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:: FOR A FEW DARLAS MORE ::

First she was human. Then she got turned into a vampire. Then she was human again. And now she's back biting necks. Can't Julie Benz make up her mind?

* * * * * * * *

"I love Darla," Julie Benz announces as we sit over lunch in a Sunset Boulevard restaurant. "I've been in love with her since the first day. I think she's just an amazing character. She's spanned 400 years. She's lived through everything - life, death, brought back to life and then death again! I think she truly is one of the most amazing characters on TV. She definitely spices things up a little."

Julie Benz has no problems being instantly identifiable as Angel's former lover. Darla has plagued the beleaguered vampire throughout the second year of his own TV series, firstly as a human returned to life by Wolfram & Hart, and then as a vampire, occasionally in league with the potty Drusilla. Benz would even jump at the opportunity of spinning off into her own series, if Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt decided that that would be the road to take. "I would definitely do it," she laughs. "I've been playing her on and off for about five years, so I'm already tied to her!"

She's thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to sprout Darla's fangs once more, although she admits that she did put up a bit of resistance when the latest twist in Darla's saga was revealed to her. "When they said that they were going to make me a vampire once more, I was going, 'No! Don't do it! I want to play human!' But as soon as we started, it was the most perfect thing to do. Their writing fits like a well-worn pair of jeans. But I think it's always fun playing evil. It's definitely more challenging as an actor."

Benz has learned never to believe anything involved with the Buffy and Angel universe until it's on the printed page. "They don't tell you a damn thing," she complains jokingly. "Not a damn thing! I don't think that they know half the time. On the first episode back this year, I bumped into Joss, and he was like, 'We're thinking of making you human. We're bouncing around the idea.' So they didn't even know then. The scripts are pretty much written one week in advance of shooting. I think they like to keep it exciting, and I think they don't have any big plotline or storyline or Big Thing in mind. They're flexible and the show changes. Just when you think you know what they're doing, they pull the rug from underneath you. The same with becoming a vampire: there were rumours about it, and they were tossing the idea around for a couple of weeks. There was nothing definite. You never know what's going to come out of one of the script meetings!"

This unpredictability has been a hallmark of Mutant Enemy's work right from the start. "I did the pilot presentation for Buffy," Benz recalls. "Darla didn't even have a name. She was just 'Vampire Girl', and she died in that. When we did the proper pilot, I was the only vampire they brought from the presentation, and I was supposed to die in that. But I didn't. The day we were going to shoot my death scene, they told me they weren't going to kill me. So I was going to die next episode - and I didn't. Finally, they decided to kill me!"

Benz has been involved in a lot of physical stuntwork since Darla's rebirth on Angel, battling David Boreanaz, and finding herself set on fire. Or, at least, that's what it looks like. "I have the most amazing stunt double," she reveals. "I let her do as much of that stuff as she wants. Lisa really is amazing. We look exactly alike, and she's the best stunt double in the entire world. She makes me look awesome! I'm no fool - I try and do my best to match her moves as much as possible with some of the fighting, but she loves doing it."

When Darla and Drusilla team up and try to create a vampire army, their plans are foiled by Angel, who deliberately tries to immolate his two enemies. Benz freely admits that her first thought on seeing the script describing Darla and Drusilla going up in flames was, "I'm not doing this, Lisa's doing this! I ain't going anywhere near any fire!" While she appreciated that it was a good way to move Angel's story forward, a little voice inside her head cautioned that, "I wanted to make sure I live afterwards. That's always a concern when the producers say, 'Oh, we're going to set you on fire this week.' Your reaction has to be, 'Do I die? Do I need to be looking for another job?'"

As fans found out, both Drusilla and Darla survived, although they were weakened by the experience. Darla turned once more to renegade lawyer Lindsey McDonald, who has been alternately using and protecting her since her resurrection. "I think Darla and Lindsey ultimately are soulmates," Benz theorises. "They're both very damaged people. They have a lot of baggage. They have a lot of pain. I believe that ultimately they belong together - if only they could get past that little thing called Angel!  Don't know what's in Darla's future," she adds, "but I do believe that even though she is using Lindsey as much as possible, there is a definite connection and attraction there. If she could allow herself to actually feel something for him, she would, but she's obsessed with Angel."

Nothing that has happened between the two vampires in the second year has changed Benz's take on their relationship. "I don't think you're ever able to really let go of you first true love," she states. "Particularly one that you were with for 150 years! I don't think that Darla will ever be able to let Angel go. He was her true love. She obviously wasn't his. I don't think that she can ever fully recover from him - she would need lots of therapy and I don't think she'd be willing to go."

After all, with a vampire, you can hardly get them to look in the mirror and ask them if they like what they see... "She wouldn't be able to see anything," Benz agrees.

Which of course begs the question, how do female vampires put on their make-up? "I've always wondered that too," Benz laughs. "How does she know how she looks in her clothes? You just have to accept that's part of the series' world."

If she were given the opportunity, would Julie herself choose to become immortal? "Oh God, that's a really hard question! I think with anything there's a price to pay. On one hand, I would take it, because I really don't want to die. I think we all fear our own mortality. But on the other hand, I don't think I could live forever and see the people I love and care for pass on. So I don't know - I probably wouldn't do it. I would probably have somebody else do it, and see how much they liked it... then I would try and get in at the tail end!"

Benz also enjoys the very strong reactions that Darla generates in fans of Buffy and Angel. "Some people love her, some people hate her. The fans that hate her are die-hard 'Buffy and Angel should be together forever' types. I sometimes think they should look again at the role she plays in the whole thing. Angel would not be the man he is today if it wasn't for Darla. Good or bad, he wouldn't be the person that he is if it wasn't for her. She made him a vampire. She brought him the gypsy girl. He had to kill her to save Buffy. It's funny because there are so many fans who absolutely hate Darla and see her as a threat... it's only a TV show! That's all it is: it's just a TV show."

She recognises that the fans of the show use it as a creative outlet. "It's fun, it's fantasy," she says. "Luckily for me, my creative outlet is actually to dress up as a vampire. I think it's great that people can embrace the whole fantasy life and go about having fun with it. It amazes me. At the Nocturnal convention in London last summer, there were people who had the actual prosthetic on. I would only put that if they're paying me money - it's not a fun process! And these people were voluntarily putting it on themselves!"

Benz is also very happy with the creative flow between her as an actor, and the writers and producers on the show. "I think Darla's a collaborative effort, and the writing is so good that by the time we get the script, there's never anything that Darla wouldn't say. I think that these characters are so alive to the writers that by the time the scripts make it to us, it's all there."

It's a marked difference from some shows where the actors rewrite the script on the set and I know that they can make sure that their characters aren't pushed in the 'wrong' direction. "I have 150% confidence when I show up on the set that the writing is going to be amazing," Benz gushes. "But I also think that the writers see parts of things that I bring to Darla that they take as inspiration to create the next storyline. I think it's a mutual give and take. I never argue a story point with them because they know what they're doing. I'm not a writer."

It means that there have been no occasions when the producers have asked something of Benz that she's not prepared to do. Benz recently revealed to the American FHM Magazine that she turned down a recall for Stanley Kubrick's final film, Eyes Wide Shut. If she's given a pay cheque to take off her clothes, that's one thing, she pointed out, but if she had to take off her shirt to get a job, then "that's when I become a whore." Although she admits being embarrassed by some of the work she did early in her career, she's now very careful about what she becomes involved with. "I don't go into any project blind. I have my people check everything out, and make sure that they're happy, so I know all the givens that are going to happen."

Playing such a well written role as Darla has occasionally spoiled Benz when she's looked at other projects. "There is a level of having such a closeness to the character as I have to Darla that you don't get when you read through other projects. I do believe that she now possesses me somehow! But I've got to work with really great writers. Sometimes what's on the written page is not what ends up on screen. Of course, sometimes you get bad stuff, but I believe that part of the challenge of being an actor is that you can make bad stuff good."

One of the other major advantages of being an actor is that she can use her celebrity status to benefit charities. Before lunch, we joined her in Sunset Boulevard dress designer Nicole Miller's boutique as she tried on different outfits for an event for the World AIDS Foundation. "Pretty much the only thing you can get out of me these days is charity," Benz claims. "I will do all I can to go out for charity events, because you're giving back. I really believe in giving back to the world. In this business we have the opportunity to put our face to a charity and bring it out to the public."

She also recently supported an event at Northwestern University in aid of the Elizabeth Glaser Paediatric AIDS Foundation, set up by Starsky & Hutch star Paul Michael Glaser in memory of his wife and children who died from HIV infected blood transfusions. "I spent a weekend up there. They did a dance marathon to raise money - they danced for 30 hours. I was there the whole time - I took a little nap, but the kids were awake the whole time. If all it takes is for me to show up there and be supportive, it's the icing on the cake of the business that we're in.

"I pretty much support all charities. I think there's good heart behind them. There are so many causes out there that we don't even know about. It's so important, especially for young people to get them involved. There's so many young people who just sit at home after school and play video games, and they need to be getting out there and getting involved with charity work in their community. I'm a great supporter of that."

She has no regrets about not winning the role of Buffy all those years ago, and doesn't waste time wondering how the show would have gone if she had been the Slayer rather than the Slayee. "That would be silly," she says. "Everybody makes a big deal out of that. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything about it. People completely distort things, take them out of context, and makes them so much bigger than they are. When I auditioned for Buffy, it was just one of 1,000 auditions that I had that pilot season. I was just one of a thousand girls they saw for it. It really wasn't that big a deal."

Julie loves acting, whether it's as Darla, Kathleen Topolsky on Roswell, or in her new movie, The Brothers. "I can't really do anything else," she says self-deprecatingly. "I'm not really qualified. I have no special skills or abilities. I can cry on cue. I can make people laugh. That's about it. I'm very lucky that I love this business. I'm very lucky to be working at what I love to do. Growing up, every week I wanted to be something different. One week I wanted to be the President of the United States. The next week I was going to be a Senator. The next a doctor, the next a teacher. It was always changing, so what better way to play every profession in the world than through acting? I've always had faith in myself. I knew if I worked hard - and I work hard at what I do - then I would be successful."

In The Brothers, which has just opened in the US, Julie plays Jesse Caldwell, the white girlfriend of an African-American man. "It's the story of four African-American men coming of age," she explains. "Bill Bellamy's character decides to go out with a white woman, because he thinks white women will be different, and it turns out that women are generally the same. He's the one with the problem! It's a fun movie: I'm so proud of it, and I think it's one of the best things I've done. The director did an awesome job capturing what it's like to be in your 30s, and struggling with relationships."

So what makes her happiest? "What gives me the biggest thrills?" she giggles. "I feel I'm happiest when I'm working in a job that I love. Like I've said before, I'm madly in love with Darla as a character - she's the most amazing character that I've ever gotten to play. I love working with David. The crew is like a family to me. It's been a really great year for me, and that's what makes me the happiest, having work that you're proud of to go and do every day." SFX

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