By Chris Betros

Arts & Culture May. 20, 2008 - 06:18AM JST ( 5 )

TOKYO —

Though she’s only 22, Mischa Barton has packed a lot into her life, both good and bad, much of it in the past six months. The former star of the hit Fox TV series “The O.C.” is heavily involved in charity work, has been attending fashion shows and store openings in Japan, appeared as a guest presenter at the MTV Awards in Australia, ran afoul of the law in California and can currently be seen in the tear-jerker film, “Closing the Ring.”

Directed by Richard Attenborough, “Closing the Ring” starts in 1943 with a dying American airman giving a ring to a Belfast local to return to his girlfriend (Barton) in the U.S. Fifty years later, another man finds the ring and sets out for America to find the girlfriend (Shirley MacLaine). “Richard is a wonderful director and it was a beautifully written script,” she said during a recent visit to Tokyo. “It was an easy film to do and a great experience.” Playing a young version of a Shirley MacLaine character was a blast, Barton added. “She’s got so much spunk and personality. I watched her performance first to see where she went with the character before I did my work.”

The film also includes a sex scene in which Barton bares all, something she said she is comfortable with. “I don’t have a problem with nudity. It’s not your average sex scene. The nudity is about her baring her innocence,” she said. Barton added that, like her character in the movie, she believes in eternal love. “That may seem a bit far-fetched to contemporary women but I find it a very romantic idea. The only thing I don’t agree with what happens to my character is that she allows a tragedy to embitter herself. She couldn’t let go and move on. People are affected by tragedy and war in their own way, and some are just permanently affected by it.”

Barton said she is enjoying her movie career after doing “The O.C.” from 2003 to 2006. She had small parts in such films as “Notting Hill” and “The Sixth Sense” in the 1990s, but “Closing the Ring” is her first movie since finishing “The O.C.” “TV works a lot faster,” she said, comparing the two mediums. “In TV, there is usually no arc to a character – no beginning, middle or end. You also have the luxury of building your character over many seasons. Sometimes, the writer throws you a curve ball and you have to go with it. In movies, there is a clear progression of where your character is going. The difference is like night and day, but with a director like Richard, it is easy. He creates a relaxed environment to get the best performance out of everyone.”

Born in the UK and raised in New York, Barton has developed a big fan base in a relatively short time. In 2003, she was named “It Girl” in 2003 by Entertainment Weekly, Hollywood Life’s “Breakthrough Actress of the Year,” and was the recipient of Cosmopolitan’s “Fun Fearless Female Award” for “Knockout Ingenue.” Her impressive charitable activities include raising funds for cancer research through the Fashion Footwear Association of New York and the SAFE campaign for skin cancer awareness. She is an ambassador for Save the Children and the One Water campaign which brings water to remote locations in Africa, and is on the board of the Lupus Research Committee in Los Angeles.

Unfortunately, it’s not all good news for Barton. In April, she sentenced to three years probation after being caught driving drunk and in possession of marijuana in Los Angeles, and during a recent visit to Sydney, she had a run-in with a paparazzi who snapped photos of her sunbathing topless on Queensland’s Hamilton Island. Still, Barton is not staying in any one place for long. She’s already busy promoting her next film, “The Assassination of a High school President” (with Bruce Willis as the school principal), and has six other films due in the next two years.