You have to carry so many archetypes as an actor, especially as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed one.
I ran for ninth grade class president. Came in a close second.
I'm a character actor; that's my skill set.
We try to use obvious Canadian touches whenever we can, and I'm really proud of the way we use Vancouver for its production value. Nobody is pretending that we're not shooting in Canada, which is really important to me. The other wonderful thing is that ABC has bought us, but they air us after CTV has had the full season air on Canadian television. That's another thing that I think is really a nod towards the importance of us acknowledging our own industry.
I injured myself quite badly when I was seventeen. I broke my ankle, and it didn't heal in such a way that I could keep dancing at the level I wanted to. It wasn't like, 'Oh my god, I'll never play the violin again.' I could, but not at the level I wanted. So, I segued into acting, the other thing that was also meaningful to me.
I want to live a good life and pay my taxes. 'The Killing' was a blessing. It was two wonderful years. But I had reached a point in my life, especially with a young son, that I was no longer willing to compromise my life for the sake of a paycheque. I was no longer willing to move where the tax credits are strong.
I'm a journeyman actor. My experience as a journeyman actor is that you have to go where the work is. I've never been the lead; I've never been in that position.
I'm really lucky. I never really felt like LA was the Mecca, that you "made it" if you made it somewhere else. I've been a journeyman actor for my whole career. I just sort of went where I was invited. I worked the early part of my career in Canada before I had the luxury of doing an American series, which brought me down to LA.
Yes, it leads people to believe that they have more information than our cops, but then, at some point, before you know it, you're both caught up. Everybody, when they're watching the who-dun-it shows, is making guesses in the first five minutes anyway. We just kind of give them what they want.
The sneak-peeks you get off the top are of them in their real life. You're more invested, you know both of them, and you've already made assumptions. A murder who would murders someone - that makes them immediately bad - but here you see them in a different.
I found out that detectives are really good dressers. I'm not even exaggerating. The woman I interviewed had these fantastic fuschia suede heels on that I coveted. And that they're invested in their jobs the same way you and I might be. We think of them as doing these jobs that we could never imagine doing, but their relationship to what they do is the same as our relationship to what we do.
I think we dip in and out of it. Every new show is trying to find their feet before they can say what they are. That's certainly something that I like about the role - going in and out of the personal life. There are some episodes where we go into it a little more, and some where we don't at all
Between my husband, my son and I, we'll always have a bit of both in our lives. We need a bit of both because the cities are so different, and we have that luxury. We're really lucky
One of the things the police officers told us in the first minutes of being with them is that the way that they cope with their job is by using a lot of inappropriate humour. It's really a lovely opportunity to try to challenge our ideas of what it is to deal with complex issues, and that they're not always dower. Having that kind of humour along with the pathos for what people are going through is a really nice challenge.
