The story she's been asked to tell doesn't have a fireworks finale, but Christina Chambers is getting a kick out of playing it up. "Now I have a chance to try getting this on the record correctly! The truth is that I was not intimidated by Kevin Costner," she says.

Chambers is talking about her audition with the Oscar-winning actor/director, who asked her to read for the leading lady role in his movie The Postman after seeing her in a national commercial (one featuring her and a box of tampons, no less). "What did intimidate me was Kevin's power in the movie industry, and what he could possibly do for my career. But you couldn't be nervous or intimidated with Kevin - he was too relaxed and having too much fun. Right away, we started teasing each other."

At 5 feet 7 inches, Chambers usually wears low-rise footwear to auditions. "It turned out that Kevin was tall, and he says to me, kidding, 'You're so short.' And I said, 'Hey, I wore flats for you!' He felt like a buddy right away; so unassuming - he wore T-shirt and jeans, and acted like a regular guy, not a movie star." The mutual razzing and fun carried through four meetings. In the end, though, Costner decided Chambers appeared too young for the role.

Because Chambers looks younger than she is, the Virginia native has dealt with her share of casting obstacles erected on visuals. But Chambers, who plays Maria Torres Evens on Sunset Beach, has been graced with a rare coping mechanism on this front: She's never been very interested in her appearance. This enviable nonfascination probably started with her parents. Her parents both hold doctorates: "Dad's is in physics, mom's in mathematics, and they preferred studying books over reflections in the mirror." (Chambers is a longtime reading junkie herself.) Two older brothers wielded influence, too, as did big sister Cathy, "my idol. I had the basic younger sister hero worship thing toward her."

Chambers, a self-professed tomboy who played house in mud forts she and her girlfriends built, will soon be playing house for real when she and fiancée Brian marry in May. And that's all the information the actress intends to provide on the subject. Chambers may be new to the publicity game, but a steely sense of privacy already operates quite well. In the nicest ways, this woman says no and means it.

Throughout her school years, Chambers happily served the same trinity: good grades, stage plays and sports. The tomboy morphed into a jock. "I played softball and field hockey, and did track and gymnastics, too." she says. "I was part of the athletics department - the football guys weren't dates, they were my buddies. I had a couple of close girlfriends, but I wasn't in with the girls who were into clothes and makeup and all that. My friends in Alexandria can testify that I was never big into fashion. I wore my hair in a ponytail braid and wore hand-me-down shirts from my brothers."

Chambers continued with softball and field hockey at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. "I don't know how bizarre or vague it sounds, but knowing that I'd become an actress was always there. The choice had already been made." Reportedly, Chambers' mother thought her daughter looked petrified during her stage debut, and that her childhood choice would bow out in the face of fear. "I don't remember being that terrified," she says with a laugh. "I was only 6 years old, after all. What I do remember is wanting to perform onstage again."

In college, to her surprise, earning a chance to act again proved to be a long process. "It's a really well-rounded theater program," she explains. "Every acting student had to do all the different kinds of work behind the scenes on plays they weren't performing in. And it was hard to get cast before your junior or senior year, because undergraduates had to compete with graduate acting students for parts." Not until year four did Chambers nail a meaty part in a play. "But I could help build a set and operate a power screwdriver; I'm familiar with a lighting panel and I can handle a follow spot." The tomboy had fun with the hardware; the actress sustained herself with classwork and a semester at the school attached to the Royal Shakespeare Company in London. The memory draws Chambers back. "At the time, Ian McKellan (Gods and Monsters) was doing their big production of Shakespeare's Richard III. We got the best seats - I saw it twice. I was so busy watching Ian McKellan act, I forgot to pay attention to the story. He does the same thing that a Shakespeare company I was in after college tries to do - make Shakespeare accessible to people, which is what Shakespeare himself wanted to be. People get so hoity-toity about him, but he wrote for the regular people. When actors take Shakespeare and other 'serious' playwrights too seriously, they end up acting more for themselves than for the audience."

That path didn't interest Chambers. Over "four or five" postgraduate years, she performed primarily in the Washington/Alexandria area in local and regional theater, commercials and industrial films. A New York commercial agency spotted and signed her, "but getting a New York print modeling agent was an accident. A friend of a friend in Virginia gave them my stuff, and they called me." Next stop: Manhattan. "I didn't have any expectations about how things would go there," Chambers says, chuckling. "Naive, huh? I figured it would be like it had been in Virginia, only a larger scale. And back there, I got my decent share of jobs."

Unwavering encouragement from family and friends bolstered Chambers' optimism during her two years in the theater mecca. "I always had a little bit of something going on , like a small print ad job would come through. It was always enough to keep me reaching for the next level."

While print modeling proved to be "a wonderful way to subsidize the television commercials," Chambers never pined for high-profile fashion gigs. "My pictures did show up in major magazines, but never modeling clothes. I was always in ads representing the "everyday girl" jobs where I'd be, like, holding up a tube of lipstick." High school jockhood helped her score a print job for Easy Spirit. "They needed a shot of a woman jumping," legs stretched "sort of like a hurdler's. On the track team, I ran hurdles. So I thought, 'Oh, this will be no problem.' It turned out that to nail that one right photograph, they had to take, I don't know, 400 pictures. Which meant I was jumping from 11 in the morning to 6 at night." Chambers' active lifestyle didn't spare her any pain the morning after. "I was so sore," she recalls, giggling. "The particular muscles used to jump in hurdling hurt. Oh, boy, were they hurting. I thought, 'You are getting too old for this!"

But commercials and print ads weren't exactly acting. The agent who could make things happen came into Chambers' life during a New York showcase. "It took place at one of the well-known Manhattan acting schools; that's where he found me," she shares. "Pete's agency has offices in New York and Los Angeles, so I'm still with them. But Pete's my guy, you know? He was my angel from the start - I still talk to him about once a week. Everyone needs someone to believe in their abilities, and I've got that person. Ever since we first met, he's pushed me, encouraged me - he's always thought I can become the actress he envisions I can be."

He also quickly recognized the discipline and work ethic that often separates starlets from legitimate thespians. Acclimating to daytime drama takes enormous quantities of sheer effort; Chambers, who moved to Los Angeles to do Sunset, couldn't fathom doing it another way. Even with silly bit parts, she insists, "You're just cheating yourself if you don't give it your all. Otherwise, you lose something of yourself and what you are."

Who Maria is - and who she is becoming - fascinates Chambers. "She's such a passionate soul, and I love that about her. Playing such a spectrum of motivations, of thoughts, of emotions - it's a pleasure to have so many levels to cover in one character," she says. The character and actress have passion in common; the quick temper, though, is not Chambers'. "My friends say I have a long fuse, except if someone assumes they can step on me or manipulate me. I'll let them know they can't - I won't let them."