Glad Tydings

According to Alexandra Tydings, playing Aphrodite, the goddess of love, in Hercules and Xena really is as much fun as it looks. John Peel sought her inner beauty.

Her roles have ranged from playing Woody Harrelson's wife in the movie Sunchaser to guest spots on shows such as Party Of Five, but it is as the goddess of love she is best known. And, oddly enough, as Catherine the pig-turned-woman in an episode of Hercules. What's it like to play a pig? "Oh, it's so fun!" she laughs. "It's so much fun. They had me wallowing in mud! I called someone in the production office - I think it was Liz Friedman - to see if I could get some dailies, because there was an episode just before it where Hercules is a pig, and I wanted to see what kind of pigs they had, and what their mannerisms were, and stuff like that. But they were shooting it right before my episode, so by the time they shot it, developed it and flew it back, I was already on the plane out there [to New Zealand]. So I just had to do it all in my imagination.

"That mud scene was so hysterical and so fun. It was like a bathtub full of mud, basically, in the ground. And I just looked at it and knew it was a oner. I really had to get it right the first time, otherwise it was going to be such a disaster with the wig and the costume and everything. And it was kind of neat. It felt cool, and, shortly after that I went to a hot springs and took a mud bath! People pay to do this, and I got to do it for free! But it felt so squishy and mushy and really kind of weird and cool, and once in a while I would freak out a little bit. When they were resetting the camera or reloading, and I was waiting there. And I saw twenty people standing around with this look of shock and total horror on their faces, and I'd go: "I want to be out of this mud!" I was in about three feet of mud, and you couldn't really see what was in there. I would feel something slide by my leg, and I'd go ugh! And then I'd tell myself: don't think about it, don't think about it! This is the thing you love more than anything in the world... and then I'd smile again."

And it is quite clear that acting is what she loves more than anything in the world. Even just talking about it lights up her face, and she becomes very animated. "I wanted to be an actress ever since I knew what an actress was. But I wanted to be President, and a veterinarian, and all kinds of other things too. I performed a lot as a child. I was a dancer - an Irish step dancer, if you can believe it. This was before I really have memories, but my mother told me that I went to Wolftrap, which is an amphitheatre outside of Washington DC and saw some Irish dancers when I was little, little, little. And I became obsessed! "I want to do that!" So, finally, she took me to lessons. It was like other kids started violin; I started Irish dancing. It was totally weird, and I didn't know anyone else in school who did it, so I was a kind of freak. So I did this weird thing on the weekends!

"The sub-culture of Irish dancing is competitions. We were always going to festivals. We were travelling - we'd go to Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Yonkers, all over the place. It was cool, because as a kid I had friends in the Bronx! How many kids could say that? I loved it, and it was just so much fun. And because of that I started doing ballet, because they said that ballet would help my Irish dancing. Because of that I started performing more. I mean, competition is performing, but ballet is a different kind of performing. And there were ballets to be in - The Nutcracker, and, so exciting, I was in Isadora with the Royal Ballet, at the Kennedy Center when I was 11 years old. It was just so thrilling - and I got paid, which was just so amazing! And as soon as school plays started happening, I started doing that.

"Then when I was in high school I got a little too angry to keep being an actress. And I had purple hair and all that." All that includes two conspicuous tattoos - a band on her right bicep and a faerie on her left shoulder blade. "And at that time you couldn't have purple hair and be in My Fair Lady! So I did a lot of exploring. I did Visual Arts, and poetry, and learned how to play bass and got into bands. I got into Brown [an Ivy League college in Providence, Rhode Island] because it seemed like the place where I could do the most amount of things that I liked to do. So I could figure out whether I wanted to be a veterinarian, or President, or an actress of what. I thought also I might want to be a film maker, so I ended up majoring in Modern Culture in Media, which is where the film department was. And that's how I started acting again, because we would put each other in our films, because it was fun and easy, and we were always available. And that's how I started to love acting again.

"So the summer after my junior year, reality was starting to set in, and we were talking about careers and being out of school for the first time in your life. I was thinking of several other things, but I was seriously thinking about acting. And someone told me I should take a class and see if I was serious about it. So I went to Tisch and NYU [both in New York City] for the summer. I was in a class with Skeet Ulrich! We actually went to a Skinny Puppy concert one night. So I came to realize that I loved it, and spent my last year at Brown doing more performing. I was in this department where you could really do whatever you wanted for your thesis. They'd probably cringe to hear me say that! But if you wanted to write a thesis on The Flintstones, you could. If you could figure out how to justify it to the professors, who were themselves writing the same kind of thing, then you could do it. I decided to make my thesis a one-woman show, and that's what I did. And then I put my stuff in my car and drove to L.A.! And that was it from then on. My friends were totally stunned when I said that was what I was doing. Because we had done a lot more counter-culture stuff, and we'd been studying lots of experimental film, like revolutionary film-making... So to go to Hollywood, to work for the Man was a total, total shock! But I love it. I totally, totally love it."

One of the earliest roles she went up for was that of Aphrodite. "I had never sen Hercules before," she admitted. "At the time, I had an agent and a manager. Manager's are more in charge of sculpting your career, whereas agents are more interested in getting you a part and doing the deal. So my agent called and said: "You have this audition for Hercules." And my manager called and said: "I don't think you should take it." Because I had just done this Woody Harrelson movie, and that was my first feature, and I was still really young. I had only been in Hollywood about two years. So she really wanted me to have this feature film career. It had been a huge part when I had gotten it, and the feeling was that I was going to be the next Gwyneth Paltrow. So that was really tempting to listen to. And then my agent called back and said: "It shoots in New Zealand." And I decided that I was going to go and do it!

"So then I went and auditioned, and got the part, which was great. It is so much fun! I love it! The show, and the character... She is so great, and so funny. The wig and the costume... well, they sort of force me to be her. I mean, who the hell else would wear that thing? She's just boom!, there, in your face. Literally!"

Alexandra has short-cropped blonde hair, and she was hoping at first that the producers would opt for a short-haired Aphrodite - but no such luck!

"The hair is a little heavy, but what's harder is the combs. You've got your hair up in a wig cap, and you have pin curls in there, a lot of pins in your head. If you've ever worn pins, you know they can start to pull after a few hours. And then they have a wig that is anchored with combs, so it's pulling back on these curls that are pinned in. It's sort of like having somebody's jaws just kind of pushing in on your brain all day long! The first couple of days it's okay, but the fourth or fifth day at five o'clock in the morning, you're sitting in the makeup chair going: "Oh, pu-lease, can't you just have her cut her hair?"

As for wearing that costume... "In the summertime it's fine. But in between takes I like to wear a robe. And then I get hot under the robe, and I have to decide between my comfort and my other kind of comfort. And in the wintertime, it's harder. It's really hard. If you see a close-up of me, you don't know that I'm wearing sweat pants! And big furry boots underneath! But Aphrodite is so much fun. She's so funny, and so ridiculous. That's what's so much fun - to play a character that's so ridiculous. Which is probably why I love Catherine also. To actually believe that people should have all these temples to "me", and that's how it should be. And therefore if it's not happening, I'm going to wreak havoc on someone's life! It's just so absurd. To just try and get into the body of a person who believes that is a trip!

"I just heard this story about Buddy Cianci, the mayor of Providence. This is all hearsay, and who knows if it was true? But I heard that he was on trial for beating up his wife's lover, something like that, and his defense was: "I'm the mayor." Does that mean that you can beat people up? I guess to his mind, it did. And that's how Aphrodite is."

Alexandra had a large role in the Hercules episode "Love Takes A Holiday," in which Aphrodite decides to change her image, much to poor Iolaus' distress. "It is so much fun to do Aphrodite and failing miserably!" She laughs at the memory of the "hot-pants" version of Kevin Sorbo's costume.

"Those guys in the costume department - Ngila and the others - are just so great. I really wanted them - I don't know if they did it or not - I really wanted them to take my little Kevin outfit and hang it in his trailer, so when he came in to work in the morning, he'd have this to try and wear! "That's a little small..."

She really enjoys working with Michael Hurst. "He's a doll," she declares. "He's such a generous actor, too. He's so thoughtful and perceptive and kind. He's just really, really there for you. And he's also just brilliantly smart. He's got a mind that must remember everything he's ever read, because the stuff he quotes off the top of his head, it just blows you away. Shakespeare, Keats, Yeats, Blake... Maybe Kiwis just get better education than we do! He's also done lots and lots of theatre and directed theatre. He's very professional and just very skilled. And in that episode, Kevin wasn't there so he got to break out of his usual part and strut and do the action role. And we both got to take on other roles. Also, I got to have an archery lesson, because I got to shoot those arrows when I was trying to take over Artemis's job. That was really cool. I love that kind of thing. When I did "Vanishing Son", I got to have horseback lessons, and it's so cool. It's my ideal job because it's where I can do the one thing I'm able to do, and do as many things as possible that are different! "Kevin's adorable. He called when I booked "The Apple", to congratulate me and welcome me aboard, and apologized that my first experience on Hercules would be with him as a director! He noticed that it was my birthday, and wished me happy birthday. I booked the job the first week of December, and was going to be flying out the first week of January. So it was over the Christmas holidays, and he was going to be back in L.A. for a few days, and he suggested we get together and have a drink.

"It was so funny, because we met in front of my agent's office. He was in Beverly Hills, and I was going to be going by there anyway. I had never seen the show before, so he said: "Well, I'm tall and I have long hair." And my agent is a fan, and she was, like "you have to let me see him! You have to tell me when he's here!" So when I walked in, I saw her receptionist, and she's: "You're meeting Kevin Sorbo!" And I said: "Yes. He's not here yet?" And she said no. So I went in to see my agent, and then we decided to walk outside. And there's Kevin, sitting on a bench in front of the building. He had been in, but he had his hair in a pony-tail, and he had his glasses on, so she hadn't realized it. She died, you know! But he was so kind, and so welcoming. It was really fun that he was my first director. Everyone was just so relaxed on the show. First of all, everyone had just come back from holiday, so everybody was pretty happy. And also it was summertime, so it was beautiful! We were shooting at the beach, and it was just lovely. And he was a good director, too. They had all been working together so long that everyone had just built up mutual respect and trust that you could just feel. It helps you to be creative."

In the Xena episode "The Quill Is Mightier...", Aphrodite becomes human, and has a great deal of trouble with bodily hygiene. Thinking of the jokes about her, Alexandra just laughs. "They kept adding them, too," she says, clearly very amused. "At first, she was just kind of falling apart. She got smellier and smellier, and every day there was another smelly joke. And Andrew Merrifield was adding them - he was the director - was having such a ball with them. And it was every scene, add a little..." She holds her nose. "You know? It was fun, though. And Kevin Smith [Ares] is so much fun to work with, too. With the makeup department, I had a deterioration over time. I even had different wigs for the different days' looks, so it was really fun. Add more dirt... add more dirt! Although, because of the way the schedule was organized for some reason, we had to shoot the dirtiest look right before we shot the cleanest look. Everyone had to stand around waiting while one wig gets yanked off and another gets put on, and I'm sort of being scrubbed up and everything. It was so funny."

Working on Xena is a little different from Hercules. "I haven't really worked with Lucy Lawless that much," Alexandra explains, since Lucy was hardly in that episode. "In fact, most of the ones I've been in, she's only been in one or two scenes. It's different for me because I haven't done as many Xenas. The first three I did were Hercules, so I felt right at home on that set very quickly. But Lucy and Renee are so funny and so sweet and just really sort of mellow. My friend, who is a makeup artist on the show, says that Lucy is just a normal Kiwi chick. Just lovely. She's so generous. I went down there one time and brought my grandmother with me. And one night what my friend calls "The Brass" took us out to dinner. Everyone was there - Kevin, Lucy and Renee, and Rob [Tapert] and Eric [Gruendemann], and all the major players. And Lucy sat at the end of the table with my grandma and talked to her the whole time. I'll have a spot in my heart for her forever for that.

"Renee is really lovely, too. She's sweet, and she's quiet. I don't know if she's shy, she's just quiet. I actually met her the very first time I went down there, when I was doing "The Apple". I got there on a Friday, and the Saturday Kevin was going to have lunch with John Mahaffey [Director of Photography], who was going out to his family's summer house to go over shots and things. And he invited Renee and I, and Ida, Bruce Campbell's wife, and we all went up there to the beach and hung out with John's kids. We played softball, and it was really fun. It was such a nice way to break into a set and into a different culture. You're so far away from home... Whenever you're on location, it can be a lot of hotel rooms, and you get the blues being on your own and not knowing anyone. It was lovely to be with a whole bunch of people, and families, and Renee was so cool, talking about the set and what it was like."

And what's it like filming in New Zealand? "New Zealand rules!" Alexandra announces. "It is so cool. I love it. One of my best friends is a Kiwi. She's the one who did my makeup the first time I was on Hercules. She really is my best friend, and she came out here to the United States last year for three weeks, the first time since I've known her. And we rented a convertible and drove from Los Angeles to Santa Fe, New Mexico, via Sedona and the Grand Canyon and all this stuff. And we borrowed a bunch of camping gear and stayed in tents. It was so much fun. Kiwis are just so cool. They've got the greatest sense of humour. Such dry, dry humour. Like George, who's one of the first assistant directors is just so hysterically funny. I wouldn't be surprised if sometimes people burst into tears when they talk to him because he has the deadest face when he's saying the wickedest stuff! They're just so friendly and mellow. It's interesting because in some ways they're so similar to Americans and in some ways they're just so different. They lost power for six weeks or something like that in one of their biggest cities, and they just lived through it, and kept candles going in the shops.

"And the scenery is so beautiful. It's so amazing. I mean, the country is the size of California, but it's got a third of L.A.'s population in the whole entire country. It's just so pristine and beautiful. I lived in Venice, California, for two years, where the water's just right there, but you can't go in it. It's sick! I mean, sometimes you can, but not after it rains. It's so creepy and strange. And to go from that to this beautiful place where you can go in the water any time you want to, and you can drink out of a tap... It's so beautiful."

And what's in her future? "Well, I know I'm going back to New Zealand this fall," she says. "More Aphrodite! I assume! More Xena, anyway. I would love to do more Catherine, but we turned her back into a pig. I'd love doing more different characters. And I did a pilot for UPN [the Paramount Network], which we shot in the Caribbean this spring, which was really fun. They're not going to go ahead with the pilot, but they're talking about reworking it, also with me and also in the Caribbean. Which I have no complaints about at all! And a friend of mine has written and is producing an independent film this fall, which I'm slated to be in as soon as their financing gets set."

What's it like seeing herself on screen? "It's very strange," she admits. "I usually go oh! Why'd I do that? Bad angle on the nose... that sort of thing! It's hard to really just get past the criticalness of seeing myself on TV. But I'm getting better. The more you do it, the easier it gets, I think. Although I've heard that some people just don't watch themselves any more. I like to watch also because I like to learn, and I think you learn a lot like that. Technically, I learn something new every time I get a job, I think. Like when we were shooting in the Caribbean, I learned that there are clear contacts that you can get that take out UV rays. So you can open your eyes in the sun and not squint. I have such light eyes and fair skin that my eyes are just little slits when we shoot on the beach! You can see that in "The Apple", actually. In the Caribbean we were shooting on the beach every day, and there were no eyes!" She squints to demonstrate, and bursts out laughing again.

"And you learn about blocking," Alexandra adds. "When you have to walk in and hit your mark, you learn how to feel that out without having to look down. If you look down, someone's going to notice! Here. I'm stopping here! And to motivate the reason why you stop, so it doesn't look like you're just walking and stopping on your mark."

And how about writing or directing. "Yes!" she says emphatically. "I'm starting my own production company with a friend of mine. We're actually in pre-production for our first short film. And my friend Debbie, who I already mentioned, is already working on one of the special effects for it. She's going to be mailing me this decapitated head! When she was here, we had our actor in, and she was doing the prosthetics in my living room. And I was helping her, and it was fun, because I've gone through it, too, on the set. And we'll be shooting that this fall. It's a little, little, tiny short film, just to get our feet wet. And I have a script idea, and I've had it for a year and a half. And I'm at that haven't-written-a-word-yet stage, and it's just so hard. And I did it in school - I wrote my one-woman show while I was in school. But, you know, I had a deadline. So maybe I just need to give myself one!"