Playmate of the Month June 1986 - Rebecca Ferratti

Miss June rode into town in a sports car that is now defunct. Zooming out of the Arizona desert, she was so thrilled to reach L.A. that she scoffed at the speed limit. She hit one of Hollywood's few puddles and hydroplaned until a parked car intervened. Rebecca Ferratti remembers enjoying the ride, ...thinking that it was a lot more exciting than tooling around Phoenix. That was last November. Rebecca - Miss Apache Ski Resort, Best Legs in Phoenix 1984, Miss Belly of Palm Springs 1985, Miss Physically Fit, Miss Cuervo Gold, the Miss Arizona Pageant's Miss Photogenic and the state of Arizona's unofficial Miss Personality - had forsaken the pageant circuitry to Go For It in the capital of Going For It. She took the dust out of her taffeta dress, walked away from her crumpled car and set out to become well-known in L.A. Today, seven months later, her answering machine is jammed with calls from casting agents, managers, and prospective beaux. Rebecca is seldom at home. If she's not in class at Creative Actors' Workshop in Burbank, she's probably at a night club on Sunset, dancing a series of strong California guys under the table.
"There's not enough time in the day," she says, bombing out of her brand-new Hollywood apartment on her way to acting class. "I need 48 hours, not 24. I love to drive fast. I love positive, high-energy people. I don't want to be around negative people. If they're negative, I'll bring them up. And I'll bring them up so far they'll say, 'Whoa!'"
She rides horses in the desert or escapes to the mountains when things slow down in the city. Sitting at a campfire, reflecting on the pageant scene in Phoenix and her prospects in Hollywood, she talks nearly as fast as she drives. It's not easy to follow the conversation of someone packing two days' worth of zest into 24 hours, but the gist is that the beauty-pageant tour got too political. "Phoenix is a very nice town with very nice people, but you get well known there very quickly. There's a lot of jealousy. Do the other girls like you for what you've won, or do they like you for yourself? Are they using you? It's hard to tell. But I didn't let all that stuff get me down. I won about 25 titles, and then it was time to go to L.A. for modeling, TV, movies. L.A. is a big town. It can be lonely, but I know I can make my dreams come true. One night, I dreamed I'd go to Europe; then I won Miss Apache Sunrise and a trip to Paris. I dreamed of an island, won a national competition for Mademoiselle and went to Bermuda. Now I'm dreaming that I'll do well and have it all."
Like hordes of hopeful, photogenic young Hollywood women, Rebecca dreams of taking phone calls in the Polo Lounge, having a ranch on the mesa and being sent scripts that Meryl Streep rejects. Like a few, she may succeed. As for succeeding with Rebecca, there are plenty of guys trying. Most of them, however, make the same mistake. They try to railroad this Ferratti, who eludes pushy dudes with the speed of a perfectly tuned Ferrari. "I don't like it when guys use lines on me: 'Don't I know you from somewhere?' 'Haven't I seen you on TV?' I can see right through that. What should they say? Maybe 'You're a joy to watch.' That might work. That's hard to resist. I really do have a flirtatious side, you know. I just don't use it very much. I don't need to." Rebecca doesn't need anything except more hours in the day, but all her admirers should be forewarned - whether the subject is late-night dancing or love, it's not easy keeping up with her. "I'm a high-energy person," she says. "Around the clock."

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