Roman Wallflower

Lucy Lawless, New Zealand’s one and only Xena, Warrior Princess, doesn’t mind being typecast, saying, “What am I going to complain about? How many actresses work as much as me?” “Being the star of an action show is really, really hard,” Lawless continues. “You’ve got to keep up a lot of energy, and you’ve got to be the morale leader. There’s a lot on your shoulders. The fighting on Xena was really hard for me.” In 2009, she landed a 16-episode run as cylon D’Anna Biers in another cult genre series, Battlestar Galactica. Now, as Lucretia in Spartacus, has embraced stepping away from playing the heroine. “I love to play a victim, and I love to play the wallflower,” she says, adding that she hopes to also play “people who are really on the edge of right and wrong — wicked in sheep’s clothing, or someone who looks like a librarian but turns out to be a psychopath.”