Finding Faith

17 April 2013 | 5:25 pm | Guy Davis

"I was fooling around on one of those family-tree websites, and that’s something I just found out, even though I’ve known Joss for 15 years."

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Eliza Dushku describes her friend and colleague Joss Whedon – who cast her as badass Faith in his much-loved TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer and blank slate Echo in his ambitious but uneven Dollhouse – in the warmest way as “a friend, a homie, a brother”. But she didn't realise until just recently that she was actually related – distantly, but still – to the man she claims changed her life by giving her “this incredible character” on Buffy to portray.

“I think we're, like, 16th cousins,” laughs Dushku. “I was fooling around on one of those family-tree websites, and that's something I just found out, even though I've known Joss for 15 years. He hired me for Buffy when I'd just graduated high school and enrolled in college, and didn't really know what I wanted to do next. I didn't know if I was going to continue with acting, but he invited me into this iconic experience, and it changed my life.”

Dushku is one of the many stars converging on Melbourne this weekend for the latest Supanova pop culture convention, and she calls the opportunity to attend such events and interact with fans of her work (which ranges from playing Arnold Schwarzenegger's imperiled daughter in the James Cameron action flick True Lies to being menaced by inbred cannibal hillbillies in the gruesome Wrong Turn) as “one of my favourite things about what I do”.

“I value them so much, honestly,” she says. “I've always loved to travel, but it's a special thing when you get to travel somewhere and there's this whole mass of people who are so excited that you're coming and who want to meet you and take your picture and ask questions. And with early projects like Buffy having such an international presence, I'm so grateful to have fans all over the world. The chance to meet them and remind them how much I appreciate them and get them excited about the new projects I have coming up, well, it's a great time.”

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Dushku says she fields all manner of questions and comments from fans at conventions like Supanova, about anything from her personal acting process to the inner lives of her characters. “It's really a chance to ask anything or express anything… as long as it doesn't endanger my life!” she laughs. “It's really interactive. A lot of people have questions about Faith because she's a fairly memorable character – she reached a lot of people, reached into these dark crevasses of people's souls and made them discover things about themselves. She was a very empowered woman, but she was also flawed. She wasn't black or white; she was in this grey area. And it's fun to go back to this iconic show, this iconic character, and have discussions about it.”

Given that she made such a major impression on fans, it's little wonder Faith is a major topic of conversation. But the character also made quite the impression on Dushku. “I had this little voice in my head telling me I needed to do something important for the world, something that was going to have an effect,” she says of the early stage of her career. “As an actor, I had these thoughts that what I was doing was superficial. But when I got this role I got fan mail from all over the world, from young women and young men, saying that they felt empowered by Faith to be courageous and do things like confront their abuser. It blew my mind. I realised there was something important there, and it changed my whole relationship with the work.”

WHAT: Supanova
WHEN & WHERE: Friday 19 - Sunday 21 April, Gold Coast Convention & Exhibition Centre, Gold Coast QLD