Sarah Michelle Gellar (center) as Helen Shivers

It is the Fourth of July, and Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) has just earned the coveted Croaker Queen beauty contest, to the delight of her boyfriend Barry (Ryan Phillippe), a wealthy, cocky, handsome jock; her best friend, the smart and ambitious Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt); and Julie's boyfriend, Ray (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), an ambitious working class young man. In the Fall, Helen will go New York to pursue her dream of becoming an actress; Ray is heading there too, to become a writer. Barry and Julie are off to Boston, he to play football and she to pursue law. With high school behind them and knowing that the fall will separate them, perhaps forever, the four friends make a pact to always be there for each other, no matter what happens.

Ryan Phillippe Barry Cox

That night, the four celebrate, partying at Oscar's Oyster Bar and driving out in Barry's new BMW to an isolated and romantic beach. After regaling each other with scary stories about what happens to trysting teens in remote places, and reveling in each other's company, they realize it's time to head home. Barry's had way too much to drink, and Ray insists on driving them back. Barry's antics in the car, tossing cheap bourbon around, leads to a crash on notorious Reaper's Curve - they've hit something large in the middle of the road. It's a man.

Freddie Prinze Jr. as Ray Bronson

The accident quickly shatters their party mood. Scared and confused, they struggle with each other and their consciences over what to do with their victim, knowing that calling the police, with their alcohol levels up and the car covered in booze, will undoubtedly lead to a conviction for vehicular manslaughter -- meaning no Boston, football, law school, or New York dreams come Fall. They finally make an uneasy decision to hide the body in the ocean, keep the secret to themselves and continue on as if nothing happened.

Jennifer Love Hewitt as Julie James

A year passes. Julie has gone to Boston but has not become the college success she expected to be. Back home for the summer, Julie's mom hands her a letter that has just arrived. Inside is a single sentence - "I know what you did last summer." Someone outside their circle knows their secret -- a clever and vicious tormenter who seems to know their weakest points, their deepest insecurities, attacking them where they are psychologically most vulnerable. Someone is determined to make sure that these four golden teens do not get away with their crime.

About The Production

The cast of I Know What You Did Last Summer features four brightly rising stars from the worlds of film and television. Jennifer Love Hewitt, who stars as Julie, currently appears as Sarah on Fox's hit series Party of Five. Also an accomplished singer with three solo albums to her credit, Hewitt's feature film credits include House Arrest, Sister Act II and the upcoming Warner Bros. romantic comedy Trojan War. The star of the new hit Warner Bros. television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sarah Michelle Gellar stars as Helen, the beauty queen. An Emmy award winner for her role in All My Children, Gellar has appeared in the films Funny Farm, Over The Brooklyn Bridge and High Stakes. Ryan Phillippe , who plays Barry, will be seen this year in three features: Homegrown, co-starring Billy Bob Thornton and Hank Azaria; Little Boy Blue, with Nastassia Kinski; and Gregg Araki's Nowhere. Freddie Prinze, Jr. has had featured roles in To Gillian On Her 37th Birthday, Miramax's House of Yes and Sparkler.

"It's about secrets and how they can kill us," says writer Kevin Williamson, describing I Know What You Did Last Summer. "These are four incredibly bright kids who are all growing up and coming of age and then something terrible happens. They have a choice to either come clean and tell the truth, or cover up and lie. Of course, they make the wrong choice. But most of the people in the audience will probably think, 'I'd do that too.'"

Recently chosen by Entertainment Weekly as one of the 50 most creative people in Hollywood, I Know What You Did Last Summer is Kevin Williamson's first film following the enormous success of his first produced screenplay, Scream. A native of North Carolina, Williamson set Last Summer in a town close to his boyhood home of Oriental - Southport, an idyllic seaside fishing village. And, unlike the overwhelming majority of films produced today, I Know What You Did Last Summer was actually filmed on location, in Southport, 35 minutes south of Wilmington. Williamson was pleased with the choice: "Southport is this incredible, idealistic place to live. It's the type of environment where the viewer will say, 'God, I wish I lived there.' The film is about a perfect town and four perfect kids - and then their lives go to hell. We wanted people to say, 'How could it happen there?'"

The sleepy town appears in the film as it does to its year-round residents - a 200-year-old, Norman Rockwell-like fishing village, situated on the Cape Fear River. One of the area's most beloved traditions - the Croaker Festival (named after the local fish) - made its screen debut in the film. An annual festival of parades, contests and good eating, the Festival was, for Williamson, "the perfect symbol of the most picture-perfect summer imaginable."

The moral center of the film is Julie, played by Jennifer Love Hewitt, known as "Love". Says Feig, "She is really the soul of the movie in that she's sort of the good spirit - she wants to call the cops; she wants to do the right thing." Hewitt describes Julie "as the all-American girl next door. She's very brave and incredibly strong. She's the sort of girl who seems to have it all together, but underneatth doesn't as much as she seems. She's the type of person that finds her strength giving security to other people's insecurities, like her best friend Helen and her boyfriend Ray."

For Hewitt, doing a scary, psychological thriller was a tremendous challenge: "I'm one of the biggest scaredy-cats ever and I can't go see movies like this because they scare me too badly. But that intrigued me and made me decide to do the film because not only was I getting to play a great character and work with terrific people, but I was going to get over one of my biggest fears by facing it head on. Everything Julie learns in the movie, I learned with her - as she sort of gets over her fright and grows strength, so do I."

Sarah Michelle Geller, who plays Helen, the smart but insecure beauty queen, was attracted to the film by the complexity of its characters. Says Geller, "I loved the script. When you're a young actress, it's very rare to find characters our age that are this fully developed. These are four really strong, intelligent characters who go through transitions that are really human. And for me the character of Helen was a real departure, and it was something I really wanted to do."

Ryan Phillippe plays Barry, the golden boy whose life is shattered by his mistake. Says Feig, "Instead of just giving an all-American-football, stilted performance, Ryan brings so much heart to the part. You actually see underneath his veneer into a much more complex character, with a lot of different motivations." For Phillippe, the most compelling aspect of the story "was the deterioration that takes place amongst these four teenagers who are affected by first the incident and then the terrorizing. It's rare to have a character like mine that starts out with everything and then you take him to a point of just disconcerted misery, just lost and having to bury that underneath all the bravado and conceit he can muster. These people start out so wonderful and end up becoming shells of their former selves."

Freddie Prinze, Jr. plays Ray, "a kid from the wrong side of the tracks," say Feig. "Among the four of them, he's the one who doesn't have the money to get him out of trouble and, at this crucial moment, we find out what the others really think of him and how he thinks of himself in the group. Freddie brings the character a sort of moral uncertainty. You understand that he is a guy who's trying to figure things out."

For Williamson, the film's stance against drinking and driving is vitally important. "Drunk driving plays a large part in the character's downward spiral. It is very apparent that the entire nightmare the characters experience could have been avoided if they hadn't been drinking. The lead character ultimately learns about responsibility and that she can change from her past actions and do things differently in the future."