Thanks to roles on The L Word, Gossip Girl, and the forthcoming gross-out horror film Sutures, Kate French is about to blow up

INKED: Your parents were both models who met on a modeling job. Was it inevitable that you'd model?

Kate French: Well, I'm a lot shorter than them. My dad is six feet, my mom is five foot ten, and my brother is six foot four. I'm five foot four and a half-I don't know what the hell happened. I guess I felt like I was supposed to follow in their footsteps, but at the same time, I never enjoyed it. Fifteen is a tough age anyway, and being constantly put down or judged based on my looks left me feeling really empty. I stopped my senior year of high school.

How old were you when you got your first tattoo?

Seventeen. My girlfriend and I had some margaritas and went to this tattoo shop in the East Village. I got an outline of a star on the back of my leg, two inches above my ankle. I've since changed it to a different star that my mom designed. I got my second one when I was living in Santa Barbara. I was having trouble meeting people, and one night in the shower I wasn't doing so well, and the phrase "Remember to breathe" popped into my head. So I got out, drove to a tattoo parlor on State Street, and had them write it on the inside of my right arm. That one's the most personal to me-it carries the most weight.

And your third?

It's a pencil drawing of a calla lily on my back right shoulder, done by Dan at Pricks on Sunset Boulevard. Then, recently, I made a stupid bet with my friend that whoever lost at darts had to get a tattoo of the other person's initials. I was killing him-I totally thought I was gonna win, but I lost. So now I have his initial, "W," on my wrist.

Don't you have a Ryan Adams lyric on your ribcage?

Yes. Ryan Adams is my favorite musician, and I'm obsessed with the line "Go on and rain down on us because I give up," from the song "Blue Hotel." So I had that tattooed in my best friend's handwriting on my ribcage.

Have you met Ryan?

No. I've seen him a million times in concert, but I don't want to be a creepy fan, like, "Look at my tattoo!" I respect his music so much that I kind of don't want to know him as a person. Although sometimes I'm like, Wow, I am that crazy fan-I have his lyrics on my body. [Laughs.] But that's all right.