"Okay, the first syllable of my last name rhymes with 'push'," explains Eliza Dushku, " and the second syllable is pronounced 'koo' with a long 'ooo' sound. It's amazing what people will come up with when they see that name, which, by the way, is Albanian-Danish. There is a joke in our family that the Dushku's and the Belushi's are the only Albanians in show business. Who knows? That might be true."

Dushku, with her tempestuous glow and supple, athletic body, has stoked Faith - BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER'S nemesis - into a formidable, adolescent femme fatale.

"I'm only 18," she shrugs, "but I generally play older. I was supposed to be a high school student in TRUE LIES [1994], but I was 12 at that time. And in BYE BYE LOVE ['95] I was about 13. I portrayed Emma, an intolerable brat in that one, but in the end it was revealed just exactly why she was that way. You see, her parents were divorced and she was afraid that things would never be the same between her father [Paul Reiser], whom she adored, and herself so she was on the defensive all the time.

"There are some similarities between Emma and Faith. Faith comes from unknown origins - either her parents are dead or maybe they just abandoned her, it's not to clear - so she wasn't raise with anyone keeping her in check; hence, she rebels against her solitude by saying and doing anything that just pops into her mind. She is a hellion, a real adrenaline junkie and someone who no guy in his right mind would ever want to date. But, like Emma, Faith is so, so vulnerable. She's scared to be alone, she has moments of great self-doubt and she really has no friends at all.

"In the beginning, when Faith first came in, she tried really hard to get into the loop and make friends, but no one was quite on her same page. The second she got the slightest feeling of denial, she reacted so strongly and then started plotting against people. For instance, Faith started off as a sidekick of Buffy's, since the two of them were both slayers. But once Faith accidentally killed a man, it started a chain of events that turned her into Buffy's enemy. Faith was forced to take solace with the only person who seemed to want to have her near him, and that was Mayor Wilkins [Harry Groener], a demon.

"Wilkins is the only one who really accepts Faith - and even when she screws up, he sort of enjoys that! Matter of fact, he almost encourages her. The whole relationship is so twisted but he is her only true friend, the only real person she has. It's sad. There are a few episodes where Faith opens up to Wilkins, starts telling him stories about her past, her family and show she became one screwed-up kid. So it is sand, you feel bad for her because she is so extreme and she hurts other people.

"When Faith accidentally killed Finch, the Mayor's assistant, there was a trace of the firghtened little girl lurking inside her. There was a scene, which most people have forgotten, after Faith runs off from the site of the killing. She returns to it, leans down like it's a reality check for her: at that point, she genuinely feels remorse but, all of a sudden, people are attacking her and she goes on the defensive and basically goes into complete denial. 'I don't care.' She rationalizes, 'Ok, you know what? Maybe I'm just a bad person, that's what it is. And if you don't like it, well then, screw you!'. Then she keeps getting worse and worse. There was one episode, 'Consequences,' where Xander goes to visit Faith to talk her into giving herself up. Well, she throws him on the bed and - unlike another episode, 'The Zeppo,' where she and Xander make passionate love - Faith nearly strangles the poor guy to death.

"Those scenes were hard for me, especially the one in 'Consequences,' where Faith shows her homicidal site. I've had people come up to me and tell me that they have not seen such a goose-bumpy scene in a long, long time. I even got a bit unnerved doing it. The love-making scene was a little easier to take for me, but not a great deal. It was a pretty risqué bit, one that gave new meaning to phrase 'jump on your bones' because that's literally what Faith did to poor Xander. Also, Nicky [Brendan, who plays Xander] is a good ten years older and a lot bigger than I am, and in that scene I had to be the total aggressor. I was raised as a Mormon, and that scene so shocked my family that my grandmother wouldn't talk to me for two weeks! Finally, she did break her silence and you know what she said" She said 'I can't believe you're such a disgusting character.'

"I can't really say I blame my grandmother for feeling that way. I look at my family life. I was raised by my three older brothers and my mother. When someone did something bad, there was always someone to act as a disciplinarian. There are times in everybody's life when you screw up, and if something is handled the wrong way - or isn't handled at all - it can totally mess you up.

"To this day, I am extremely thankful for my family and what they've done, but I remember times ...well, this business is so screwy and I've been in it since I was ten years old, and part of me can relate to being a wild child like Faith. I did a film in Australia when I was 14 years old, and I had to have a hired guardian. I thought, 'Come on now, how wild can you be at 14? But I didn't really have someone there to help me out and lead me in the right direction, so I turned into a little bit of a lout girl. I can understand Faith getting that adrenaline high off of being the bad girl, and the attention that comes from it.

"That could be the reason I find Faith so easy to play even though, even in my wildest moments, I could never be as wild as she is. The ease in characterization helped me so much because at the beginning, when Faith first comes onto the scene ['Faith, Hope, & Trick' episode, 10/13/98], no one was really happy with how the character was coming off. Initially, I was just going to be in a couple of episodes - a short-lived bit as something of an action freak, adding a little excitement and a little bit of the bad side... and basically, bringing some darkness into Sunnydale, where everyone seems happy and everyone's got these great morals...

"The, because she was so different from Buffy and her cronies, Joss Whedon decided to make Faith a third season regular. But there were a few changes that had to be made. Faith's character was pretty undefined. Was she supposed to be a villain? A hero? Was she sympathetic? Apathetic? No one really know. Joss started getting to know me, and he wrote in what he thought would work for me. Some parts of Faith were like me, and some parts where unlike me. It was Joss, the other creators and their hard work that made Faith who she was. I just followed along, read my lines, and, eventually, the full 'I don't really like you, but you inspire my pity' character of Faith emerged.

"Faith is a teenager just as I am and, like me, she is trying to find herself. In many ways, she's still growing up. The others on the show - people like Sarah [Michelle Gellar], Nicky [Brendan], and Alyson [Hannigan] - are all older, in their twenties and early thirties, and they bring more of their lives into their characters because they have seen sides of life that I haven't seen. I have to draw on my own youthful experiences in order to bring the character of Faith to reality.

"What is beautiful is that all of the other cast members are forever aware that I am so young, and they're all really protective of me in a way. I came out here from Boston, all by myself, to do BUFFY and before that I usually had some family member close at hand to depend on. Everyone on BUFFY was really cool about saying, 'If you ever need anything and, if you ever need to talk or whatever, we are here.' They were all really supportive of how young I was. No one crossed over the line and made me feel uncomfortable.

"Someone who helped me tremendously was Harry Groener, the man who plays Mayor Wilkins. He is so cool. He's so much fun. He makes me totally relax. He is so great at improvisation. Watching him get these monologues of this wacky guy he's playing... his character is such a trip, and Harry creates a lot of the stuff he does. He really took this character and went all the way with it. You can almost hear his brain ticking. You go in for rehearsal and he has his script, but no one knows what he's going to do; however, once he figures it out or tries a couple of things - he's not scared to try anything - it's so amazing. It can be intimidating tin a sense, but Harry always tries what his gut instinct is, and that is refreshing. He is one smart guy and he's also such a sweetheart.

"It's always nice when actors in real life are down-to-earth. I'm one of the most down to earth people there is. But so is Harry, and it's really nice to see people like that in the business because so much of the business is so crazy. There's a lot of warped people in this industry.

"In all truth, as much as I like doing BUFFY, I would like to return to film work. Staying with the show is not what I want to do. I think that I would like to test the waters in other places a little more. There are a lot of different scripts right now that I'm seeing. There's some good stuff out there, and there's obviously some really crappy stuff. My mother was just out visiting - she's a professor of government at a college in Boston - and she's been a huge part in helping me with my career, like in choosing what I should or should not do. The same with my manager. So we're looking at different things, different parts. But no more teenagers. I usually get to play older anyway, so I figure, why not look for older parts?"

Reprinted from Femme Fatales - By Mitch Persons - June 30, 2000