Back on screen tonight in a new cop drama, former Shortland Streeter Angela Dotchin talks to Frances Grant about her plans for the future.
The big picture has yet to be filled in, but Angela Dotchin is not afraid of drawing the basic shape of her dream career in a few bold outlines.
Yes, the 25-year-old wants to act, direct, produce - the lot. Jodie Foster is a role model when we're talking goals. "I want to have my own production company, I want everything, I want it all," Dotchin says.
The reality check is equally enthusiastic. "I think I'll be working very hard for another 100 years before those type of things happen."
A whole century is a lot to contemplate in one interview over coffee in a Devonport cafe on a Saturday afternoon. So we tighten the focus.
"I'm quite happy with what I'm doing now. I can't see myself being happier. But sure, I've got really, really high goals for myself and I intend to get close to them, or reach them, and put all my efforts and energy into that."
The first step away from the Dotchin we knew best - the irrepressible receptionist Kirsty Knight on Shortland Street - has been accomplished.
In tonight's tele-feature Lawless, a police drama starring Kevin Smith as an undercover cop, she appears on our screens for the first time since leaving the soap 18 months ago.
"She's a cool lady," she says of her character Jodie Keane, a police office assistant who yearns to join the force. "She isn't somebody who would be very easily intimidated."
Keane's ambition is knocked back, but she is confident enough to handle it. And when Smith's character, John Lawless, is in trouble the resourceful young woman wades into help him without hesitation.
"A whole new ball game," says Dotchin about her debut in a serious, feature-length drama. "I felt like an amateur."
But playing a woman like Keane presented no problems. "I didn't feel like I had to go too far away from myself to play her. I didn't have to try to search some place inside myself to find her, she was there."
The role was also a welcome return, in one respect, to familiar territory.
"You know what the best thing about it was? Playing a Kiwi woman with a Kiwi accent. It was just so nice being back where I'm really comfortable."
Since checking out of Shortland Street, the 25-year-old has had to work on an American. She has played a mermaid for a couple of episodes of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and landed a part last year in the spinoff series Young Hercules, as a no-nonsense innkeeper by the name of Kora.
Can't beat those fantasy shows, she says. "How could you go wrong? It's like being a little kid, being able to overact as much as you want. And it seems to work ... nothing's real, it's all crazy. So you just go for it."
The ups and downs of the life of a soap character can be hard to give up, however. The feisty inn proprietor and the staunch Jodie Keane aren't the types to get misty-eyed.
"I've really missed my crying scenes. You have to get really intimate with a character when you've got to go through those things and I haven't had the chance to do that for a while."
Though Dotchin's hopes and dreams are big, her gratitude towards the show which set her on the road is as large as her ambition.
"Shortland Street gave me everything," she declares. "It has set me up as far as handling things and the way I look at myself, what I want out of my life, the projects I want to do. Because it gave me a taste of everything - comedy, drama, everything you could imagine."
Leaving the soap wasn't easy. "It was really difficult, like leaving home, leaving all the people, and it was all I knew." As for people still calling her Kirsty, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. "Honestly, it doesn't bother me because of course you're going to know me more as Kirsty than Ange ... it will always be a big part of me."
Back to the future, and we're talking film. A role in a good, gripping New Zealand movie would be just the thing. Maybe something like What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?
"I'd like to do something as real as that, definitely. I'd mean I'd like to do no big, blond hair and lashings of mascara. I'd like to throw all that out the window for once - do something with no make-up, my hair back, and do something really quite emotional."
She won't be drawn on her relationship with Broken Hearted star Tem Morrison, except to say his home base is here not Hollywood. And yes, she's visited America and done some casting calls but her own sights are set firmly in New Zealand.
If Lawless, designed as a potential pilot for a series, gets picked up, will we see more of her as Keane?
"I say nothing until it happens," she says. "I mean, I was just flattered to be thought of for the role." There are one or two other projects on the horizon, but for now it's all a case of "can't say."
So we're back to 100 years of good, keen attitude. "What I've learned is that you've got to have huge goals. Think big, I reckon. That's my new motto. Think big, never sell yourself short in your life."
The world is not just her oyster, it's the full feast. "I'd like to do a bit of everything - I just feel like life's a bit of a smorgasbord at the moment."
Who: Angela Dotchin
What: Lawless
When: Thursdays at 8.30
Where: TV2
A good Keane woman
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