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Everybody is kung-fu fighting! Or at least, dusky Eliza Dushku seems to be doing so in most of her roles. Best known as the feral Faith on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she's also kicked up her heels as rough-and-tumble cheerleader Missy in Bring It On. Next up, she dons a catsuit as Sissy, a bad-ass jewel thief in director Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (opening Friday).
Unlike so many of today's starlets, Dushku has eschewed boring, bimbo girlfriend parts in lieu of playing violent femme fatales. Why is she such a devotee of the Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! school of acting?
"I think it's my coloring," she smirks to TV Guide Online. "I think it's the dark hair. You don't see a lot of blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls playing the tough, edgy character roles. And the fact that I grew up in Boston with three older brothers and I have this deep, smoky voice — and I've always been an outspoken junior toughie.
"I always kind of knew how to hold my own playing touch football with my brothers," she adds, grinning. "I guess these little girls who grew up in Hollywood — not to stereotype these girls — but they don't have that."
Toward the end of Jay and Silent Bob, she and co-star Shannon Elizabeth indulge drooling male moviegoers with a bit by catfighting Angel-style. Of course, they didn't do all that scrapping without some backup. "Are we actually in the movie?" jokes Dushku. "[This scene] was very Buffy-ish kind of fighting where the two stunt doubles do the main master shot. That was totally the amazing, talented women who came in and they were like, 'Oh, so I just bounced off the wall and cracked my skull, but sure, I'll do it again!' They're such troupers." — Daniel R. Coleridge
From TV Guide Online - August 20th, 2001