There’s one word that This Life star Lauren Lee Smith uses repeatedly when describing her 17-year acting career: luck.
Technically, she uses both luck and its adjective offspring, lucky. Smith counts herself lucky that she unearthed her passion for acting in the first place; she’s lucky that she found success almost immediately after committing to her career; she’s lucky that she’s worked steadily for nearly two decades.
As lucky as Smith considers herself, though, she also doesn’t completely eschew the impact of her attitude and hard work.
“I think that, for me, it’s a lot of luck and a lot of, ‘This is it, this is what I’m doing,’” says the Vancouver actress in a recent phone interview.
On CBC’s Montreal-shot family drama This Life – which caps off its second season next week – Smith plays Maggie Lawson, the free-spirited, 30-something “kid” sister of series protagonist Natalie Lawson (portrayed by Stargate Atlantis alum Torri Higginson).
Maggie is the prototypical emotionally stunted younger sibling, which makes her a complete joy to play, according to Smith.
“I love Maggie, because she is completely immature. She speaks her mind. She makes a lot of bad choices. There are no limitations with her. She really does not give a crap about anything,” laughs Smith, whose lengthy filmography includes scene-stealing turns in The L-Word, The Listener, Helen (for which she won a Leo Award), and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
“The joy of playing Maggie is I get to act out on all of these crazy things she does and not feel bad about it in my real life. I get to do it for make-believe.”
Smith’s passion for acting began when she was seven years old and watched The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth in short order.
“I know those both had a lot of puppets, but they had a big influence on me,” she chuckles. “I remember with Labyrinth going, ‘What is this world, and how do I enter it? I want to do what they do.’”
Smith honed her acting skills in youth theatre programs, but she wouldn’t fully pull the trigger on her acting career until her late teens, when she was working as a model in Korea. “I was reading this acting book, and I said, ‘Okay, that’s it: I’m leaving modeling, I’m going back home, I’m putting all of my attention into acting’ – and I have to say, I got really, really, really lucky.”
Luck came in the form of her first role: Erin Evans on MTV’s cult-favourite boy band parody, 2gether.
“Cut to 17 years later, and acting is the only job that I’ve ever gotten to do. It’s pretty crazy when you think about it. I got super, super lucky.”
Over those 17 luck-filled years, Smith has used every tool at her disposal not to be pigeonholed into any one type of role. “Every year I’d make a point to chop my hair off, or dye it black, or grow my hair out and dye it red,” says Smith. “I know it sounds silly, but I think it helped me a little bit because I really jumped around from one genre to the next, and one character to the next, which is,” – here comes that word again – “lucky.”
These days, the new mom – she has a six-month-old daughter – is looking at her life and This Life with gratitude. “When I was 20 years old, to me success was people knowing my name […]. And to me now, I look at my career and I think, ‘Wow, I’ve made a really great life and a really great living for the last 17 years by working.’ And to me, that is success. I couldn’t really ask for anything more.”
This Life airs Sundays at 9pm on CBC.
