I understand you are quite the
outdoorswoman, on and off the set of Lost, which makes
Vancouver a perfect place for you. Give us a sense of the
layout of the city. Vancouver is actually a city very
much like
Honolulu, ironically, in that it is surrounded by
mountains and ocean. It is very isolated. It is metropolitan
in its center and core, but, primarily, most people who live
in Vancouver are nature lovers and very outdoorsy. A lot of
people there will snowboard and ski and mountain climb and
run and cycle. When you come into the city, for the most
part, it does not feel like a city. It doesn't feel like
Manhattan until you get right into the downtown core, which
is, actually, very much like Manhattan. Downtown's, like, a
tiny little island, and it's surrounded by greater Vancouver.
It's a grid; it's a perfect grid. Once you are in the
downtown core, everything maps out relatively easily. But
greater Vancouver sprawls out over miles and miles and
miles.
Where do you like to stay when you go back?
Probably my very favorite hotel in Vancouver is the Opus Hotel in
Yaletown.
Yaletown is sort of the young, posh area of Vancouver,
and the Opus Hotel is a very swanky, very trendy hotel that,
actually, is similar to the W chain of hotels, always very modern
and minimalist in its interior design. The service is impeccable.
It doesn't have the greatest view. A lot of the hotels in Vancouver
are right on the water and have incredible views. This one is kind
of stuck in the middle of the city, but it's a really cool hotel.
When I was working for the
Ford Talent Agency, doing commercials,
there was an audition for models to work for Abercrombie &
Fitch. I had this long, drawn-out conversation with my agent,
during which they said they thought I should go. I said I was not a
model, I was an actress, and I was not tall enough to be a model,
and I was not skinny enough to be a model, and I should not go.
They said, "No, you should go, because Abercrombie & Fitch goes
for a more athletic, normal-looking model. They don't always go for
the six-foot rakes." They convinced me, and I went and did it, and
it was one of the most mortifying things I've ever done. I'm not a
model. I'm very uncomfortable in front of a camera, and having
people just scope me out to see if I look good enough was a very
uncomfortable thing for me. But it was the first time I had ever
been to the Opus Hotel, and I remember thinking at the time, If I
ever have enough money to stay at a nice hotel in Vancouver, I
would like to stay here. Years later, when I was working for Lost,
I had to go back to Vancouver to do, ironically, a photo shoot. I
requested that I get to stay in the Opus Hotel, and they put me up
there, in this beautiful, monstrous suite. It was sort of a nice
callback to my past life, when I could only dream about affording a
hotel like that.