Noureen Dewulf

With a breakout role in this summer’s The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, Noureen DeWulf has an appetite for stardom. insatiable, baby!

By Jack Erwin; Photography by Aletha Austin
MORE CREDITS: BIKINI BY C&M

Call Noureen DeWulf a “good girl gone bad” and you’d be right in more ways than one. The 24-year-old Indian stunner was raised in a strict Muslim household in Georgia, but started taking stripperobics classes after moving to L.A. She’s starred in an Academy Award-winning short (2005’s West Bank Story)—and also as Paris Hilton’s foreign exchange student pal “Poo Poo” (2006’s Pledge This!). And this summer she’s set to put the bad (meaning good) in The Goods, playing a stripper working her way through grad school in the Jeremy Piven-starring, Will Ferrell-produced comedy. We recently got with Noureen to closely examine all of her sides.

You’ve been part of an Oscar winner and also played a character named “Poo Poo”—

Noureen Dewulf:[Laughs.]

—with Paris Hilton. How did you end up with such…diverse roles?

Noureen Dewulf: I moved out to Los Angeles when I was 21, and the first job I booked was West Bank Story, this little short comedy that won an Oscar a few years later. After that I had a call like, “OK, you just got offered this role, you got a week before you get to go to Miami, do you wanna do it?” And I’m like “Do I wanna? Do I wanna? Yeah, I wanna do it.”

And it was a flop.

Noureen Dewulf: Absolutely. Sometimes you do things and in the back of your mind you’re like, “I’m so grateful that didn’t go anywhere.”

Was it hard growing up Muslim in the American Bible Belt?

Noureen Dewulf: My parents were pretty strict on my sisters and me; basically, they didn’t want us to get involved on any level with the opposite sex. So we weren’t allowed to do a lot of things: watch TV, go to football games, shit like that.

And probably say “shit like that.” No doubt they love that you’re playing a stripper now. How did you go about prepping for the role?

Noureen Dewulf: I’ve actually done stripperobics, which came in handy a little.

Wait—what’s a good Muslim girl from the South doing in stripperobics?!

Noureen Dewulf: The answer to that is probably in the question you just asked. This chick I know told me about this class that she took and all these crazy tricks they did and it sounded really, really fun. It was a good way for me to take a dance class that wasn’t traditional. And I’m really good at it.

We’re glad to hear that!

CLICK HERE TO SEE NOUREEN'S "HOT COMPLEX" GALLERY