| ALMOST a year to the day since she left, actor Yvonne Strahovski has returned home to Sydney with a new surname and a thriving career.
She left Australia to try her luck in the US TV pilot season. During her second day in Los Angeles, the former Yvonne Strzechowski auditioned for the action comedy series Chuck.
"I bought a return ticket because I thought I'd only be gone for two months for pilot season," Strahovski laughed. "Who knew I was going to get a job in two days?"
Some job. Strahovski, 27, stars as an energetic spy already described as a "latter-day Emma Peel" in one of the few 2007 US TV series now heading into a second season after the resolution of the Writers Guild of America strike.
Strahovski, who adopted the more phonetic stage name while in the US, has become one of the new breed of strong female characters on US television after a few small parts in Australian films and TV shows including Sea Patrol and Headland.
"I'm more well-known in the USA than I am here," she said.
The athletic Strahovski said she won her big break because she looked like she could hold a gun - a handy talent when US networks are giving women a taste of the action in series such as Bionic Woman and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. "The show's creator, Josh Schwartz, told me the holding the gun thing was one of the factors, but he said he needed someone who could be really sweet and then change and be really lethal and kick arse," Strahovski said.
Stronger roles for physically capable women were long overdue, she added.
"I guess it also ties into the male fantasy of it as well," she said. "I'm sure that has a huge influence.
"The great thing about the role is I do get to play the girlfriend and I do get to play the kick-arse chick and I get to play a whole bunch of different themes because of who I am in the show, an undercover CIA agent who works at a hot dog place."
Chuck is expected to premiere on the Nine Network in April.
Strahovski flies back to Los Angeles as discussions for film roles gain pace now that the writers' strike is over.
Another young actor looks to be lost to the Australian film and television industries. Not that they particularly appreciated the University of Western Sydney's Theatre Nepean graduate.
"I feel like I'm so welcomed over there, incredibly welcomed, and the levels of enthusiasm are so great," she said.
"I feel really well looked after in that industry and they've offered me so much. I mean, this series and these films, what more could an actor want?" |