Pic from Stuff Magazine.
Starlog 3/03: Karen Cliche, on Adventure-Inc.net
Great Adventuress
In the syndicated action series Adventure Inc., actress Karen Cliche plays Mackenzie Previn, a beautiful soldier of fortune whose job takes her to locations around the world. Real life isn't all that different. Production of the show kicked off in spring 2002 in Toronto, and has since moved on to the United Kingdom and the south of France. Cliche is enjoying the ride.
"It was in the original breakdown. They told us that we would be going [to all these different places]," she explains. "1 was like, This is going to be really cool. I love to travel, always have. I get itchy if I stay in one place for too long." She speaks from experience, having grown up the youngest of two daughters of a Canadian Army sergeant whose NATO job moved the family from northern Quebec to Manitoba to Virginia Beach to Germany and then back across the Atlantic to Montreal - all before Cliche finished high school.
After graduating, "1 didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, so I figured I might as well travel and look at what's out there," she says. "Modeling was a great outlet for that." So she spent four years modeling in Italy, Germany, Spain, New York and Los Angeles. It wasn't until Cliche was in her early 20s that acting became her passion, eventually leading to the role of Mackenzie, a part almost predestined for this road scholar.
Mystery Woman
On Adventure Inc., Cliche's character is a rogue independent contractor who signs on to crew with legendary explorer Judson Cross, played by genre favorite Michael (Terminator) Biehn. Together, the team - which also includes tech wizard Gabriel Patterson (Jesse Nilsson) - criss-crosses the globe searching for treasures both ancient and modern.
Cliche (pronounced Kleesh) admits that the role sort of fell into her lap. "It all fell under the usual process of auditioning," she says. "The breakdown came in and my agent told me to take a look at it, and I really liked it. I auditioned and related to the casting agent. The next thing I know, they flew me in for a screen test and I got the part. It was like, OK, you've got the part. Now you're moving to Toronto. It all happened in a week, and it was such a surprise."
The actress describes her character as being a little hardcore, with a mysterious and slightly sketchy background that is sure to provide a few future surprises. "No one really knows exactly where Mackenzie comes from, and she doesn't like to talk about her background," Cliche explains. "She joined Judson's crew about five or six years prior to the show's beginning. He still doesn't know much about her, but he has come to trust her. She's just sort of a gung-ho type of a girl, straight-up and a little tough, and she has had a lot of military training in her past.
"She has a passion just like Judson and Gabe, a passion for discovering unknown things and mysteries. She's someone who needs things to change a lot in her life. She can't remain just stagnant. She gets bored too easily."
Cliche maintains that she and Mackenzie have more in common than their love of world travel. "We're not too distinct from each other," she insists. "I add a lot of stuff that I would do in my own life to the character, and it ends up fitting pretty well. I'm opinionated and not afraid to say what I think, or to confront injustices or go for what I want. I don't go around shooting machine guns in real life, but apart from that, we have quite a bit in common in terms of just the need for adventure and exploration."
She also recognizes and willingly conveys some of her weaknesses to Mackenzie.
"You meet so many people in your life and they seem to be so hardcore," Cliche says. "But they're usually the ones who are the most afraid and weak and sensitive. I'm a bit that way too, and I don't always want to expose my vulnerability. I think Mackenzie feels that same way, so she hides behind that toughness. She's not just some superhero."
Although she's the lone female cast member, Cliche represents the majority of the Adventure Inc. team's muscle, "which is really cool," she exclaims. "There aren't that many roles that let women be that way, especially in a circle of men. They're usually the underdog who latches onto the strength of the men. But we're all strong characters and we all have our own strong points. Judson represents the very humane, nice guy. Gabe portrays the intellectual guy who knows a lot about computers and technology. Mackenzie's the one who's going to want to take it on. She's much more fearless than the guys. It's a nice balance, because we all bring something to the table that makes for a great team."
Fortune Hunter
Despite her tough exterior, it's highly unlikely that Cliche will ever be mistaken for one of the boys. Loyal viewers of Adventure Inc. are regularly rewarded with the sight of Cliche sporting some very sexy swimwear. And the actress is happy to do her part in keeping ratings on the rise, as long as things are kept in check. "A lot of sucking in goes on when we do those scenes," she laughs. "But it's pretty relevant. It's not like I go running around with high heels and a bikini shooting an M-16. That would be a little ridiculous. But at times, like when we're relaxing on the boat, it seems natural. I mean, after all, we go to many different locations on our boat. It's sunny, so why not a little eye candy for the audience? It's cool. It's never done in a degrading way."
She's grateful, though, that the producers of Adventure Inc. have given her the opportunity to portray a character other than a damsel in distress. "More and more these days, you're seeing movies and TV shows where the women are strong and can handle themselves and go one-on-one with the men," Cliche comments. "But, unfortunately, there are still writers and producers who are afraid to make a girl too tough."
Early on, it wasn't the producers who doubted whether Cliche's character would work, but Biehn, who feared audiences wouldn't buy her tough-girl-with-a-gun image. After meeting Cliche, however, the star soon had a change of heart. Cliche recalls discussing the situation with Biehn, and remains touched by his vote of confidence. "He's really a sweet one in complimenting me that way," she says. "His opinion means so much to me, to everyone on the show. I did a movie called Riders just before I started Adventure Inc., and I learned how to shoot guns and stuff like that. But Michael has done so many action films, and he can do all sorts of neat tricks with the guns. He would let me know if I was holding a weapon properly. His approval means a lot."
With a tough series to shoot, Cliche was prepared for Adventure Inc.'s more grueling aspects. "I had done a demo for a potential movie," she recounts. "That was about 14 months ago, and I prepared for it with two months of training. I did about eight hours a day of tae kwon do and aiki-do. I didn't know how to make a proper fist when I first started, but by the end it was just great. Ihad no idea that I was going to be doing Adventure Inc. They were pretty surprised when they found out that I knew how to get away with it. Every day, I practice as I go along. I learn different things all the time from the different stunt teams."
And she performs many of her own stunts - as long as they're not potentially life-threatening. "In terms of stunts like jumping over a cliff, I don't do those," she laughs. "But I do my own fights. If they take a wide master, though, they will use my stunt double. We both rehearse the fight and know it really well. Michael, Jesse and I do many of our own stunts. We do all of our own fighting and rock climbing. In Toronto, we did some episodes that required scuba diving. We have a big studio tank there. I had done a little diving in the Caribbean on vacation, and of course Michael had done it extensively for The Abyss. So we were pretty comfortable with the whole thing."
As a child, "I was always kind of a tomboy," she grins. "I was never a girly girl who grew her nails and stuff like that. I learned that later on. My sister Marie-Pierre and I were raised, because of my father, to be a little bit like boys. To stand up for ourselves and be strong and do the same amount of work as a guy does. And I'm really thankful for that, because if I hadn't had that upbringing, I would never have gotten the part of Mackenzie. It wouldn't make sense. It wouldn't sell. I bring many of my own ways to the table. So if that comes across, great."
The arts have always intrigued Cliche. "I think I was practicing my Oscar speech in front of my mirror when I was six," she laughs. "I loved writing, I loved performing, all that stuff. It was always a dream of mine. But you have to understand, I come from a family that stresses education and more of a normal lifestyle, so initially I took the more conservative route and went to university. I studied psychology for a year before I decided that it wasn't right for me. I was really afraid to take that risk and fail at it. Finally, I got a chance to model. I didn't really want to do it, but I figured if I could make some money and travel, why not? I did that for a few years, and when I came back one summer, my modeling agency had opened an acting agency. They asked me if I could act. I said, Yeah, I think I can."
Phantom Lady
One of her earliest acting gigs was a 1999 guest shot on Fox Family's Big Wolf on Campus. In the episode Witch College, she plays an evil sorority sister who tries to recruit new pledges. "That was actually my second [acting] job ever," Cliche recalls. "We were this sorority who tricked one of the lead characters into coming into our group so we could turn her into a witch." Cliche returned to the show for the third season episode What's Vlud Got to Do With It, which cast her as a werewolf princess out to nab a hus- band. "I remember that we did a lot of transformations and that it was really fun."
Other roles have included a guest spot on All Souls and a brief but memorable stint on Galidor: Defenders of the Outer Dimension. Of the latter, she remembers it being "a cute show for kids. My character, Lind, came in during the last five or six episodes. She was this cool Japanese animation-inspired character, with the kimono and the sword, the obi, the hair and braids. At first she was very resistant to the hero, because she wanted to save the planet Galidor herself and now had to compete with this half-human guy who arrived from Earth to save everyone. But they end up being a team and fight off the evil Gorm together."
The project that offered her the most visibility was Vampire High, a series which aired for one season in the United Kingdom and Canada. Cliche portrayed Essie Rachimova, a young, royal-blooded vampire. Despite its short run, she recalls the show fondly. "It was such a great, great time," she says. "We went for just that season, but it was a really good show. It was set in a time when vampires really do exist but don't live among us yet, and humans don't know about them. In the vampire world, there's a civil war going on between the elders and the baddies. The bad vampires, the Fury, want to take over the human world and just become a huge vampire race and kill off all the humans. But the elders have a vision of living in harmony with humans, possibly even mating and having half-vampire, half-human children. So the elders take five of the youngest vampires - four other guys and me - and put us into sort of a school to learn to become human and suppress our vampire instincts. Every episode dealt with growing up. We had lived for hundreds of years but were still teenagers at heart, and we dealt with issues of growing up and yet being vampires."
Her credits also include the 1999 TV movie version of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, with Adam (Firefly) Baldwin. "It was actually a Francis Ford Coppola pilot. He was trying to make it into a series but it never went," she explains. "Adam was the star, and I played his wife. We're this young couple on our honeymoon. The whole story takes place in Hong Kong, and unfortunately I get blown up about halfway through. The plot is about who killed me, and it turns into this whole kind of Jekyll and Hyde thing, where Adam turns into two different people because of an old Chinese legend. It was a pretty cool concept. I got to go to Australia for four weeks and then to Hong Kong for 10 days."
As for Adventure Inc., although it has elements of both fantasy and action, the actress considers it principally a drama. "It's just so great," Karen Cliche says. "Sometimes we don't get as much done because we just laugh. Michael is hilarious; he's one of those people who just cracks me up. And Jessie and I have a brother-and-sister relationship. We push each other around and bug each other all the time. But we're all very close. It's a really great gift to be given."
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