Daryl Hannah Gets On Board With 'Liebrary'

She's previously made huge impressions in such hits as "Splash," and "Wall Street," and the "Grumpy Old Men" and "Kill Bill" films. But now, actress Daryl Hannah is looking to earn herself a name in a new role: Game designer.

That's because Hannah and her best friend, fellow actress Hilary Shepard, have taken their passion for board games to store shelves with the new game "Liebrary." It's much more than a game for bookworms, Hannah explained to me in a recent @ The Movies interview.

"It's funny, when you hear the name, it's like, 'Wait a minute, who wants to play a game that doesn't sound like fun -- it sounds like a game for nerds,' Hannah told, me, laughing. "It's been around hundreds of years. It's an old parlor game -- a game where you bluff other people to think that yours is the first line of a book."

Designed for ages 12 and up, "Liebrary" asks players to come up with that first line after a Liebrarian reads to them the book's title, author and a short summary. Consisting of 350 titles from the Random House library, the game has five categories of books to pick from: Children's, Classics, Fiction/Nonfiction, Horror/Mystery/Sci-Fi and Romance.

The game's box, in fact, looks like a big book - but you don't have to necessarily know the contents of the books within to take part.

"We wanted it to look really beautiful so you could leave it out on your coffee table, but it's not actually intimidating to play," Hannah said. "It's not one of those games where you are going to be tested on your knowledge or intellect or memory of literature at all."

But if you do happen to remember the first line of the book in question, then great.

"The object of the game isn't necessarily to remember the first line of any book -- if you do, you get to skip ahead two spots and it's a bonus -- the object is to just be super-creative and funny and come up with a line that will fool everybody."

Hannah said that she and Shepard took 10 years to develop, test and perfect the game. Before that, it was something they would play off-the-cuff at friend's houses, simply by grabbing titles from whatever book collections were available at the time.

"The problem was, there were times we were at someone's house who didn't have an extensive library," Hannah said. "Sometimes, it would just take forever because some books don't have plot summaries or they're just too long, or some plot lines were just not too good to play with."

Hannah her and Shepard's idea to take the game to the next level finally came on a trip to Hawaii with a group of friends, when they arrived to a house without any books.

"We wanted to play, but we couldn't because there were no books in the house and we didn't bring enough between us, so that's when we decided to invent the game," she said.

Celebrity Gamers

Perhaps the most interesting thing behind Hannah and Shepard creating "Liebrary" is that it's a unique game project for celebrities to get involved. Sure, you get actors lending their voice talents to video games all the time, but to actually take the steps in developing and testing a board game -- a process that takes a considerable amount more of time -- testifies to the duo's passion for the project.

In fact, "Liebrary" is the second game the duo has put out.

"Hilary and I actually invented a board game that came out before 'Liebrary,' that was out in Toys R' Us and other stores for a couple of years. We do it because we just love to play games -- there's really no other reason," Hannah, said, laughing. "We don't even know if we made a dollar on it. But we want the games we love to be available so we just started making them."

Hannah said that developing a game is much like developing a film idea in Hollywood, which means that there can be plenty of ups and downs. Fortunately, she said, that wasn't the case with her and Shepard's new endeavor.

"The first game that we did didn't come out exactly as we wanted it to, because the game maker did a lot of market testing," Hannah said. "For movies they do that, they'll test something and test something and re-edit it until it doesn't resemble itself at all. They did that with our game. But this company (Simply Fun), they did things exactly as we wanted it. They did it exactly as we designed it and conceived it. It just plays perfectly. We've played it for 10 years and know exactly how it works."

And of course, testing it for so long gives them insight as to which category produces the largest laughs.

"People really do enjoy the Romance category," Hannah enthused. "It's hysterical because it's so super-cheesy."

Hannah said that people also discover some surprising things about the first lines of books -- like their simplicity, in some cases.

"You get all the information in the plot summary that you need to write the first line," she explained. "Say you're doing 'Wuthering Heights' from Emily Bronte and you'll get people writing, 'Heathcliff, Heathcliff, where are you?' when in fact the real first line is '1801.' People always chuckle at that and say, 'No one could have written that.'"

One of the things that took time in developing the game was determining which books should be included in it. After it was determined that the 350 titles would be coming from the Random House library, the grueling work began.

"Hilary and I went through every single book ourselves, we edited every single description and made sure every first line was a good first line to play with," Hannah said. "It was really time consuming, but we did every single one. If the game is successful, we'll make booster packs to get fresh books to play with."

Hannah And Tarantino, Vol. 3

If "Liebrary" proves anything about Hannah, it just goes to show that the screen beauty is a regular person like you and me. And, if it's a choice between a Hollywood premiere and a board game, she'll take the board game.

"My favorite thing is to hang out with my friends and my family, and laugh and have a great time just like anybody," Hannah said. "I'm not a big fan of the red carpet situation. I do it occasionally when it's for work or a friend's film.

"But if I can avoid it, I do," she added with a laugh.

Of course, the cool thing about working in the creative community is discovering that others share the same interests, namely Quentin Tarantino, the director who brought out the dark side of Hannah in the form of the assassin Elle Driver in "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" and "Kill Bill: Vol. 2." Tarantino has been a huge board game player -- and collector -- for years.

"He just loves fun -- he's a big kid and he loves to play like I do," Hannah beamed. "I'm definitely going to have a game night with him."

Hannah admits she's been spoiled by working with the wunderkind writer-director, and knows that picking out future projects has become a little bit tougher because of it. On the flip side, though, Hannah said that showing a side of her talents that people haven't seen before has opened the door to new opportunities.

"I definitely have gotten more offers for stronger roles, whereas people used to say, 'No, she's too vulnerable, too soft, too gentle and too much of an ingénue to play this stronger character,'" Hannah observed. "Now it's just the opposite. People almost can't envision something until they've seen it -- even in this business -- which is really crazy. You would think it would be the opposite, but it's not."

As a lasting reminder to film executives, Hannah will not only have the films as part of her diverse resume, but a new Elle Driver action figure that can sit on their desks -- where the one-eyed bandit can well, stare them in the eye.

And they better make sure that there's copy of "Liebrary" sitting there as well. Hannah's not only powerful with a sword -- she can throw one mean, big book at 'em, too.