She didn't get her ears pierced until she was 23, when she had them pierced especially for her role as Sonja Stone in The Beautiful Life: TBL. One of the terms of a product placement deal the show's producers had done with a top fashion designer was that Mischa would wear some of their earrings. As all of the earrings were made for pierced ears, Mischa had to get her ears pierced in order to be able to wear them.
In 2017, she added two additional piercings in each earlobe, making a total of three piercings in each earlobe. She also has two piercings in her right helix. However, she only rarely wears anything in her second and third earlobe piercings.
At the start of 2005, she got a small tattoo on her lower back, just above her waist. Because she didn't get their permission first, the producers of The O.C. were initially very angry with her for getting the tattoo, but eventually decided to write it into the show and created the story about Marissa and Alex visiting the tattoo parlour in episode 2.10 "The Accomplice".
She had her belly button pierced especially for her role in Octane, but removed the piercing once filming was completed. In January 2007, at the same time as she got her second and third earlobe piercings, she also had her belly button re-pierced.
She has a total of three tattoos.
As part of the preparation for her role in Apartment 1303 3D, she had her nose pierced with a small gold stud, but removed the piercing after just a few days when it was decided by the director that it didn't actually suit her character.
She was underage when she performed topless and fairly intimate scenes with a then-28-year-old Enrique Iglesias for his "Addicted" music video.
She's a big fan of magic and often helps magician friends out by acting as their assistant in their shows, taking part in tricks such as being sawed in half or beheaded by a guillotine. In interviews, she's estimated that she's been sawed in half several hundred times since she first took part in the trick at the age of 18. Many of those sawings have used either a clear box or no box at all to cover her body, giving the audience an unobstructed view of her divided halves. This helps to prove to them that Mischa's body really has been divided into two pieces.
The guillotine illusion that she takes part in is called the "French Guillotine". In this version, instead of disappearing inside the wooden neck stocks, the guillotine blade passes in front of them, visibly passing right through Mischa's neck. As a result, Mischa is genuinely decapitated and her head actually does drop into the waiting basket.
During a private visit to his magic museum, David Copperfield performed a number of his illusions on her. These included a "Buzz-saw" sawing in half that Orson Welles had performed on Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe, and that Copperfield had performed on Claudia Schiffer, Penelope Cruz and Cat Deeley. He also performed his "Blade" vertical sawing on her, in which she was divided vertically from head to toe into left and right halves, rather than dividing her laterally through her waist into upper and lower halves.
Quotes[]
I do intelligent roles. I don't want to be labeled as doing silly movies. I'm more mature than kids my age because I'm constantly surrounded by adults.
I love to draw people's faces. I do that all the time.
(On how she ended up being sawed in half by a Japanese magician) He started off by showing me a card trick, which was really cool and totally fooled me. Then he asked if I'd be happy to help him out with another trick, and I thought it would be another card trick or something like that, so I said 'yes'. But, when they rolled the box out onto the stage, I knew that someone was going to get sawed in half, and I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be him!
I like playing dark, offbeat, quirky characters.
It kind of irritates me that I'm seen as this pretty face. People also say I'm too thin. The truth is pretty people aren't as accepted as other people. It comes with all these stigmas.
(When interviewed in 2003) No, my ears aren't pierced. I've though about having them done a few times, and almost done it a couple of times - but I'm such a chicken when it comes to pain and backed out each time! I'd like to get them done, because it can be so difficult getting good clip-ons, and I guess I probably will at some point, but no, they're not pierced at the moment.
When I signed up for The Beautiful Life and we were discussing costumes for Sonja, they asked me if I'd be prepared to have my ears pierced for the role. They had to ask because they'd done a deal with one of the top fashion houses for the loan of some of their latest designs, including some of their jewelry. This was a bit of a problem, because all of the earrings they'd got for me to wear were for pierced ears, and they'd not realized that I'd not got mine done. So they really needed me to get my ears pierced in order to be able to wear the earrings so that they could comply with the terms of the deal. And, as I'd already been thinking again about maybe getting them done, I figured that maybe now was the time, so I said 'OK' and got them done a couple of days later.
I know I sometimes get people saying 'what was she thinking wearing that?' But the truth is I'm happy with what I wear, and feel comfortable wearing it, so does it really matter what others think?
(On her character in Apartment 1303 3D) I like the character I play, Lara Slate. She's a really, really cool girl. She's very tough and boyish, and now that I'm older, I have a lot of that dude thing in me, where I was a lot more delicate when I was young. It's one of the first roles I've gotten to play where I was straight tough female, like, don’t mess with me.
I love magic, especially the really big tricks where a woman gets divided into two or more pieces. And I don't just love watching them, I really enjoy taking part in them too - especially being sawed in half. The first time I got sawed in half was just after my 18th birthday, and I've done it several times a year ever since then. I don't know exactly how many times I've been sawed in half, as I lost count a long time ago, but it must be around two or three hundred times or so, and in several different versions of the trick. One time, I even got my younger sister involved in a version where we both got sawed in half and then reassembled with our bottom halves switched. That was a really strange experience, getting out of the sawing box and knowing that I was walking around on my sister's legs. I've also had my head chopped off around a hundred times or so, which is another strange experience. Usually it's been done using a guillotine, but a couple of times it's been a version where I've had to kneel down and put my neck on a big wooden block, and they've then used an axe to cut my head off, just like they did with a couple of Henry the Eighth's queens.
