Hot new conspiracy thriller series Fringe has made an overnight star of Anna Torv. She talks to JOANNA HUNKIN about life in the twilight zone
Anna Torv is one of those actresses you vaguely recognise. You know her from something, you just can't quite remember what.
Some might recognise her as the adulterous lesbian from BBC series Mistresses. Others might recall her stints on Aussie dramas McLeod's Daughters and The Secret Life of Us.
But that is all set to change as she takes a starring role in J. J. Abrams' new series Fringe - one of the most expensive television series ever made.
Torv plays FBI agent Olivia Dunham, who is charged with investigating a series of unexplained happenings known as "the Pattern" using alternative methods - or "fringe" science.
She does this with the help of Peter Bishop (Dawson's Creek's Joshua Jackson) and his father, crazed scientist Walter Bishop (fellow Australian John Noble), who she draws out of an asylum to head up her investigation.
The show has been described, among many things, as a cross between The X Files and Dark Angel but promises to be less convoluted and confusing than Abrams' previous hit Lost.
"'I think they've done a really good job of making every episode stand alone. They've managed to walk that fine line of episodic drama," she says.
Torv concedes it has been quite a leap from bit parts in Aussie and Brit dramas to the lead in an Abrams' series, but is adamant she has paid her dues.
"You know, I trained for three years and I'd been jobbing about in Australia and the UK when I got this," she says down the line from Los Angeles, where she is packing her bags for her first trip home to Australia since landing the series last year.
"It wasn't overnight. I don't think it ever is."
Still, heading on to the set of the pilot - the second most expensive ever made, behind Abrams' other brainchild Lost - could have been quite a daunting prospect, had she let herself think about it.
"I think if you spent too much time thinking about it, you'd just end up paralysed with fear. You've just got to let it go. There was absolutely a moment of 'Oh my God'. But then you just try to do what's required."
It also helped that Torv had so little time to prepare for the role.
After producers requested an audition tape from the actress, who had returned to Australia's Gold Coast during the writers' strike, it was less than a week before she was in Toronto filming the pilot.
There was an element of fluke to the events, says Torv. But also one of fate.
It was on the set of the pilot that Torv met her now-husband, co-star Mark Valley (best known as Boston Legal's Brad Chase).
No one knew of the romance until after the actors married in December last year.
"We just didn't tell anybody," she laughs. "We kept it very quiet, like you do most office romances. We kept it separate."
In some ways, the couple's real-life love affair mirrored that of their onscreen characters - who are also engaged in an illicit affair they struggle to keep under wraps from their FBI colleagues.
Of course, they haven't had to deal with the complications of biological warfare and paranormal activities.
Renewed for a second season in the United States after getting healthy ratings on its first, Fringe is being billed here as one of the most-anticipated new series of 2009. However, there has been widespread criticism about the show's character development - or lack thereof.
Torv admits Dunham is isolated and withdrawn - but says that is precisely the point. "In the first scenes of the first episode of the show, she's this bubbly young thing who's madly in love with this man.
"All of a sudden he's attacked and she goes on this mission to find out what's wrong. She gets him better and then realises ... it was for nothing.
"She starts the series there. She's a shadow of her former self ...
"She has become extremely isolated and extremely shut off from the rest of the world."
- additional reporting Associated Press
LOWDOWN
Who: Anna Torv plays special agent Olivia Dunham in Fringe.
Born: April 15, 1978 in Melbourne, Australia.
What: The latest brainchild of Lost creator and Star Trek director J. J. Abrams.
When: Premieres next Wednesday, July 1, at 8.30pm on TV2.
