you're hurt in any situation, the situation will be in your heart. That's what makes me, me."

Search for identity

Focusing a little more on that "me" just might put her career back on track, says Majewski. "She needs an angle, an identity. She needs to decide who she is. Right now, she is a jack-of-all-trades and master of none."

Indeed, Simpson has the Dessert line of skin care products and is hawking HairDo extensions with her hairstylist/best friend, Ken Paves. And she plans to open a Hooters-like restaurant with her father.

In the hoopla surrounding Simpson's life, says Us Weekly editor Janice Min, "what's lost is that she's a really talented singer." She needs "to go back to the studio and spend a long time working on some truly fantastic hits. She needs to put her heart back into it."

Simpson seems to realize that singing is her core identity, saying music "is something I always knew I would have."

But Jessica's dad knows his daughter, especially her honesty, will be a winner on a big-screen canvas. "She's a middle-American girl," he says, "like everyone. She's got a big heart, and we've tried to allow people to see that. Jessica is not afraid to say something, and quite often, she says something before she thinks about what it means or what it sounds like."

That impulsive streak helped her stumble onto her album title. The disc was inspired by the 1962 movie A Very Private Affair, with Bardot playing a movie star craving isolation.

"Her life was so public that she never could have a private affair. But in my twisted head, I thought it was a public affair and that I'd be so cool, knocking off Brigitte Bardot!" she says, chortling. "I completely messed it up, which is so funny. And so typical Jessica."

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