Choices and creations

It is interesting that Clare should mention 'the list' as I was interested to find out what type of role attracts Clare so when faced with a number of scripts, which scripts make the yes pile and which are discarded to the rubbish bin! "Nowadays days they all go on the yes pile," Clare jokes, "no I'm just kidding. You know it's interesting, you can read a script and you can think this is going to be horrible and it can be the best movie and you can read a script and you can think this is going to be an amazing movie, it's going to be up for academy awards and it can turn out for crap." Clare puts some thought as to why this may be. "A lot of it is whom you surround yourself with, just like in life. If you surround yourself with good people, good friends then that's going to be reflected through you. Well it's the same thing if you have a good director or a good cast. It's not so much about the budget involved, as we all know there's films that are multi million dollars that are horrible and really great independent films, so it's about the level of passion not only from yourself but from the director, from the other cast members. I try to stick to things that are original ideas that are strong female characters and I don't know for whatever reason but I've never really been seen as the girl next door or the quiet wife or the sister and it’s not that I haven't auditioned for those parts, it's just that's kind of what has been dealt to me. I think I have been a little bit spoilt with some of my roles and now I tend to want the more challenging characters. I try to find stuff that's new to me."

From Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Tru Calling, from Bring It On to The Mummy and The Armadillo via The Mallory Effect and even Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Clare is collecting healthy amount of experience but does she feel that with each role she takes, she learns something new? "Definitely," Clare agrees, "as much as taking on a role is about creating a character, it's also about finding out about new pieces of ourselves like when you approach a character I think where I start at least is how am I like this person then maybe make a list with what are my similarities, what are my differences. Okay so here's the differences but I'm the one who's acting it so how can I get myself so that I can find a similarity with that difference and so that way it makes it, I won’t say it makes it real, but you're not pretending, you're not acting. I think acting is a really bad connotation of you know just getting up there and saying lines and going through the motions, well you know who cares. To me if you're not connecting with the material, something's not going on inside, something's definitely not going to be going on with the audience and that's kind of the point of my job to make people feel something, whether it's good or bad, that's about me and that character."