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| Tuesday, September 4, 2007 |
Fall TV Preview: Lauren Cohan
This is part of our Fall TV Preview in the Sep/Oct 2007 issue.
The British actress is playing it tough in her new role as a mercenary.
This season The CW sci-fi series Supernatural gets an injection of estrogen in the form of Bela, a mercenary who'll make trouble for the spook-hunting brothers Sam and Dean Winchester (Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles). "She is on a mission. She has a definite agenda," says Lauren Cohan, who describes the character as strong, sophisticated, and conniving. "She's a firecracker. She'll break somebody's leg if she has to."
Supernatural is the first series for Cohan, whose previous roles included parts in Young Alexander, Van Wilder 2, and Casanova. Born in Philadelphia, she grew up in Britain and studied English and drama at the U.K.'s Winchester University. "My mom is British. Her father's job brought her here when she was a kid and my dad's job brought us back there. I have a couple of passports," explains Cohan, who had been living in Los Angeles for just six months when she got the series job, which required her to relocate to Vancouver. That meant leaving her musician boyfriend Matt behind, "but he'll come up," she notes.
Cohan, whose mother converted to Judaism when she married her stepfather, was raised in the faith from the time she was five, attending Hebrew school and celebrating her bat mitzvah. Moving to England from the Philly suburb of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where half her friends were Jewish, she was surprised to find that the only Jews in her school "were myself and the headmaster."
These days, "I'm not religious, but the tradition, the culture and the history are very important to me," says Cohan, whose boyfriend is also Jewish. She hopes to visit Israel on a Birthright trip, but so far her schedule has been too tight to plan it. Her film career is thriving too. She'll be seen next in Float, playing the daughter of a man (Gregory Itzin) having a midlife crisis.
Supernatural premieres Oct. 4 at 9 PM on The CW. Cohan's first episode airs Oct. 18.
-- Text by Gerri Miller / Photo by Frank Ockenfels.
This is part of our Fall TV Preview in the Sep/Oct 2007 issue.
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