Does Mischa Barton even know about cars? is, believe it or not, a relevant question right now, given her job as a cohost on Joyride, the Esquire Networks fancy-car show. Her love of cars  vintage cars specifically  could easily be a hobby she developed just to have something to say for Us Weeklys 25 Things You Dont Know About Mischa Barton column. And while her ownership of a baby-blue, 1970 Cadillac Coupe de Ville has been well documented since 2010, information about said car has been publicly shared mostly when it has been towed, run out of gas, or swiped a parked car.
But it turns out that she does know about cars  enough to fix her own Caddy, and enough to qualify for Joyride. The elevator pitch: car fanatics Oliver Trevena (British actor and noted muscle car collector), T-Pain (rapper and owner of 32 cars), Brian Vickers (race car driver), and Barton (actress and Cadillac enthusiast) drive different types of elite cars and pick their favorites. The former teen star now makes a living talking about V12 engines and taking McLarens on wild spins around a track in the Valley. Barton says she jumped at the chance to do Joyride, and then took lessons with a professional driver so she could keep up with her cohosts. It takes people a while to trust me, she says of her skills. Theyre so afraid of a young woman in a car like this, but then theyre like, Oh yeah, she can drive that thing. She knows its turning radius to a tee.
But I realize that Im being ungenerous, and also that it doesnt really matter: Its a perfect December L.A. day, Sunset Boulevard is waiting, and the Cadillac is fixed. I came here to find out what it is like to be Mischa Barton these days, and apparently this is it.
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It is much calmer than the life you might remember her for  the one she lived during and just after The O.C., the iconic SoCal teen show that turned Barton into an It Girl. You remember the era: Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, Kitson, paparazzi campouts on Robertson, DUIs and Juicy Couture and mega clubs. For Barton, its the time she was on all the magazine covers  Allure, Glamour, Vogue, Elle. But its an era thats also synonymous with uncertainty and pain: canceled CW shows, The Beautiful Life, a handful of unremarkable entries on IMDb, a DUI in 2007, and years of tabloid headlines picking apart her weight, behavior, career, and love life. In 2009, at 23, Barton was admitted to the psychiatric ward at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
It was an intense time, Barton tells me while coloring car pictures in the Petersen museums kids room. (Her suggestion.) It used to be like 10 or 12 paparazzi swarming the car all the time.
They used to chase you, like all 12 of the cars, creating accidents and stuff in the streets, and it was no way to live. And the magazines, they insulted and judged everything I did. Everyone I dated. I really wanted to step back and take a break and reassess. She says her hospitalization felt necessary after so many disaster cases. You need to keep your head on straight. I needed that time for me.
