Tara Reid has made a comeback of sorts with the campy SyFy hits Sharknado and Sharknado 2: The Second One, and although she’s been working since her role in the American Pie films, many of them were direct-to-video movies that never got the attention her previous work did. Now that she’s back in the spotlight, she says she wants the media to view her as an adult, rather than the party girl she got a reputation for when she was younger.

“Throughout the years I’ve lost the credibility of how much I did have, with things that weren’t always in my favor. I was the first one. I was before Paris Hilton, before Lindsay Lohan. I’m the oldest one, and I started selling their magazines. They still want to make me that. The magazines aren’t even letting me grow up, and that’s what’s hurting me with the character roles. They need to let me be the woman I am now, not the girl. There’s a big difference,” she said.

Reid is well aware that her latest films–about shark-infested tornadoes that terrorize the country–won’t get her any Oscar nods, but she is grateful to be working in a business that doesn’t always portray her in the best light.

“I feel like a cartoon. Because that’s what sells. Let’s write a bad story about Tara. Let’s show her drunk. Let’s show a party girl. Let’s show the worst situations…they still talk about stories from 10 years ago, my dress falling down or something ridiculous. That’s so old. It’s not even funny,” she said.

Reid says she knows she’s capable of tackling more serious roles as the adult she is, but unfortunately that’s in the hands of the studio execs. For now, though, she can take comfort in the fact that the first Sharknado film was uproariously successful and was the most talked-about television event on Twitter the week it premiered.

“Sharknado was an extraordinary ‘perfect storm’ which captured the attention of movie fans across the globe,” Syfy’s executive vice president Thomas Vitale said after the sequel was announced. “You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing about Sharknado! By reassembling the creative team–and dropping sharks onto New York’s iconic sites–we’re unleashing yet another ‘fin’ wave of shark-mania.”

Sharknado 2: The Second One premieres tonight on SyFy.

Image via Wikimedia Commons