"No, I prefer boring lawyer-types myself!" she laughs at first, then responds slightly more seriously: "No, it’s funny. I seem to get a lot of weird roles. I guess I enjoy comedy more than anything else. I enjoy the freedom of jumping into somebody who’s absurd. It gives the freedom to be off-the-wall, which I am in real life, anyway. It’s actually more of an effort for me to do what I call the milquetoast roles: the lawyers, young doctors, and miscarrying mothers, which I used to get because I’m a good crier. That was more boring to me and less challenging than something that’s just goofy—because most people don’t want to see even a semi-attractive woman screaming and sticking her tongue out. They want you to look good and keep your legs crossed. For me, jumping off buildings is more exciting. HEXED was the most fun I’ve ever had doing a movie, by far."
Despite early television work that includes guest shots and recurring roles on DALLAS, THE HIGHWAYMAN, and POLICE STORY, Christian now light-heartedly calls the science fiction genre "my forte." Her first step in this direction was her feature-film debut, a small but memorable part in the sleeper hit THE HIDDEN (1987). In this action-packed cult classic, starring Michael Nouri and Kyle McLachlan, Christian played the striptease dancer who is possessed the malevolent—and very male—alien moving from body to body throughout the story. In a truly amusing moment, Christian conveys the invading entity’s pleasure at finding itself in a body equipped with breasts.
In light of the impression she made, it is surprising to discover that Christian was not the first choice for the role. "They fired somebody else and called me in," she reveals. "They liked my reading, but then I had to come back for a second audition in a bikini, so I stuffed it really big—huge, huge, fake breaks—and I got the part. Now, everybody expects me to have them, and I don’t—but the character in THE HIDDEN does!
"It was kind of a prerequisite that you were built," she adds, "so I took it a little bit further—I went over-the-top, like always. I don’t know if that’s why I got it; I think it was maybe because I made them laugh. It’s silly being a stripper with a male alien inside your body. It was a weird kind of character, but people seem to remember that part. A lot of guys in jail write to me, a lot of people in video stores. I thought it was a good movie, and it got me a role in CLEAN AND SOBER, another one of those serious movies."
Christian next appeared in ARENA (1991) for Empire Productions, the now-defunct company headed by producer Charles Band, a notable purveyor of low-budget science fiction films that seldom if ever reach the big screen. The plot basically takes a great-white-hope boxing storyline (about a human fighter who hopes to take the championship title from the aliens who have long dominated the sport) and sets it on an orbiting space station. Ironically, the setting prefigured Christian’s later appearance in BABYLON 5; even more ironically, one of her co-stars was Armin Shimerman, who ended up on the competing space station of STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE.
Christian’s recollection of the production has more to do with the filming than the film itself. "I remember it was three months in Rome, and I had orange hair," she says of her science fiction coif. "I was the manager of this fighting team of alien reptiles. It was a strong woman role. It was shot at the old studio where Dino De Laurentiis used to shoot his movies. They get Eastern European extras and film crew, and it ends up costing them less money. It was a kick for me. If somebody dangles that in front of my nose, I say, ‘Sure, I’ll be in it! What do you want me to do?" You offer an actress three months in a beautiful city; what’s she going to say? ‘No, I don’t want to have orange hair’? I looked like an idiot, but I don’t care. I kind of enjoyed it. I like futuristic stuff; I tend to get a lot of it.
"In fact, just before BABYLON 5 came along, I did the third episode of a show called SPACE RANGER, which was also set in the future. It was from the people who did ROBIN HOOD—they were doing a new series. It was a STAR TREK kind of thing, but funnier. It’s fun—you get to wear those padded shoulder things: Fashions o’ the Future. There were a lot of people in latex makeup. I’m just glad I wasn’t one of them!"
Christian played one of her less outrageous roles opposite Robert Davi (the villain in LICENSE TO KILL) in MANIAC COP II (1990). This sequel went pretty much direct-to-video, despite being considerably more entertaining than its theatrical predecessor—a sort of paranoid liberal response to the tough-cop genre, about an undead officer who takes all the DIRTY HARRY clichés to outrageous and horrific extremes, administering justice by execution for minor infractions.
"I had the female lead, a police psychologist," says Christian. "Davi was the cop, private investigator, or whatever—I don’t remember—I slept through that film. Just kidding! We shot it in Hoboken in 16-degree weather. I don’t remember much! I do remember being handcuffed to this steering wheel and dragged down the street while thinking, ‘Don’t I have a union? Aren’t there stunt people to do this?’ It was not a pleasant experience, but the movie came out better than MANIAC COP, I have to say. Again, I played the straight woman, but I got chased by the maniac cop and survived him and his chainsaws."
Christian next essayed a trio of deranged femme fatale rolls. She went to Canada to appear opposite Tim Matheson (ANIMAL HOUSE) in MOON INDIGO, a pilot for a proposed television series that never sold. "I played this wealthy girl who falls in love with her psychiatrist and ends up murdering his wife. Another nice girl! This was a really sick woman: after murdering the wife in a bathtub, she puts on her nightgown and waits for the husband to come home. That’s really dramatic, not comedy! People need comedy in their lives, like HEXED!"
Christian is referring to her lead role in the tongue-in-cheek thriller, HEXED (1993). In this Columbia Pictures release, she played her biggest role in a feature film to date, a psychotic supermodel named Hexena—a role created specifically for her by writer-director Alan Spenser, making his feature film debut after creating the SLEDGEHAMMER television series. "Alan had seen THE HIDDEN and liked the fact that I played a woman taken over by an alien, so he thought it would be interesting to develop a character that I could play," says the actress. "We met socially at Anthony Perkins house on New Year’s Eve. He was watching me play charades with Anthony’s kids. I was doing lots of crazy faces and basically being my absurd self. So he thought of this idea for this crazed model.
"A couple of years later, when it was set up, he called me in to read," she continues. "He told me he wanted me, but of course the studio was going for a name. I said, ‘I have a name—there’s two words in it!’ I ended up getting it, in spite of the fact that Columbia wanted a name. Now, they love me," she laughs, referring to the studio’s change of heart after seeing her performance, "so I should say, ‘Fuck ‘em!’"
The film pokes fun at the clichés of the FATAL ATTRACTION genre, revolving around the model’s attempts to murder a blackmailer with damaging photos taken when the character was overweight in an insane asylum after setting a fire that killed thirty-two people on Super Bowl Sunday because her abusive ex-boyfriend refused to marry her.
"It’s a bit of a thriller; it’s not just a screwball comedy, a la AIRPLANE," the actress explains. "I think it’s a parody of all the woman that have been portrayed in HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE and BASIC INSTINCT, except this one’s gone a thousand times crazier. She’s also clumsy."
Of the finished film, she adds, "It’s a black comedy, so it’s not like she’s just psychotic; she’s a woman with a good sense of humor who kills a lot. She’s very eccentric and off-the-wall, and kind of sick, actually—a helluva broad. She’s very tough but also innocent and sexy on the other side. I got to employ a lot of voices. I even do Elvis, but you have to be very quick to pick it up. I say, ‘You found my G-spot, thankyou-very-much,’ and do this funny lip-curling thing, but most people don’t get it."
Her third fatale woman role was one-half of a mother-daughter murderess team, guest starring with Faye Dunaway in an episode of COLUMBO. "It’s kind of a red herring, because you think that we’re lesbian lovers until the end, and then you find out we’re mother and daughter," she explains. "I think it’s a little more risqué than most COLUMBOs, although," she admits with a laugh, "I’ve never actually seen one."
The transition back to television was a minor one for Christian, thanks to the perfectionism of the show’s star, Peter Falk. "Because it’s a higher quality TV movie, it’s not like doing an episodic show," she says. "It’s not exactly like a feature, obviously; you don’t get as many takes. But Peter Falk is a bit of a perfectionist, so it resembles feature filmmaking in that sense. When you have somebody really going for what they want, it’s not typical TV."
Next, Christian played a small role in THE CHASE, with Charlie Sheen and Kirsty Swanson (the feature film incarnation of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER). This was one of four low-budget films she made for writer-director Adam Rifkin, who has since gone on to a successful career writing scripts for big-budget DreamWorks productions like MOUSE HUNT and SMALL SOLDIERS. "He has a very succinct style of directing—like one word: Bigger! Louder! Faster. It lends itself to being cartoonish. I’m a little leery of about my performance," she admits, "because I was told to go huge, so I made an ass of myself. Which is fine—I’m not afraid of that. But I would have preferred to play it my own way. If you go that broad in comedy, it’s got to work, or it flops completely. In the AIRPLANE movies, it worked. We tried to make it work in HEXED, but it didn’t quite. It’s a very fine line."
After that, Christian returned to outer space, landing the role of Susan Ivanova on the BABYLON 5, even though she hadn’t been part of the original cast. Rather like the original STAR TREK, which underwent major changes between the pilot and the actual episodes, the BABYLON 5 series introduced new characters and new actors who had not appeared in the introductory two-hour telefilm.
"I watched the pilot," Christian recalled, "and I thought there were a lot of problems with it, some of them casting and some of them production values, but they really changed it. The character’s taken some nice turns. It was not a one-color tough girl. Before, it was lacking in focus. The girl was a good actress, but she wasn’t strong. Things seemed to be too flippant. It’s got to be real. It’s got to be people you care about; otherwise, why watch it? A lot of space shows get too involved in showing aliens and technical stuff, which is not what people want to see."
Christian credits the improvements to the increased involvement of producer J. Michael Straczynski. Still, her actual introduction to working on the show was less than auspicious. "My first episode, I got the leading man’s virus. I was in top form, but this guy was breathing in my face all day. Then he loses his voice, and two days later I’m gone. I had no voice, and I had to shoot three scenes. I forced it, and it was fine, because I was supposed to be upset! It sounded like I was hoarse and it was emotional, but it wasn’t emotional—it was a virus. Finally, they sent me home. This was bad timing, because it was my first episode, and they were wondering, ‘Is she going to make it through the season? Is she a wimp?’ But it wasn’t my fault—he was sick! I felt bad, but it worked out okay."
Although she enjoyed her stint aboard BABYLON 5, Christian was absent from Season Five, when the show went from syndication to cable. Christian had always been reluctant to commit to the five-year arc planned by Straczynski, and finally moved on when the show’s shooting schedule wouldn’t allow her to take other work. "They made me sign a five-year contract, which frightened the hell out of me. But I figured, ‘I’m young enough so that it’s not like I’m going to be old if we go that long. Besides, if it does go that long, I’ll be financially stable’—although what they’re paying nowadays is a joke! I was making more in 1983, in my first series. Because of that, you have to explore other avenues, like convention appearances, although that is frightening—people dressed up like you! It’s their life! It’s frightening but also amusing. And they’re harmless compared to my fans from THE HIDDEN—guys in jail! Space fans are a lot less frightening."
The first season got off to a slow start, and the series faced considerable competition from STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE, which had a similar setting (a self-sufficient station in deep space) and, obviously, a core base of loyal fans because of the TREK title. But over the course of the subsequent three seasons, BABYLON 5 developed its own following, thanks to increasingly confident writing from Straczynski and an intricately plotted story arc that strove to achieve a WAR AND PEACE-type complexity in a weekly television format. (Unlike THE X-FILES, the story actually seemed to be making definite progress toward a conclusion, not simply clouding the issue with more and more muddled details.)
However, after four years on the air, low ratings resulted in cancelation, forcing a switch to Turner Network Television if the show was to complete its fifth and final season. Christian, whose contract (like that of the rest of the cast) was up, opted not to sign a new contract for Season Five, which would have included a cut in her residual payments because of the changeover. Perhaps equally significant to the financial aspect was the creative one: her character of Susan Ivanova, although still a welcome presence on the space station, had a tendency to be short-changed dramatically. This was perhaps most conspicuous in a fourth-season six-episode story arc dealing with the Vorlon-Shadows war, in which both Captain John Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner) and Security Chief Michael Garibaldi (Jerry Doyle) were missing and presumed dead. What could have been an opportunity to show Ivanova stepping into the vacuum to assume command instead mostly shuffled her off to the sidelines, while focusing the spotlight on other characters grieving and/or fretting over the missing duo.
Christian's departure generated quite a lot of activity on the Internet, with the actress and Straczynski exchanging chat board messages each giving his/her side of the story. Without going into unnecessary detail, the producer felt Christian had departed with no room for negotiation, while the actress maintained that she had left the door open for a reasonable offer.
Looking back on the situation, Christian says, "I just feel it was rather unfortunate. I don't regret my decision to leave the show. I think the first four seasons are far superior to the fifth, even though I only saw bits and pieces. I just feel that the story was told; I thought the show told itself beautifully in four years. I'm not saying there werent wonderful moments in the fifth season; I'm sure there were--I just didn't get an opportunity to watch them. Joe's an enormously talented writer. I've always said that, and I will stand by that till the day I die. And I have no regrets being on the show. I just felt that, if I was worth anything, then they could have at least taken the consideration to open up a discussion with me, either telling me my character was going to do something in the fifth season or that they might entertain the idea of rewarding me a little bit. It was basically no raise, plus no residuals for that season, plus no storyline for Ivanova. It was interesting that, after I decided to leave, it came down to, "Oh, you would have been with Byron, and you would have done this...' Well, that's a bunch of bullshit! Ivanova in the fourth season sat there reading cue cards, doing the Voice of the Resistance. I said, 'Is my telepathic ability going to be explored?'--and all these other unanswered things. There was nothing in the works for it."
Although she stands by her decision, she does regret the way that decision became a public matter on the Internet. "I just don't think it was handled well at all," she says. "I think airing your dirty laundry in this day and age is so dangerous because of the medium of the computer age and so forth. It suddenly became everybody's business. Joe received death threats. I received hate mail. You know, people were taking it personally, when in essence I was simply saying, 'Look, the men make more than me. I've worked eighty-eight episodes. Nobody's giving me [anything to do.] In those eighty-eight episodes, I've had basically two episodes that were basically built around me, in the second season, whereas Talia had eight episodes built around her.' So Ivanova was always there, but quite frankly I was getting bored, you know? It's very easy to sit back, collect your paycheck, and be lazy, but I wanted to be stimulated, and at least I wanted to be compensated. I mean, the aliens made more than me--everybody! Just from a financial level, it was Bruce Boxleitner getting the majority of the money, and me getting the same that I did when I was first hired. If you're working hard and doing a good job, I think you should be compensated, and I think after four years and every single episode, and breaking my foot and working through that, and throwing out my back and working everyday through that, that I deserved to be compensated. Either with something like a special episode written about my character, or financially. There was no golden carrot being waved in front of my face, and here was this movie sitting there that I would be the lead of. I was going to make a good chunk of money, and they wouldn't let me off for it in the fifth season, so I said, 'I'm going to do the movie.' So I made my decision based on that. Even though that movie wasn't a great movie for my career, I am not regretting my decision. Not only that, I made it very clear that I would be happy to come back to do eight or ten episodes. They didn't need to hire Tracey Scoggins. That was a little 'f.u.' to me from Joe Straczynski, because I had told him I just wanted four episodes off, and he said he wouldn't give it to me in writing. So, I couldn't really do the film and do BABYLON 5, so I chose to do the film. I didn't break any contracts; I didn't break any laws. I had no contract. It was all up. I was the only one who didn't re-sign [for Season Five]. I would have been happy to do the eight episodes that Tracey did--absolutely happy. He wouldn't have gotten all these fans pissed off at him, and he wouldn't have created such a mess. He was just being an egotistical person."
Curiously, the kind of fan reaction that resulted has actually been around at least since the days of STAR TREK. The difference of course is that it used to be restricted mostly to fanzines and letter-writing campaigns, which might reach only a few hundred people. With the Internet, on the other hand, anyone can write something that is potentially accessible to millions of people. At least, the reaction that Christian received was mostly favorable. "It's funny, because, out of hundreds and thousands of letters and e-mails to my website, I actually received only five negative or slightly negative ones. Everyone was very supportive, and they were saying, 'What will it take to get you back?' I said, 'Well, you know, it's very easy. I said I'll come back; I said I'll do it. They just haven't called.' I put it on the Internet: ‘If they want me to put the uniform on, all they have to do is pick up the phone.' The fans knew that I was more than willing to go back and play Ivanova. I just didn't want to commit to twenty-two episodes."
After Christian's departure, her character did reappear on BABYLON 5, in a two hour telefilm and in a final episode, both filmed before Season Five. She explains, "We did the very last episode at the end of Season Four, which was kind of my farewell. That was episode 4:22, but they ended up showing it at the end of Season Five. That was the one set twenty years in the future. That, to me, was my goodbye to everything, because it was very emotional. The whole episode was Bruce dying and my career finally accumulating and taking over. It was very interesting, and that was, I think, the most heart-wrenching moment for me: looking at us all in the old-age makeups and going through these motions of saying goodbye. Doing the movie-of-the-week, where I had a big part and we were battling yet another enemy, with Shari Belafonte Harper--that was just like filming two episodes of the series to me. Because it was an isolated adventure, it was not a continuation of the Fourth Season; it could have taken place any time within the four years, pretty much. Come to think of it, were we back in our blue uniforms? No, so it had to take place during the third or fourth season. But it wasn't anything that was continuous with the story; it was just an isolated incident they decided to make a movie about. It would be as if you took any serial series or even a soap opera, and you took one incident you had never shown and turned it into a movie. Which is the same thing they would have done if we'd made a feature film: they probably would have made a film about the Psy-Corp War, which you never saw in BABYLON 5--there were just references to it."
Early in her BABYLON 5 career, Christian had experimented with appearing at fan convention, and found she enjoyed the experience enough to continue, even after her departure from the show. "I still do conventions for the fans, absolutely," she affirms. "It's a great opportunity for the fans to meet the actors, and they're always polite and rather excited to see you. I've accumulated a nice little, group of people who are very loyal and enthusiastic toward me, and I go when I have time to go. It's an interesting thing. I'm such a great admirer of human behavior that it's fascinating for me to go to these conventions. I really like getting down and dirty with the fans, having a couple drinks with them, dancing with them, hanging out with them, in essence talking to them a lot and hearing people's problems. I really get involved with the fans; I like to make sure they're okay. There's a lot of lost people everywhere in the world, and I think the science fiction genre brings together people from all walks of life, but they have a commonality, and that is...a lot of them are addicted to the computer and so forth. It's nice to extend your hand and bring them back into humanity and into more of a verbal relationship, face-to-face with human beings."
Christian seems to be implying that fans are looking for some kind of connection in their lives that is missing. "Yes, isn't everyone?" she says. "I think we all are. I think sports fanatics bind because they love to watch sports together, and drinkers drink in bars together, and gamblers gamble together, and women shop together because that's their bonding. We all do that."
The difference of course is that the bars, casinos, and stores are open everyday, whereas conventions come only at intervals. Perhaps this is what makes the experience much more intense for the participants and (seemingly) much more strange to misunderstanding observers. "Well, it becomes special; it becomes an event," says Christian of the fan gatherings. "There's also a sort of party atmosphere to all of that; I almost want to say 'a sophomoric, collegiate' kind of feeling--you know, a bunch of people partying and sleeping ten to a room and staying up all night drinking strange drinks that are blue colored. And they're dressing up in crazy costumes - it's like Halloween for the weekend. It's great!"
Those crazy costumes include many that resemble Christian's character from the show. "Quite often I see some Ivanovas out there, yeah. It's fun," she says. "You know, Peter Jurasik [who played Ambassador Londo Mollari] said--God bless the man, I adore him--'Yeah, it's a really rough job. Here we are complaining when we're working non-acting gigs, but we go to a convention where we're worshiped; we're adored; we're paid for our photos. People come up and tell us how much we've changed our lives or how much they admire us. Gosh, it's really a rough job.' That kind of puts everything in perspective, I think, because we are very fortunate to have ever worked as actors, especially in a genre like science fiction that has such an intensely loyal following."
The departure from BABYLON 5 turned out to be a fortuitous one for Christian's career, leading to several roles filmed around the world. "The year that I left BABYLON 5, I did quite a few projects. I did THICK AND THIN with Robert Townsend that just came out on video. It's now called MERCENARY 2 or something like that," she laughs. "They changed the name, but that was an interesting experience. He's a very funny nice man. Nick Turturro was in that. We shot in Mexico. And I did a film called RUNNING HOME for Allegro Pictures, which is a Montreal based company. I played the lead in that. It was a young artist who had a baby when she fifteen and gave it up for adoption. He's had a really crummy life, and he comes back to her; he finds her. He's this street kid who says 'Hey, I'm your kid' and completely disrupts her life. That was interesting."
Having spent plenty of time in the future, Christian took a step into the past with her next film project, co-starring with Michael York (Basil Exposition in the AUSTIN POWERS films) in THE GHOSTLY RENTAL. Despite a title that might to modern ears suggest a haunted videotape, the modestly-budgeted Roger Corman production was based on a story by Henry James, set in the days before television, let alone VCRs. "I played this very young character," says Christian. "I was cast as a 23 year-old sort of pained, insecure daughter in the turn of the century Boston, actually the early 1800s. That was nice. We shot on the coast of Ireland. So that was fantastic. I heard that it played in the Berlin Festival and won some sort of little award."
Originally intended for an art house release, the film was recut, retitled (to THE HAUNTING OF HELL HOUSE) and released directly to video. "I was cut out of a lot of the film," says Christian. "But the story wasn't anything to do with me. The story took a different turn. You know sometimes, in editing, the movie just changes. But that was great: I spent a few weeks in Ireland, met some great people, and I hope Michael and his wife will always be friends of mine. They're really wonderful people. His wife is a renowned photographer who shot me for the first time in my life naked actually." Christian laughs, adding, "She takes pictures of people nude at work. Isn't that funny? So she has pictures of plumbers and architects. She's quite a daring photographer. She asked me to take a picture on the Irish moors, reading my script naked. That's possibly what got me over my fear, and henceforth I ended up in Playboy. See how these things happen? That was also the year that I did the [episode of] HIGHLANDER in Paris. So it was a great year for travelling and nice roles."
"I played Katherine, who was older than a lot of immortals--very, very old," says Christian. "I got to do sword fighting; I would workout the fights with F. Braun, who's a wonderful sword master, and we shot in beautiful castles outside of Paris. It was a dream job. If anyone asks me what I would like to do television-wise, I'd love to do a series like that, because of the opportunity--in conjunction with all the athleticism--to use my facility for languages and to try to create accents and so forth. It was really fun. Also, I'm a history fanatic. I love studying English, Welsh, Scottish, German, French history. Also middle eastern. I love history. That would have been a dream job had I gotten that series. You know you would have had to trace her lineage all the way back and find out where she was in what year and develop accents for those times."
Alas, it was not to be, and the spin-off series that did result died off rather quickly. "I was actually one of three or four women that they considered to take over the spin-off series, and obviously they went with Grayson, who had already been on the show for years, so that was that," says Christian. "Unfortunately, the show didn't survive, but it would have been interesting had they followed, I think, any of them. I know they tried a French actress, and English actress and myself."
In the episode, Katherine, teamed with Nick, her mortal husband and bounty-hunting partner, pursues the evil immortal Bartholomew. An old adversary from 1270, Bartholomew was a faux religious zealot who used medieval Christianity and the Crusades as a cover for amassing an illegitimate fortune from the underclass. When confronted by Katherine, who’s angered by an unreasonable tithe placed upon her village, he leaves her for dead and razes the village, killing her friends and dozens of innocent peasants. Centuries later, Katherine finally tracks him to Paris, where he now launders funds through a charitable mission that fronts his operations. With Nick’s unsolicited help—she wishes to protect him from her immortal life—she confronts Bartholomew several times, finally invading his home, taking his head and ending their centuries-long vendetta.
Katherine follows a familiar character arc for the series (good immortal seeks vengeance on bad immortal for perpetrating injustice, while agonizing over the problems of a relationship with a mortal lover), and her history was not mapped out in detail, but there were hints that could have been developed in a series. Christian’s best moments lie in Katherine’s 1270 village, when her younger, less confident self struggles unsuccessfully to leave her immortal life behind in favor of becoming a healer. These all-too-brief scenes are engaging because they touch upon a nurturing role generally foreign to the warrior-borne Duncan (Adrian Paul) and the series’ typically aggressive female immortals. Presumably, future episodes could have further explored this emotional territory rather then re-treading old ground, perhaps giving Christian more dramatic meat to chew.
"I wasn't really informed that much, but there was references that she had posed for the original Kama Sutra, so she must have been around quite a while," Christian recalls. "Also one of my flashbacks was medieval, what I took to be northern England, but it was hard to develop an accent because it was sort of an Irish, Scottish, English accent because I wasn't really sure where she was from. So I kinda did once again a sort of mélange." (Christian had done a similar, non-specific European accent for her episode of COLUMBO.) "It was kind of a lilting kind of thing. You know I have relatives in Ireland, and my mother has a very thick German accent. So I certainly have a facility for doing them. It's just that I've never been told to do anything very specific; it's always these blends."
Fortunately, sparks of Christian’s trademark sarcasm flicker briefly in modern Katherine as she verbally spars with Nick, and the actress handles the requisite swordplay and physical demands comfortably. Which should be no surprise, considering one of her hobbies: "Well, I collected weapons, so I've always had an affection for swords and swordplay and that vein and sabers," she admits. "And I have a whole collection of swords from god knows. Actually, my father, I think, got me interested in them because he has quite an extensive collection. Of course in theater school and so forth your always doing stage combat. And I have a group of friends, Clan McDagger, that we do recreations, sort of parties. You have to know a lot about daggers. We go to the renaissance fairs, and we always dress accordingly, so I think all of my interests have always been based on things historical."
Her interest in swordplay must have made the experience of shooting the episode enjoyable, but one wonders how necessary it truly is for an actor to have genuine skill in order to play such a character on screen. "Well, I think you certainly have to know how to move, and I think people can tell when you can't sell a punch or a kick. You know, I've seen girls who look like girls who don't know how to fight," she laughs. "I've also seen people that are very flexible and very good at it but it looks too balletic--it isn't raw enough. You know they have all the moves down, but they don't have that raw anger or that 'I'm gonna kill you .' So I think if you have the passion and at least some flexibility and dexterity and the smarts, I think you could sell it; you don't have to be a master swordsman." On the other hand, those who are master swordsmen don't necessarily come across better on screen. "It's because they don't know how to sell the acting of blood wrenching anger or passion. They're just going through the motions, so to speak, so it looks aesthetically very good, but it doesn't move you. I think that's a difference."
Another of Christian's projects that involved historical settings was the little-seen time-travel film THE GUARDIAN, also known as LANCELOT: THE GUARDIAN OF TIME. "What a piece of shite!" the actress exclaims when the title is mentioned. "I saw a version of the cut--either a final version or a rough--and it was just horrible. Ugh! Really bad. It was sort of a cute 'Lancelot Meets BACK TO THE FUTURE' kind of idea: he comes to the current day to save the universe. But it was just not executed well at all. The special effects were unbelievably cheesy, and the acting left something to the imagination. It wasn't an unhappy experience, but when I looked at the film, I was just appalled at how bad it was. I apologize for bad-mouthing anything, because I know people put a lot of work into films, but it was just really bad. Maybe they've cleaned it up; may what I saw was just a rough cut. I hate to be ungenerous in spirit. It's just what I say was 'Oh my God--this is dreadful! Take that one off my resume.'
The experience was, in some way, a familiar one for the actress, who has found that it is not always possible to predict what the final results will be of any project. In this particular case, she says, "Well, I should have known, when the director changed his name--put a different name on the movie. I should have known then that, perhaps, not using his own name as director meant that maybe he didn't have the highest aspirations for it as well. But you never know; you just don't know. I mean, I've done five Adam Rifkin movies--and Adam Rifkin is one of the hottest young directors around--and I would say three of them are unwatchable. So who's to say? Who tests for taste? Some fans write in and tell me, 'Oh, I loved THE DARK BACKWARD' or 'I loved TALE OF TWO SISTERS.' And these movies to me are like--I don't even understand them, and I starred in them, you know? Adam is very talented. It's just sometimes you make movies that don't appeal to yourself."
Of course, no matter how bizarre a project is, there are at least some fans out there who will enjoy it ("Hey, there's a fan out there that even remembers me from DALLAS!" laughs Christian), and with cable and video, even obscure films retain some kind of afterlife. "Unfortunately true," she admits, then asks, "Why can't they keep showing CLEAN AND SOBER and all the good movies I did? No, they've got to show MANIAC COP II and what was that horrible, futuristic thing I did--ARENA? They keep reshowing those! I think you need to be quite buzzed and surrounded by other Looney-tunes [to enjoy those]. At least show THE HIDDEN if you're going to show a genre movie--that was a good one!" she laments.
Another "good one" that Christian wishes would be seen by more people is A GNOME NAMED GNORM, a whimsical fantasy that fell into the void that results when a finished film's distributor goes out of business. "That was Stan Winston's directorial debut," she recalls, referring to the noted makeup and effects artist (whose work was most recently seen in GALAXY QUEST). "A brilliant man, very sweet and very talented, obviously. He was great. I enjoyed doing that film immensely. It got caught in an awkward position, when Vestron was falling apart, and this one just got sucked into the black hole. It was a cute film. There was nothing wrong with it. Anthony Michael Hall and I were in it; Robert Z'dar [the MANIAC COP films] was in it, playing one of the bad guys. And there's a cute little gnome."
More recently, Christian has been involved in a number of gratifying, if smaller, projects, including a play and some personal appearances in Germany last year. "I did a film in February [1999] called TRUE RIGHTS," she recalls. "I played a middle-aged, fat Jewish housewife, and that was a lot of fun. At thirty-three, it was great to do that; now everyone's going to think I'm forty-five! That was really great, with the wig and the fat suit and the long nails. I fought very hard for that role, because the director didn't think I was at all the right type--which, technically, was right. But I impressed upon her that I'm an actress and a chameleon, and I'm really a character actress, trapped in a younger woman's body. I really am; I always thought I have been. So, that was very, very gratifying, satisfying work. I don't know when that will be released, but I think it will go to the festivals and maybe get domestic distribution, which would be great.
She continues, "Other than that, I did a scene in my girlfriend's movie--one of my best and oldest friends--with John Favro and Famke Janssen. That's what I did last year, pretty much, and I wrote a script, a kids script, for a little movie. I have a children’s book that I'm trying to get published right now, that I've sent out to many places. I think it has a good shot. The script I wrote as a spec script, because I was kind of bored between acting gigs, so I came up with a nice idea and wrote that. Then I did Playboy."
The layout in Playboy magazine brought the actress a kind of attention somewhat different from what she received as a result of her movie and television appearances. "It's interesting because I don't go out a whole lot, but the two times I've been out in the last couple of weeks--one was at a restaurant, and the waiter said, 'Hey, I really liked your spread!' It's interesting to hear that out of somebody's mouth. Then last night, I went to a very Hollywood sort of party--and I never go to these things. Now I know why: because they're dreadful. Three thousand people crammed into a room, standing fifty feet deep at the bars, clamoring, and everybody's staring at everybody else. There were adult movie stars; Hugh Hefner was there. It was weird, so I stayed about twenty minutes, and as I was walking out the door, this Scottish guy wearing plaid pants and earrings all over his head, stopped me and said [adopting Scottish accent], "You were fucking great in Playboy. Just fucking great! Just gorgeous!" I thought, 'God, I'm getting out of here. This is so not me." I convinced my friends that I was with to come back to my house, and I'd cook them a late dinner. That worked: food was the magic key to getting me out of there! "I'll cook anything--just take me out of here!'"
If anything, the experience convinced the actress t continue to avoid the Hollywood scene. "I think I'm just going to stay with my books for awhile," she says. "I'm a book-aholic. I read about two books a week. I think reading--because I read mostly history, very little fiction--for me is the college education that I never got. I mean, I graduated high school early, and immediately went to work. I got my first TV series when I was eighteen. So, for me, I read things that I'm interested in, so that I become a more well-rounded person and so that I'm able to carry on conversations about a variety of things. In fact, I think I probably have a much better education than the average college educated, university-graduated person, because I'm interested in what I'm reading; therefore, I retain more."
But her scholarly pursuits won't prevent you from seeing and hearing more of Claudia Christian in the near future. She has a few projects in the works, including a radio play/audio book, which will also feature the voice of one of her BABYLON 5 co-stars, Patricia Tallman; additionally, an online science fiction movie, co-written by another BABYLON 5 alumnus, Billy Mummy, is in development. "And I have a Disney film coming out in 2001: ATLANTIS, their new animated feature, with Michael J. Fox and James Garner, and I'm the female lead," she reveals. "It's a lot of fun. I've been working on it for two years, supplying my voice, and it will now take another year/year and a half for the animation to be done. But I'm going to be in a Disney film! That, to me, is amazing. It's exciting; it's neat. I'm going to be a character for kids!"
Matthew F. Saunders contributed to the HIGHLANDER portion of this article.
Originally appeared at fandom.com:
http://www.fandom.com/Master_Site/Editorial.asp?action=page&obj_id=23580
