Woman's Weekly
27 October 2003
"From Warrior Princess to Working Mum"
Even a warrior woman like Lucy Lawless can have trouble combining kids and career
Transcript and scans by MaryD
Lucy Lawless is virtually unrecognisable these days.
Where once before there was a strapping lass who became a worldwide star playing the cult role of Xena, the Warrior Princess, now the 1.78m(5'10") actress has a more lithe and willowy figure and is a lot less fearsome for it.
In fact, a lot has changed in the two years since Lucy filmed her last episode of Xena: Warrior Princess. She is now a mother of three and she's clocked up a number of small and diverse roles that bear little relation to the fantasy figure that made her famous. But there is one thing that hasn't changed - in the hearts and minds of fans she is still Xena.
"Those kind of shows have legs," says the 35-year-old. "And because they're iconic, the character is more known than the show was actually watched. People will say they've seen Xena when in fact they might have watched maybe one or two shows. They'll have grabbed the image of it and I'm still indelibly imprinted on it."
It's not surprising because Xena was a huge phenomenon. The Amazonian heroine not only made Lucy a star, she garnered a worldwide cult following. She was a feminist role model and at the same time a sex symbol for men and a lesbian icon. There was merchandising, comics, a theme park and not least of all, hundreds of websites dedicated to Xena.
"To me it was just a gig, you know?" says Lucy. "It was a fantasy show and I never realised anybody could take such a thing to heart and read into it all sorts of wisdom that it really didn't have. It became greater than the sum of its parts really."
But all good things come to an end and so it was in 2001 with Xena. At the time it was
assumed Lucy had decided to quit the show when she became pregnant with her second child Julius, now three. But she denies this. "The people who paid for it just moved on to other things," she says. "All shows end and the producers were running out of story lines and I was certainly out of energy."
So was she happy it ended? "Yes," she admits. "I had nothing to do with the decision but I was grateful for the rest to be honest. However, I had nothing but fun doing it and obviously it's done great things for me. Here I am traveling the world and working with great people."
In fact Lucy has spent much of the year jet-setting around the world filming a new documentary series for Discovery
Channel which will be screening in New Zealand next year. In Warrior Women she travels to Britain, France, Ireland, China and the US to uncover the stories of some of history's forgotten heroines.
"Characters like Boudicca and the Apache warrior Lozen are often overlooked because they're women," says Lucy. "It's an age-old problem. The last time women were really held in high regard was in pre-Christian times, when women were celebrated as being representative of the Earth Mother. But I guess that's slowly being redressed."
Her favourite warrior woman is the 16th century Irish pirate queen Grainne Ni Mhaille, known as Grace O'Malley to the English. "At one point she sailed her boat right up the Thames to Greenwich, demanded an audience with Queen Elizabeth and got it. She was one hell of a woman."
Part of the appeal was due to the fact Lucy's own family are originally from Ireland. So visiting the country for filming was a particular pleasure and she even stopped at a pub recommended by her uncle.
Lucy was brought up in Auckland, the fifth of seven children. Having four older brothers, she was unwittingly prepared for her role as Xena, soon becoming a tomboy who felt that anything her brothers could do, she could do just as well.
*l could ride, shoot a bow and arrow, run like hell when I had to and swim like a fish," she says with a grin. "My mother says I didn't know I was a girl until I was about eight. I guess it wasn't relevant."
She even worked as a gold miner for a few years, deep in the Australian Outback, but acting was always her ultimate goal and she did as much of it as she could when she was growing up.
"My girlfriends and I would adapt plays as kids," she recalls. "I was always very clear that acting was what I wanted to do."
Since Xena ended, Lucy's acting career has been put on the back burner due to her busy family life. As well as her daughter Daisy (14), from her first marriage to childhood sweetheart Garth Lawless, the actress also has two children -Julius and one-year-old Judah - with Xena producer Robert Tapert, who she married in 1998.
"It's been really difficult balancing things," she says. "I've turned down some great things for solid reasons because it's not worth it if your children are miserable.
"You feel terribly guilty about going away or even just going out to work, especially because one of my little boys is such a mummy's boy. I think he plays me pretty well and I feel terrible going out the door."
But her recent time away for Warrior Women did have some positive aspects for her family. "Me being away has been very good for my son's confidence and he can now go to school without Mummy hanging around all the time," she laughs. "And it's nice for Rob to be able to do things his way for a while. The kids are normally my domain."
As well as being with the kids, Lucy has spent the past two years doing the odd acting job. She did some theatre in the play The Vagina Monologues, perfectly complementing her feminist image.
"I know; it's so funny," she laughs. "Life takes you in funny directions doesn't it? I never saw myself as a role model or a feminist or a lesbian icon or any of these things but I keep getting these job offers that are related to this persona people have put on me." She's currently writing her first screenplay, tentatively called Anatomy of a Marriage, and next up we'll see her playing a femme fatale in the forthcoming film The Ugly Americans.
She plans to concentrate on j her career more in the future, That is, if she feels like it. "I make my decisions along my own lines now," she says. "Other people might see no rhyme or reason to what I'm doing but I do things because they're fun. I want to have a damn good time while I'm on this planet."
