Model from Eagle lands part in 'Wedding Crashers'

There's a scene in the new movie "Wedding Crashers" in which a beautiful woman in a big hat bats her eyes and shoots a sultry look toward stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.

She might look familiar.

Kind of like that girl who used to work at Ultra Tan on Northwoods Drive in Lincoln.

Or perhaps like that good hurdler from Waverly High School a few years back.

Or, if you happen to know Connie and Rodney Schoneweis, like their eldest daughter, Lindsay.

A lot of people have asked Connie if that pretty girl in the big hat is indeed her daughter.

It is.  

It's a small part. Lindsay doesn't say anything. She sits in a church pew as Vaughn's character explains to Wilson's character the problem with girls who wear hats. 

Connie, who saw the movie the night it opened, won't tell the punchline, because it's dirty.

But for 20-year-old Lindsay, it's a start.

It's her first part in a big movie since moving to Los Angeles nearly two years ago.

"It was really neat," Lindsay said Monday, talking on her cell phone from Miami, where she was doing some runway modeling for a clothing company called Hurley. "You get treated very nice."

But she's already experienced a little bit of the limelight.

She's swished her long, brown hair around in a pair of Vidal Sassoon commercials. She's served hors d'oeuvres at a birthday party for Demi Moore. She filmed a Trident gum commercial in Mexico City and has given out prizes to guests on "Jimmy Kimmel Live."

She also goes to two or three auditions each day and takes an acting class each night from 7 until 11.

It's the life she's wanted since she was little.

When Lindsay was growing up on her parents' farm on O Street between Lincoln and Eagle, she was an entertainer.

She and her sisters would make music videos. Lindsay was the director. Her younger sisters, Ashley and Amber, were the stars.

The three girls wrote an elaborate script and filmed a movie in their basement. Lindsay estimates her mom has 20 VHS tapes of their early forays into the world of entertainment.

Connie took the girls to cattle call model searches at hotels in Lincoln and Omaha. Lindsay did a little bit of modeling for Pamida and Richman Gordman.

She was still in high school when she won a Miss Hawaiian Tropic pageant in Omaha.

That led to to her own page in a calendar. It led to opportunities to travel to Spain and Italy and France. It led to a poster of her in a tan crocheted bikini that is available at Wal-Mart, and that everyone, including her Grandpa Elroy Schoneweis, seems to have a copy of.

Lindsay still hasn't seen it.

"I was really kind of embarrassed," she said.

Being a Miss Hawaiian Tropic is also what led Lindsay to L.A. The pageant's owner has a house there, where Lindsay lives with two other Hawaiian Tropic models.

It's very different from her Lincoln life, she said.

There's more opportunity, more diversity, more to do.

There's the beach nearby, which Lindsay likes to visit when she has a little free time.

There's also drugs and parties, which Lindsay said she's avoided.

"There's a lot of bad, but there's also a lot of good," she said.

Connie worried a little at first.

"I was scared the first time I went to pick her up from the airport," she said.

She worried that the city had changed her daughter, that she wouldn't recognize her.

She didn't, but only because Lindsay had dyed her hair for the Vidal Sassoon commercial.

She was the same girl — creative, but practical and level-headed and nice, too.

Connie was relieved.

And she's proud of both her daughter's success and the way she's handled it.

"I think she'll make it someday," she said.

Reach Cara Pesek at 473-7361 or cpesek@journalstar.com.