Lindsay Hollister: How I Became Blubberella

When Lindsay Hollister saw the trailer for her new movie Blubberella on the Internet last November, she was horrified. In fact, the actress, 33, was so taken aback by the clip that she e-mailed a complaint to the movie's director, notorious German auteur Uwe Boll. ''I said, 'You have shown nothing but the food stuff,''' she recalls. ''He pretty much made it all about the eating.''

Hollister had a point. Blubberella is an R-rated superhero-movie spoof set during the Second World War that stars Hollister as an overweight dhampir, or half vampire. In the clip, the plus-size Hollister is shown chowing down on a variety of edibles — cotton candy, a pot of stew, a big hunk of roasted meat — and at one point kills a German soldier for his sandwich. In another sequence, she is described as resembling a rhino, albeit one that hasn't been fed in weeks. Hollister's character takes this as a compliment and replies simply, ''Pilates.''

The trailer inspired an Internet brouhaha and an avalanche of negative commentary. ''Honestly, I want the Nazis to win,'' declared one YouTube visitor. In her Los Angeles home, an aghast Hollister read such comments until finally she could bear no more. ''People said, 'This burns my eyes,''' she says. ''I had to stop reading at a certain point.''

The fact that Hollister took such a role in the first place may seem surprising. Over the past decade, the actress has become something of an icon within the plus-size community — a group she now risks alienating with a movie whose very title many will regard as offensive. Yet Hollister insists she has no regrets about signing on for the film, which will be released on DVD in early summer. ''I'm not ashamed of Blubberella,'' she says. ''Of course there's fat jokes in the film. If they put another salami sandwich in my hand, I was going to start killing the crew. But I want people to know we weren't setting out to hate fat people. It's important for me that people know the true story.''