Whether a product of occupational anxiety or some secret PR class in vacuous doublespeak, a lot of young, up-and-coming actors and actresses speak in carefully packaged sound-bites, offering up only smiling platitudes and generic praise for costars. Trying to nudge them off script can be a lobotomizing experience, leading to one-sentence replies or answers to questions not asked.

Amanda Crew is not one such actress. A 22-year-old native of British Columbia who plays, opposite Josh Zuckerman and Clark Duke, the most attractive member of a love triangle that gives the wild new teen road-trip comedy Sex Drive its requisite pinch of emotional mooring, Crew is warm and engaging, but not falsely ebullient, like she’s tackling an interview as another role. She’s real, in other words. There’s no guardedness or pretense, so when talk turns to matters of technology, and how keeping in touch with friends has changed radically in only a half dozen years, Crew self-effacingly chides herself for her poser past (“I remember my dad getting a pager but never using it, so I’d just walk around with it, to look cool”) and confesses to occasionally losing four or five hours on Facebook.

Instinctively, she knows comedy’s “rule of three,” joking about the manufactured distraction of fabricated list-making during the current production holding pattern, owing to the possibility of a Screen Actors Guild strike (“I’ve always enjoyed lists, but now my to-do lists are literally like: ‘shower, take the dog out, buy toilet paper.’ I’ll put ‘brush my teeth’ on there just so I feel like I accomplished something”), and then amusingly circling back to her comment at various points in the conversation.

According to Crew, she wasn’t always this personable and outgoing, though. “They used to call me Mouse when I was a kid, because I was so shy and quiet,” she says. “I think it was in third or fourth grade when I had this switch, I don’t know what caused it. I was the class clown, but not the obnoxious one getting kicked out of class; I loved to do Mr. Bean impressions, I was obsessed with him. Then in elementary school I became involved in some of the school plays, and in high school they had a film and television program in our school and I had a teacher who recommended that I take a film acting class.”

An agent saw Crew there, at a showcase, but her mother wouldn’t let her get an agent until she was a bit older, and more settled and serious. Small parts in a few films (Final Destination 3, She’s the Man, John Tucker Must Die) followed, along with larger roles on TV shows Whistler and 15/Love. Crew moved to Los Angeles in April, and seems invigorated by the plunge. “I’ve spent some time here before and hated it, but I have to honestly say I’m really enjoying it this time,” she says. “I’m living with this girl that I met on a film I did in Winnipeg. She’s in the industry, so she gets it, but she’s not an actress. It’s really good vibes to have in the house. She’s very career-oriented and Miss Independent, so I like to have that around me, because it pushes me to be more goal-oriented.”

Indecision and a bit of romantic waffling is part of Crew’s character Felicia in Sex Drive. With two guys as best friends, she can’t see the forest through the trees. Crew cops to having some personal experience with friendship-launched romance. “Yeah, there’s a few people I could think of,” she says with a reflective laugh. “I think everyone has someone like that, that you hang out with for a long time and just think of as a buddy, and then all of a sudden they do something or something changes with you, or someone will say something, and you’re like, ‘Oh, I guess he is cute. And nice.’”

Crew is physically striking, but has a relaxed demeanor and carefree sense of humor that help her give as good as she gets in a couple scenes in Sex Drive. “I connected with the character in that she gets along so well with guys,” says Crew. “I have lots of girlfriends, but I do feel comfortable hanging out with guys and being myself. Some girls feel they have to act and dress a certain way around guys, and I definitely went through that stage in early high school, but now I’m just like, ‘Whatever.’ I can kick it with the boys, which is what I had to do for the shoot, because it was all guys. It was fun because I have this side to me that’s very crude, I guess you could say. I have a mouth like a truck driver, and if someone ignites it I have the dirtiest sense of humor, so after two or three months of working with those guys I came home and my mom was like, ‘What did you just say?’”

Next up for Crew is the already completed The Haunting in Connecticut, a based-on-a-true-story horror thriller opposite Virginia Madsen. For now, though, she waits, a bit anxiously. “I do better when I have a lot on my plate, I get a lot more done,” says Crew. “Right now I have so much free time that I feel like I do nothing.” To that end, she’s taken to dabbling in photography. One gets the feeling, though, that it won’t be long after Sex Drive until the camera is turned back on Crew.