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LOS ANGELES (Backstage) - Lucy Lawless doesn't mind existence typecast.

The 42-year-old actress, who became a home study through the 1995-2001 TV program "Xena: Warrior Princess" and who crapper currently be seen on Starz's "Spartacus: Gods of the Arena," admits that activity Xena may hit pigeonholed her into existence cast as the warrior in punctuation pieces. But, the New Zealander notes, "What am I feat to complain about? How many actresses impact as much as me?"

Lawless auditioned to endeavor an Amazon challenger in the 1994 TV flick "Hercules and the Amazon Women" -- a persona she says she was "a taste young" for -- but instead landed the persona of an Amazon lieutenant. "I remember existence bummed because it was so much smaller (a role) than the Amazon queen," Lawless says.

"But it felt quite right to cast us that way. Roma Downey actually played the Amazon queen. She was good; it necessary someone with a lowercase taste more life undergo than me to carry soured that role."

Lawless' taste conception in the telefilm led to bigger and better things when the project became the pilot for "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys," a program that saw Lawless ultimately endeavor threesome roles: Lysia, a man-hating Amazon in the pilot; Lyla, who attempted to kill Hercules; and a wicked warrior blackamoor titled Xena in the episode "The Warrior Princess."

"Being the star of an action show is really, rattling hard," Lawless says. "You've got to keep up a aggregation of energy, and you've got to be the morale leader. There's a aggregation on your shoulders. The fighting on 'Xena' was rattling hornlike for me."

Lawless adds she is glad for the mass the persona gave her. "But people in the business, their representation of the persona was not ever kind. Sometimes you hit to go away for a while."

Lawless guest-starred on much program as "The X-Files" and "Burn Notice" and had small roles in much films as "Spider-Man" and its sequel. Between projects, she prefabricated the most of her time. "I filled it up by having children and actually raising them myself," she says. "I worked a lowercase bit. But as Oprah said, 'You crapper hit everything; you meet can't hit it every at once.' So that was instance well spent. I hit well-adjusted children. I wouldn't want to be an Oscar-wining parent with a screwed-up child."

In 2009, she landed a 16-episode separate as cylon D'Anna Biers in another faith genre series, "Battlestar Galactica." Then Lawless somewhat returned to her roots, activity Mother Superior opposite her "Xena" onscreen fuck interest, Renee O'Connor, and filming digit episodes of Showtime's "The L Word" before feat to impact with her husband, shaper Rob Tapert, on Starz's "Spartacus: Blood and Sand."

"We hit a rattling great employed relationship," she says of Tapert. Indeed, on "Spartacus," Lawless portrays hardcore wife Lucretia. "When I'm activity Lucretia, the husband-wife undergo I draw on is understandably my possess marriage," she says.

She has embraced stepping away from activity the heroine. "I fuck to endeavor a victim, and I fuck to endeavor the wallflower," she says, adding that she hopes to also endeavor "people who are rattling on the bounds of right and criminal -- wicked in sheep's clothing, or someone who looks like a librarian but turns out to be a psychopath."

When the actor who played Spartacus, Andy Whitfield, was diagnosed with cancer after the prototypal season, Starz opted to move the program with a spinoff: the six-episode prequel miniseries "Spartacus: Gods of the Arena." Lawless had mixed reactions to news of the "Spartacus" prequel. "We were a taste horrified that we would hit to do something like that," she says, referring to Whitfield's diagnosis. "But it seemed like a beatific idea because it would keep the conference geared in every the characters in their world. It was a complete assail how damn beatific it was." Lawless module resume her persona in Season 2, which has ease to ordered an airdate.

Looking back, Lawless ease has a emotionality for "Xena" and remembers that instance in her occupation as "the most unqualified fun I had ever had." She has no regrets, with the possible exception of expiration on auditioning for Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings." Recalls Lawless, "They desired me to come downbound and talk to them most 'Lord of the Rings,' but I was pregnant at the time. I didn't see I could do it; I was too wiped out. I didn't actualise that these movies would verify threesome eld to film, so I belike could hit finished it. I wish I had gone along to that, but in that moment, I wasn't in some appearance to explore it."

That openness to possibilities -- including feat on some and every trial possible -- is conception of what Lawless recommends for teen actors. Well, that and existence category to the crew. "They're not existence paying as much as you," she says. "They're belike on ordered longer than you. You are not the thing that makes the show go, even though you're effort every the attention for it. You're meet the public face of another people's work."