To ease the transition from oblivious high school student to guardian of humanity,having a close circle of friends for moral support seems to be working for Buffy Summers, but she's the exception to the rule. For most slayers, life is lonely...and short.

Maybe the new slayer in town, Faith, will prove to be the second exception to the rule,though she's off to a really rough start. Activated when Kendra the Vampire Slayer was killed, Faith the Vampire Slayer arrives in Sunnydale from Boston with no friends, no place to stay, no job... and no Watcher.

"Her job is kicking vampire butt," clarifies Eliza Dushku, the spirited actress taking on the responsibilities of slayer number two. "I think that's the difference between her and Buffy - their fighting mechanisms are different. Faith kinda loses her mind when she's fighting. Buffy will get in there and throw the vampires around, [whereas] Faith has a tendency to just keep beating and punching and freaking out. She gives it her all; she doesn't make a sport out of it. She just totally beats the bag out of these vampires, and then when they're lifeless she'll just maybe drop the stake in."

Whoa. She may be new at this Slayer gig, but Faith's chances for success seem pretty good.

"Faith doesn't mess around," Dushku says with a laugh. "She's definitely a tough girl. She does her own thing, and she's really confident in a lot of senses. She dresses in her own style of dress, she talks her own talk, walks her own walk. She has some insecurities... Faith's a complicated little chick."

Dushku's a little complicated herself. At 17 years old,she's already had to make some pretty major decisions before the ink on her high school diploma has had a chance to dry. Her first was opting to hold off on starting college (she's been accepted to both Boston and George Washington Universities) to join the Buffy cast. Since minors aren't allowed to work past a certain time of day, Buffy's heavy night shooting schedule required that she also get legally emancipated from her parents, both college professors who have left for Romania to write a book.

"My mother and I didn't really think about how incredible it was until after the judge signed the order," Dushku says. "Then we were in the courthouse freaking out, like 'Wow - you're gonna be on TV!' Flipping and spazzing and so ecstatic and so frightened at the same time."

If ever there was an actress suited to play a vampire slayer, Dushku is it. From a professional standpoint, she's already taken on terrorists alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1993's True Lies. Personally, she grew up fighting with her three older brothers. Besides, her favorite color is black.

"I have a little bit of that fighting energy and mentality in me," Dushku confesses. "When you have three older brothers, you've got to know how to fend for yourself sometimes. You have to be strong if you're a small woman - I think I'm really tough, but you've got to think it if you're going to appear to be."

Possibly the toughest thing any teenager can go through - and that includes fighting demons - is starting at a new school, and while she was technically no longer a student, those old feelings flooded back to her during her first day on the Sunnydale set.

"It really felt like the first day of high school coming in here," she says. "Everything's all established and everyone knows each other, and I felt like this freshmen walking into this school of seniors I didn't know - even up to where to sit at lunch. I walked into the dining area with this whole tray of food, and I'me like,' Oh, shoot - who am I going to sit with?'"

Apparently slayers stick together on camera and off, however,because she wound up finding a spot eating with Sarah Michelle Gellar.

"Sarah's been really sweet about things. Now I feel so comfortable on the set, between the crew and a cast of the most awesome heads on their shoulders - they're all just the best."

Dushku's role on Buffy marks a return to acting for Dushku, who took the last two years off to concentrate on her grades and take a crack at a normal high school life.

"You only have one senior prom, one senior banquet, one senior prank night. You have to do that," she says. "My goal was to come back for my junior year and make honor roll, because I hadn't been doing to good with the tutors on different movies my freshman and sophomore years. I wanted to do really well, and I did, which was really impressive. I didn't know I had it in me, nor did my family. I'm seen more as a little social bug than a study bug. But I totally got into it and made high honors. It was pretty awesome, and I got motivated by that."

As a young actress, it wasn't just grades that gave Dushku trouble in those early years. Classmates also used to give her a hard time when she'd miss school to make movies. But other kids weren't the only ones who fell into the habit of blaming any school-related problems on her budding film acting career.

"It was kinda strange, because it wasn't just the students that were badgering me. I was getting badgered by teachers, too. They'd be like, 'You don't have your homework in? What, you don't think you have to do your homework because you're a movie star?' I figured,why can't I just say my dog ate it like everyone else in the room?"

That all came to an end, however, when she got some good advice from one of her co-stars. No, Schwarsenegger didn't offer to go into her school and blow anybody up, and Robert DeNiro didn't teach her the old, "You talkin' to me?" routine. It was an up-and-coming young talent who worked with her in the 1992 film This Boy's Life, Leonardo DiCaprio.

"I remember when we first started working together, he was really intimidating. Someone would pick on him and he'd bust out, calling you every swear word in the book. I got so scared, I'd start crying. I hated him; I thought he was so mean and terrible," she recalls with a laugh. "Obviously it was all a front, to make it so that people wouldn't mess with him. After a while, we started getting along and he started giving me pointers on how I could deal with kids in my high school."

Dushku credits DiCaprio with offering some choice pointers on how to deal with loudmouth bullies at school. He must have faced these problems before he became every young girls' favorite locker pin-up. Or perhaps being a teen heartthrob teaches you a bit about how to deal with any negative naysayers.

"Like a little nerd, I went back and said them, and they really worked," Dushku says. "I was forever grateful to him. Once that happened, I started building a whole new confidence in myself. Once I could defend against the enemies, I could pick out the friends. I'm indebted to Leo for teaching me some comebacks and ways to stick up for myself."

Yeah, but what does he know about fighting vampires? Confidence is only one aspect of smasking bloodsuckers around. Remeber, no slayer has survived yet, besides Buffy - and she's been dead once.

"Do I worry about getting killed?" Dushku asks. "That's been the last fear in my head. Joss will joke with me about how I should be careful because there's a drive-by coming up. The way I see it, if you're going to joke with me about it, then it can't be too serious."

I guess not. Sometimes you just have to keep the Faith.

Reprinted from The Official Buffy the Vampire Slayer Magazine - Winter 1998