Evan Rachel Wood: Beauty and the beastliness

After spending two-thirds of her life on screen, it is no surprise that Evan Rachel Wood is, as one fansite dubs her, "wise beyond her years". Now 21, she certainly seemed that way when I met her four years ago for Down in the Valley, the film in which she played a youngster who falls for Edward Norton's drifter. "I've always hung out with older kids," she said, looking a picture of innocence with her pale skin and honey-coloured hair. Still, few would've expected that two years later, she'd start "hanging" with Marilyn Manson, the Goth rocker some 19 years her senior.

Today, sporting dyed red hair, black fingernail polish and a series of tattoos – including a "J" for her first love, actor Jamie Bell – Wood looks the part. But while she may have played the archetypal angst-ridden adolescent in films such as Thirteen and Running With Scissors, she insists that dating Manson is no mere act of petulant rebellion. "I just have nothing but a massive amount of respect and admiration for him," she says. "I do believe he is one of the last real rock stars. I think over time, more and more people are going to realise that."

After appearing in the video for Manson's "Heart-Shaped Glasses", which saw her and the musician have what many believed was actual sex on camera, Wood experienced a little of the controversy he draws as a matter of course. "A lot of people still want to put him down because he is still out there," she notes. "But he's taking chances and somebody's got to do it." With Manson's music blamed in the US for everything from teenage suicide to the school shootings at Columbine, Wood admires his fortitude. "Talk about having to be strong... what he has to deal with on a daily basis, I would never be able to do it."

That said, Wood has hardly had it easy since she started seeing Manson, after they met at a party at Los Angeles' Chateau Marmont Hotel. When their relationship went public in 2007, it coincided with the disintegration of Manson's marriage to burlesque dancer Dita Von Teese, who cited the rocker's "inappropriate relationship" with another woman in the divorce papers for her reason for the split. Immediately branded a "home-wrecker", as Wood said at the time, "I've seen blogs where I've been called a slut, a whore, that say I should be condemned to death simply because I've fallen in love."

With all this happening since I last met Wood, I wonder if she feels she's grown up even more since Down in the Valley. "Oh, definitely," she purrs. "I never had to experience the really nasty side of it [being in the public eye]. I mean, I'd see it but that was the first time I really had to go through it that hard. It's been an amazing learning experience. But I still don't regret anything. I wouldn't do anything different. It definitely teaches you who your friends are and who aren't. That's probably the hardest part. It's quite a wake-up call."

Recently, whispers began to circulate that Wood and Manson had split after he was seen with a mystery woman, later identified as model Isani Griffith. But, on Christmas Day, he announced on his website that "the rumours that I found a 'replacement' for Evan, or that I have a new girlfriend are absolutely not true". Likewise Wood has been linked with Mickey Rourke, the star of her new film, Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, though she claims their public displays of affection came about "because we got so close in a family kind of way".

While she admits that she "had the biggest crush on Mickey", after she saw Angel Heart when she was 11, it's evident their close proximity came about from the intense experience of making The Wrestler. It seems to have been a cathartic experience for both actors. For Rourke, who plays a washed-up pro wrestler, Randy "The Ram" Robinson, trying to make a return to the ring, it's been billed as a return to form after years in the wilderness. Wood, however, disagrees. "Everybody keeps saying this is a comeback for him, but in my mind he never left. He's always... Mickey!"

For Wood, who plays Randy's estranged daughter Stephanie, it threw up emotions about her own father, Ira David Wood III, an actor, singer, theatre director and playwright. "I can relate to a lot of what the character was going through. I was away from my father for most of my life, so I know the feeling, that loneliness – you're so sad about something but still so angry at the same time. You don't want to be sad, and it makes you so angry that you're sad. It happens when you're a child, so you're not in control of it. That's what hurts, and also pisses you off at the same time because it wasn't your fault."

Born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, Wood moved to Los Angeles County with her mother, actress, director and acting coach Sara Lynn Moore, after her parents divorced when she was nine. It's little wonder that making The Wrestler was "like 10 years of therapy in a week". As she puts it: "Doing those scenes, and dealing with those emotions that I've ignored for most of my life, was a big deal. It was such a sigh of relief when it was all over." Still, if there's a happy consequence of her work, it's that the film prompted Wood to seek out her father for a reunion.

As Wood notes that she really "opened up" to her father, the interview begins to sound like a therapy session. "I think my own anger kept us apart," she says. "But so much of it wasn't his fault. It's hard to realise that when you're younger. I just get it a lot more now that I'm older. And he gets it too. We really understand each other now." She claims he has "really been my main supporter" since she started dating Manson. "He was one of the few people, family members, that did not care. He was just there for me, unconditionally. So I realised he was very important."

As it turns out, the bulk of Wood's family are in the entertainment business. Her father's sister Carol is a Hollywood production designer and her mother's new husband an assistant director. The youngest of three children, when she was growing up, Wood and her two older brothers were actively involved in Theatre in the Park, a community theatre group directed by her father.

She was only several months old when she appeared as the Ghost of Christmas Past in A Christmas Carol and later appeared as Helen Keller, alongside her mother, in a production of The Miracle Worker. By the time she was seven, she had starred in the first of a series of made-for-television movies before landing a part in American Gothic.

Once Wood moved with her mother to California, she scored a recurring role as Jessie Sammler on the television saga Once and Again. "Everybody on that set became my family," she recalls. "I considered them my family – when I introduced them to people, I'd say, 'This is my mom, this is my dad!'"

Given this comment, which speaks volumes for Wood's need to find a surrogate emotional crutch in the absence of her real father, it's no surprise she was drawn to acting, and the community it can provide at such a young age. Still, subsequently winning her first major screen role alongside Kevin Bacon on 1998's Digging To China, it took another five years for her breakout role to arrive in the shape of the rebellious teenager in Thirteen.

Despite her role as the parental nightmare Tracy gleaning her a Golden Globe nomination, Wood ensured she didn't become a poster-child for disaffected teens by following it with a diverse selection, including Ron Howard's western The Missing and Julie Taymor's Beatles-inspired musical Across the Universe. "I don't like going for the pre-packaged money-making movies, because they're only made to make money and they come and go," she says. "I like movies that will stick around, movies that will make people talk and have strong opinions about. I don't like it when everybody loves a movie."

While there's currently talk of Wood cutting her first album, playing Anne Brontë in a movie biopic and even collaborating with Manson on his long-gestating film about Lewis Carroll, her most concrete project is reuniting with Taymor for a Broadway musical version of Spider-Man next June. With music provided by U2's Bono and The Edge, Wood will play love interest Mary Jane. Though she will have her fair share of numbers with the superhero's altar-ego Peter Parker, she dispels fears that her male co-star will be forced to sing dressed in the web-spinner's all-in-one masked costume. "A man does not sing in Spandex!" she laughs.

If playing Mary Jane will pair her with someone in her age bracket, in keeping with her love of older men, her next screen role is in Woody Allen's Whatever Works, as the naïve partner to an embittered old man, played by Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David. "It's very classic, old school Woody Allen," she says. "It's hysterical." Presumably meant by Allen as a riposte to media interest in his own relationship with the much younger Soon-Yi Previn, it's not hard to see why Wood was attracted to the role. More than most, she already understands that love can cross the generation gap.

'The Wrestler' opens on 16 January