Mena Suvari got her start as a teen queen in American Beauty. Since then she’s tackled a dozen wildly different roles, one rough divorce, and a very confusing year. April Long meets her as she comes out of hibernation. Photographed by Terry Richardson.

Mena Suvari just put her hand in bird poop. “Gross,” she squeaks, casting an eye up to the branches above the park bench she’s sitting on in search of the offending pigeon. “I don’t even want to look.” But then she does, lifting her sunglasses to scrutinise her gooey palm. “Huh,” she says, finally and with a laugh, wipes it off on her shorts. This, you’ll soon see, is Mena Suvari in a nutshell.

The 26-year-old actress is a bundle of kinetic energy. She speaks rapidly in sentences spiked with “likes” and fits of giggles, and tends to sound as though she’s asking a question, even when she isn’t. Suvari is relentlessly inquisitive. “People say I’m a truth-seeker,” she says. “Maybe it’s because I’m an Aquarius. I’m always digging deeper, wanting to know more, more, more…” Her eyes widen. “I’m just so interested in everything. I’m so restless. Maybe that’s my problem? I’m never satisfied!”

It’s no doubt partly because her personality demands variety that Suvari so enjoys mixing light and dark roles, fluffy comedy and off-beat drama, but it’s also because refreshingly she doesn’t seem to give a shit about the Hollywood star system. “It’s just about the material for me, because it’s so hard to find good roles for young women. I don’t want to do something I don’t believe in just for a whole lot of money.”

Suvari has been going through what she calls a “very complicated” time. Last May, she filed for divorce from her husband of five years, cinematographer Robert Brinkmann. When they were married, just after her star-making turn in 1999’s American Beauty, she had to deflect scepticism about their 16-year age gap (he was 37 to her 21). Now, she’s having to navigate persistent questions about their split her own, as well as everyone else’s. “Honestly, I’m still in shock mode,” she admits. “It’s like, what the hell happened? I guess I’m in the reflecting stage: Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing? And I’m not even far enough out of it to have any perspective.”

After this “cyclone” of a year, Suvari says, “I feel like I know where I want to be, I just want to hurry up and get there.” When I ask her where that place is, she shrugs and looks off into the distance. “It’s inside myself,” she answers, finally. “It’s peace and contentment, and, you know, a stability that you can't get anywhere else. It’s a feeling I can’t really describe. I want to gain more knowledge and confidence about myself. That’s it. If I have that, that’s cool. I want to stop running for awhile.” But coming from someone who’s constantly asking what’s next, it’s difficult to imagine that Suvari will sit still for long.