April 30, 2007 - With the remake of The Hitcher hitting DVD next week, it seemed like a great time to jump on the phone with Sophia Bush, the One Tree Hill starlet who serves as one of nasty Sean Bean's chief targets in the thriller. We caught Bush, ironically enough, when she had just returned from a road trip of her own, though it seems safe to say that her cross-country journey went much smoother than her character's in The Hitcher.

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Sophia Bush: Hi, how's it going?

IGN DVD: Pretty good. Just had a pizza party in the office.

Bush: Oh, I wish I was having a pizza party! I'm out running errands and they're not nearly as fun as lunchtime.

IGN: Are you in L.A.?

Bush: Yeah, I'm running around like crazy. I actually just got back from a road trip and I'm putting all my ducks in order.

IGN: In rows?

Bush: Yes!

IGN: Where'd you go?

Bush: I drove back from North Carolina after we wrapped the show back here, but we zigzagged all over the country. We went up to the Great Lakes and once we hit really bad snow in Ohio, we went down through Ohio and into Iowa and Nebraska and into Aspen. Spent some time on the mountain. Went to the Grand Canyon, camped at the Grand Canyon. Went through Vegas, saw Love, didn't enter a nightclub, which is kind of funny because I feel like that is why people go to Las Vegas. They have some pretty fun places there, but I don't know. I'm definitely not the raging party girl. I go out every once in awhile, but it's not really my thing, that craziness.


IGN: Well, that's probably good. You won't land yourself in the public eye.

Bush: Yeah, and you know, I'd rather be doing it for work than for ridiculous social scenes.

IGN: Do you have any crazy highway stories from your road trip?

Bush: You know, actually we had a really smooth, wonderful ride. I definitely did call the highway patrol a couple of times for some stranded motorists that we saw, but I think two phone calls the whole time the entire way across America is really not a bad ratio.

IGN: I like that you call them motorists.

Bush: Oh, absolutely. Well, the thing is, I think we all know that in this day and age you just can't stop for people, which is unfortunate, but you can't do it. And after my shooting experience [on The Hitcher], it may have been [best to not] move in that direction anymore. I just have highway patrol numbers on the speed dial and let people know on which highway and on which exit I see people stuck or broken down or whatever, and I figure you can send an officer who has a buddy and a gun.

IGN: That makes you a bona fide Good Samaritan.

Bush: Oh, yeah. I feel like that's just something that people should do. I miss that sort of honor code of our grandparents' generation of, you know, you could be told to be somewhere and you would just go. There is definitely something to that sort of -- I don't know what word to use really besides honor -- that I miss. And I really wish we could move more into our more progressive directions that I feel like we're slowly attempting to power into these days, I wish we could move into those spaces with that honor because I think it would happen better and faster and really [help] the state of the union, which we need right now.

IGN: It starts with this interview. You just sparked it.

Bush: Well thanks, you know.

IGN: We're going to spread the word now.

Bush: Wouldn't that be amazing? It would be fun.

IGN: But you raise a good point. It's like the world has changed.

Bush: Yeah, it's really sad. I look at my parents' generation, and all the crazy things they got to do and life experiences that they got to have and we can't do that, we can't experience those things because it's not safe because that sort of innocence has been taken advantage of too many times. And now people know better. It just bums me out when children have to be coached on staying away from strangers and knowing not to be lured by puppies and candy and they have to be given instructional seminars in the event of a shooting in their school. I mean, the whole thing is so sad. We live in such a land of opportunity and it's just wild to see the potential being squandered the way that it is. It really hurts my heart.