Submitted by Unknown on 2002-11-24
Spielberg A Big Fan

Source: Houston Chronicle

Filmmaker Steven Spielberg must watch Angel regularly.

Spielberg hired Amy Acker, who portrays Fred on the bloodsucker series, for his upcoming film Catch Me If You Can. Then he invited Julie Benz, who played the vampire Darla until the character's latest demise, to co-star in his miniseries, Steven Spielberg Presents "Taken."....

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"One day my manager got a phone call from Spielberg's (manager) saying that he had been watching Angel the night before, and he was really impressed with my performance," Benz said. Actually, Spielberg had wanted Benz for an earlier project, but she wasn't available. When she was asked this time, she considered it such an honor she gave him an immediate "yes" without even reading the part.

"And then once I read the script and realized what an undertaking it was -- a 20-hour miniseries -- that definitely sealed the deal for me," Benz said.

Debuting Dec. 2 on the Sci Fi Channel, Taken follows four generations of three families from World War II to the present. The three families have been touched by alien visits, and their lives will never be the same.

Benz appears in "Beyond the Sky" and "Jacob & Jesse," the first two episodes of the 10-installment saga.

"My character, Kate, is a young girl in the 1940s whose high school boyfriend (Steve Burton) returns from the war," she said. "They end up getting married, but during the war something happened to him. And he's back home now trying to deal with what happened to him.

"In the '40s and '50s there was a lot of speculation about aliens, but people didn't really talk about it. It wasn't as out there as it is now. So Kate is trying to deal with what she's heard from her husband. He had an encounter in his airplane. ... Because she loves him so much, she tries to believe him. She's just unable to."

Benz is no stranger to sci-fi adventures. Her other genre credits include episodes of the series Sliders and Roswell, as well as the films Two Evil Eyes and Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth.

"I think my favorite part of having done so many of these fantasy projects is the fans," Benz said.

"The fans are die-hard fans," she said. "They know every element of the production, from the set design to the stories to the actors. They create their own stories based on the film or show and based on the characters they love.

"There are no other fans like genre fans. They're very creative and incredibly loyal. They're so willing to jump into another world and live it and breathe it, and so willing to go there with the actor," she says.

On Angel, Benz has played Darla, a 400-year-old vampire. "That's not your everyday, run-of-the-mill character," she said.

When last seen on Angel, Darla, fearing an ages-old prophecy, had killed herself so that Connor, her baby son with Angel (David Boreanaz), might live. Benz won't rule out an Angel return engagement. "You never know what those guys will come up with," she said. But Benz probably won't watch the show again unless she makes another appearance.

"I watched one episode when Connor was still a baby, but I haven't seen any episodes with Vincent," Benz said, referring to Vincent Kartheiser, who plays the now-teenage Connor. "I know Vincent as an actor. I was so happy to find out that he's who they chose to play our son. ... But it's still too hard for me to watch the show."
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