You can learn all sorts of interesting things about a person on a road trip together. For example: Jessica Biel is a very good driver. She is behind the wheel of a Subaru heading north from Vancouver toward Whistler, one of the ski resorts hosting the Olympics this month. Because of record-breaking snow, Biel has decided to ditch the more traditional plans she’d made for our interview and hit the slopes instead. So here we are, side by side, snacking on trail mix and listening to the sound track to Where the Wild Things Are. In the car in front of us is Biel’s assistant and best friend, Lindsay Ratowsky, who is being driven with all of our bags and equipment. Our mini caravan left Vancouver in the late afternoon in a downpour, and now we are driving in the dark in a snowstorm. Wearing jeans and hiking boots, Biel, who grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and has been snowboarding since she was a kid, is utterly in her element. “This is very much a me moment: in the snow, in the Subaru, listening to music,” she says. “I feel really at peace in this environment.”

It’s a far cry from where we were two hours ago, when Biel had 40 pounds of ammo strapped around her waist and an M4 semiautomatic assault rifle hoisted above her right shoulder. We were on the outskirts of Vancouver in an empty warehouse the size of a Walmart, part of the soundstage where she has been filming The A-Team. Paul, a dashing fellow with a British accent whom Biel describes as the “resident badass,” was teaching her the finer points of racking and reloading. After Biel squeezed off several deafening rounds, Paul calculated the number of mistakes she made and then said, “Twenty-four!” She dropped to the floor and gave him two dozen push-ups. It was only then that I noticed that she is as thin as a teenage boy and all muscle. Her usual Jessica Rabbit curves have all but disappeared, the red-carpet Sex Bomb nowhere to be found.

Who is Jessica Biel? Let’s admit it: She is a bit of a cipher. The girls who read the tabloids think of her as Justin Timberlake’s on-again, off-again girlfriend; my aunt Nancy thinks of her as little Mary Camden from the mid-nineties WB series 7th Heaven; and most men under 40 think of her as the smokin’ hottie who let Adam Sandler massage her breasts in I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry. I think it is fair to say that Jessica Biel has not yet experienced a unifying cultural moment. In other words: She can still ride the subway, which, in fact, she tells me she just did the other day. “I talked to a girl who liked my shoes,” she says. ” ‘Oh, those are cute. Where’d you get those?’ ‘I got them at Barneys.’ ‘Are you from New York?’ ‘No, I’m from out of town.‘ ‘Oh, cool. Nice to talk to you.’ ‘Nice to talk to you!’ “

My own expectations were equally off-base; I imagined her as a sort of modern-day Raquel Welch. I thought she would purr. But that notion was shattered the instant I met her. It does not take long to figure out that Jessica Biel is a mellow creature, a young woman who appears to be completely at ease with herself and who meets the world on her own terms. I spent nearly two full days with her, and not once did I see her tense up. This is at least partly due to how she was raised. She describes her parents as hippies. “They are major outdoor people,” she says. “They rafted the Grand Canyon when they were in their 20s. They are an incredible couple.”

Her father, Jon, worked for GE for many years and ran his own business consultancy in Boulder. “He is extremely motivated and ambitious,” she says. “I get those qualities from him.” Her mother, Kim, grew up one of six kids in a small town a few hours southwest of Denver where Jessica and her parents both own cabins on adjoining properties. Her mother’s side of the family is part Native American: Those crazy-high cheekbones are shared by her younger brother, mother, and grandmother. When she tells me that her parents dehydrate their own food, culture their own vegetables, and make their own coconut kefir, I can’t help laughing. “I actually do, too!” she says.

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