Space Cowgirl

Tricia Helfer has launched her career into space, travelling galaxies away from her family’s grain farm in Donalda, Alta., and conquering humanity as Cylon ‘Number Six’, the sexy-but-duplicitous humanoid machine in TV’s critically-acclaimed Battlestar Galactica.

As a young girl, Helfer had no ambition to model or act but at age 17, she was discovered by a talent scout while standing in line at a local cinema. She left for New York and promptly won Ford Models’ Supermodel of the World competition in 1992. Helfer was soon appearing on the covers of Vogue and Cosmopolitan, and walking runways around the world for top designers like Giorgio Armani, Versace, and Dolce & Gabbana.

“I certainly didn’t think that I could ever be a model. And I had no ambition to be an actor. I was petrified of being on stage; I wasn’t a singer and I wasn’t a dancer. I was much more of a tomboy into basketball, volleyball, track and field, and soccer. And, again, I worked on the farm: I drove tractors and fixed farm machinery,” she told Vancouver’s Georgia Straight in 2007.

It was her small town roots and strong family upbringing that allowed Helfer to remain grounded as she jet-setted around the world. The support of her parents was unwavering and that, she has said, allowed her to take risks.

Which is just what she did. After almost a decade in modelling, she caught the acting bug while working as a correspondent for Canadian fashion show Ooh La La. Realizing that most modelling careers are short by nature, Helfer enrolled in acting classes and then moved to Los Angeles — without any gigs lined up.

“I instantly fell in love with it. Part of the reason that I have this passion for acting is that I like the idea of getting inside someone’s brain to study their characteristics — why it is that they do the things they do. My focus was suddenly very clear on what I wanted to do after modelling,” she told the Straight.

After a year of TV guest appearances, including a memorable 2002 C.S.I. episode as a self-mutilating model, Helfer landed the Battlestar role. Bearing little resemblance to its campy, late-70s predecessor, the series has won a prestigious Peabody award, and been called one of the smartest shows on television. Helfer’s role as the seductive Cylon — or roles, since each Cylon model has multiple incarnations — has been described by executive producer Ronald D. Moore as the toughest on the show. While all the other actors received several pages of backstory notes to craft their characters, Helfer’s Number Six backstory had just one line: “The machine as woman.”

Anxious to prove she had more to offer than just killer cheekbones, Helfer quickly began taking on different projects during the show’s hiatuses. In 2006, her Battlestar role won her a Leo Award from the B.C. Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Foundation. She followed up with another Leo Award nomination for her role as a dominatrix in the Canadian film Walk All Over Me. With the Battlestar series drawing to a close, she has signed a talent holding deal with Fox Broadcasting and will star in a multi-episode arc on the USA Network’s acclaimed action series Burn Notice.

Not bad for an Alberta girl who grew up without a TV.

Feeling confident about her acting career, Helfer decided to pose for Playboy in February 2007 — something she was unwilling to do a few years earlier.

“They approached me right after Battlestar came out and I said no to it initially, because I want people to know me as an actress first and that I have some chops,” Helfer told George Stroumboulopoulos on CBC-TV’s The Hour. “I’m certainly not Meryl Streep but I have some chops. So, it took a little while for the critical acclaim to come. Once Battlestar won a Peabody award, and up here I won a Leo award for best actor… I thought now maybe the time is right.” She also demanded — and was granted — creative control over the pictures.

An intelligent woman, Helfer is not one to surrender control. She learned how to ride a motorcycle because her husband is an enthusiast, but as she told Hollywood 411, “I’m kind of not the type that likes to ride on the back. I like to make my own decisions.”

Helfer is also passionate about the environment, and she’s currently building a green vacation home in Alberta that will be off the grid. The decision to build in Alberta was an easy one — though not one that everyone understood, as she recently explained to Green Living. “People laughed and then asked, ‘Why are you building in Alberta? Why not Aspen?’ My husband and I looked at each other and had the same response — when you go on vacation you want to get away.” •