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For a gallery of images,
visit sharpformen.com.
20 Sharp September 2008 SHARPFORMEN.COM
Hollywood, the brighter side of threesomes, stepping
through the looking glass and a kung fu grip.
Rachelle Lefevre isn’t goofball, she’s just
kiddish. But don’t mistake her child-
like quality for doe-eyed innocence. No,
definitely not that. What Lefevre has is
cheeky bravado, the kind of brassy rapscal-
lion’s independence that comes of growing
up in a very particular, very unique way—
all by her lonesome.
“Do you think Lewis Carroll was an
only child?” she asks. “I have to say, the
things he came up with, hanging out in
your room and entering another world
through a mirror, it’s classic only child
stuff. I was always going off somewhere,
making up games for myself and playing
all the characters. To an only child that
makes sense, to others it sounds crazy.”
Crazy or not, the Montreal native
with the oh-so-memorable crimson curls
has taken that rarefied imagination and
translated it into a slew of multi-textured
twists on iconic roles. She’s given us her
tomboy, her girl next door, her whip-smart
policewoman, her one-night-stand-to-
remember and her…
“… hooker with the heart of gold?” she
says with a lusty laugh.
You’d be forgiven for thinking this
sounds like the stacked layers in a core
sample of the male sexual psyche. Lefevre
is more than willing to splash around in
that type of subtext, something she does
with relish on the new CBS show Swing-
town. The series takes place in 1976 Amer-
ica, at the historical tipping point between
shifting notions of behaviour—moral,
social, political, and, above all, sexual. Into
this climate of suburban contentment and
emotionally secure wife-swappers, her
turn as the budding stock trader Melinda
serves as the show’s most persistent
honey trap.
“The great thing about the show is that
it doesn’t treat the material in a salacious
or melodramatic way. Sure, there are
threesomes, drugs and other things that
push the envelope but they’re there to
tell the story of that period, a time when
all of the established values were being
re-evaluated. It’s not simple. Some of
these characters are continuing the sexual
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revolution, actively finding new frontiers,
and some of them have happily rejected
it, going back to some outmoded Happy
Homemaker version of reality. And you
know people watching it today will be
confronted with those questions as well.”
Swingtown isn’t the only thing she’s
been up to. She shot a pilot for the US
version of the celebrated UK series Life
on Mars, but ultimately lost her part along
with the rest of the cast when showrun-
ner David E. Kelly left the project. Her
association with Kelly, however, resulted
in a multi-episode run on Boston Legal, as
the previously mentioned golden-hearted
call girl. September 12th, she hits the small
screen again in the Canadian-made mini-
series The Summit, a bio-terror intrigue in
which she plays the intrepid daughter to
Bruce Greenwood’s Prime Minister.
“Generally speaking, people expect
Bruce to be stoic because there’s so much
stoicism in his portrayals. But when you
meet him, you realize he’s actually a bit of
a clown. He does amazing impersonations.
He really likes to laugh. It doesn’t hurt
that he’s a great actor either.”
More recently, she finished shooting
the Catherine Hardwicke-directed screen
adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight,
an angsty modern-day vampire saga with
only a slightly less rabid fanbase than
Harry Potter’s. The Internet and trades are
already lit up with speculations about the
likely “hugeiosity” of the franchise and
the impact it will have on those involved.
Lefevre, who plays Victoria, one of the
series’ central characters, is already being
hailed by many (us included) as the next
Hollywood “it girl.” But the it girl herself
isn’t buying it.
“It’s not the first time I’ve had voices
around me going, “This could be really big.
You could be very big.” People have the
tendency to do that. I try to ignore that
now. But it does get in your head. On my
worst days of having no power to control
my fantasy life, I can’t help wonder if – CHANGE YOUR TV / CHANGE YOUR LIFE
maybe, you know – I’ll get to be an
action figure.”
DYLAN YOUNG ©
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PHOTO BY JIMMY HAMELIN