Xena Loves Geniuses

“You may know her as Xena from Xena: Warrior Princess and, more recently, Lucretia from Spartacus, but you may not expect that Lucy Lawless would fly all the way from New Zealand to California for TEDMED, a conference about great ideas in health care,” CNN health writer Elizabeth Landau says. ‘It’s like a beauty pageant for brilliant people, where you sit in the audience and all these geniuses comes out and parade their incredible brilliance in front of you,’ said Lawless. ‘I’m not a geek, but I love geeks,’ she said. ‘I love these people who have focused all their attention on like, lasers, on some particular area.’ In her spare time, she helps the fund-raising arm of [Starship Children’s Health] in [Auckland], and is involved with Greenpeace.” Auckland-born Lawless, 43, won the 2011 Saturn Award as Best Supporting Actress for her role as Lucretia in Spartacus: Blood and Sand.