"It's a baby sperm," says Mandy, unzipping a motorcycle boot and slipping off her sock to expose a small black tattoo near the arch of her right foot. It sure is, though honestly, it could also pass for a kid's balloon. She lets loose a laugh as she recalls the day, two years ago, when she trekked to an Omaha tattoo parlor with her five band members during her last tour. "We were goofing off, writing a song about babies or something," she says. "Somehow that evolved into everybody getting inked."
Mandy reveals her proclivity for tats—she also has a heart on the top of one toe—during a Friday afternoon visit to the Getty Center, a breathtaking mecca of art, architecture, and landscaping in Los Angeles' Santa Monica Mountains. The singer-actress has spent the better part of an hour perusing a collection of photographs, and, settling onto a bench overlooking a maze of red azaleas, she explains that she's well aware that the image most people have of Mandy Moore doesn't include body art. "I understand people have preconceived notions of who I am or what I do," she says, referring to her origins as a 15-year-old bubblegum-pop pixie who burst onto the scene 10 years ago cooing a light-as-air concoction called "Candy" and her most recent incarnation, as a fresh-faced ingénue in a string of films such as License to Wed and Because I Said So. "But I do find it a bit bizarre that people find it bizarre that I've grown up."
Which, of course, she has. Now 25, the Orlando native looks more indie rock than polished pop, in black Wayfarers, a long, slouchy cardigan, a scarf draped around her neck, and skinny jeans. (Her hair, dyed a warm chestnut brown after a "hot second" as a blonde, is pulled back into a bumpy ponytail. "My hair's naturally dirty-dishwater light brown," she says. "Ug-ly.") Her music has evolved, too. Amanda Leigh (the title is her given name), Mandy's recently released sixth album, is chock-full of introspective odes to self-discovery and the roller-coaster ride of relationships. Fortunately, Mandy's own love life is now firmly on track. But her marriage in March to singer-songwriter Ryan Adams has garnered unwelcome attention—earlier in the day, Mandy and her new husband were accompanied on their hike by paparazzi. "It was like 9 in the morning, I'm having my period, I have a huge pimple on my face, and all of a sudden some guy pops out from behind a porta-potty," Mandy says, not bothering to disguise her annoyance. She didn't then, either: "I said, 'Man, this is a private street.' He goes, 'I'm sorry.' I was like, 'No, you're not. If you were, you wouldn't be here.'"
Mandy may not be shy about calling out an overly aggressive snapper, but even after a decade in the spotlight, she remains accessible. She offers up a "bless you" when a stranger across the gallery sneezes and eagerly obliges when a tourist—mistaking her for just another young Angeleno—asks her to snap his photo in front of a fountain ("I'll take another, just in case," she says). And after a fierce wind sends this writer's drink sailing all over Mandy's See by Chloe bag, she barely bothers to brush it off. "Are you kidding me?" she says. "It's just iced tea."
