Blake Lively is starving. She slides into a booth at a charming restaurant in New York City’s West Village and immediately buries her head in the menu. “Let’s share a bunch of stuff,” she says, then adds, “On average, I order about three meals for myself in one sitting.” She isn’t kidding. Two bread baskets, two appetizers, two pasta entrées, and three desserts later, she decides that’s enough food…to start with.

If you want to read a bit more of this sneak peak, then click read more, and check out the gallery soon for scans. For now, click here, to see a hi res version of the cover thanks to the guys at cosmo.

But there’s good reason for Blake’s ravenous appetite. As one of the breakout stars of television’s most buzzed-about show, Gossip Girl, she’s spent the last several months working 18-hour days. And that’s in addition to promoting her new flick, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, in which she plays a college student coming to terms with her mother’s death. Though she looks every bit the chosen Hollywood starlet (she’s dressed in skinny jeans, black ballet flats, and a leather bomber jacket), she hardly acts it. “I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. But I do sleep around a lot,” she deadpans, before busting into laughter.

The fact is, her own high school experience in Burbank, California, was a far cry from her character’s ultraprivileged existence. While Serena van der Woodsen spends her time sipping champagne at the Palace Hotel dressed in designer clothes, Blake, now 21, was more of a gung-ho overachiever. “I was class president, on the cheerleading squad, in a competitive show choir, and in, like, six different clubs,” she says. She even sported a bulldog costume to act as mascot for some football games. That up-for-anything attitude is what helped her break into acting. She got her first gig (in the original Sisterhood movie) because her brother, also an actor, thought she would like performing and asked his agent to send her on a couple auditions.

Want more? Pick up the September 2008 issue of Cosmo, on stands now! You can also check out Blake and the rest of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 cast at the movie premiere.

Or check out The CW for everything you want to know about “Gossip Girl.”