Eliza Dushku: Faith, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Faith is a fictional
character created by Joss Whedon for the television series Buffy the Vampire
Slayer. Played by actress Eliza Dushku in the TV series and by Whitney Thompson
in the motion comic series, Faith was introduced in the third season of Buffy
and was a focus of that season's overarching plot. She returned for shorter
story arcs on Buffy and its spin-off, Angel. The character's story is continued
in the comic book series Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, and she also
appears in apocryphal material such as other comic books and novels. Faith was
set to receive her own spin-off television series after the final season of
Buffy, but Eliza Dushku declined the offer, and the series was never made.
Faith will co-star in the 25-issue comic book Angel and Faith beginning in
August 2011 under the banner of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Nine, the story
taking place mostly in London and the surrounding area.[1] Seven years after
the character's creation, Whedon granted her the surname Lehane for a
role-playing game and subsequent material. The last issue of Season Eight was
the first source officially confirmed to be canon that referred to Faith by her
full name.
Faith is a Slayer: a
girl endowed with supernatural abilities and destined to battle evil creatures
such as vampires and demons. Created as a foil to the protagonist, Buffy
Summers, she is a Slayer who comes from a damaged background and often makes
the wrong decision. Initially an ally to the main characters, events take a
toll on Faith's sanity and she slips into a villainous role. Later storylines
show her feeling remorse for her past crimes, and with Angel's help she
eventually rejoins the side of good in the hopes of achieving redemption.
Eliza Patricia
Dushku (play /ˈdʊʃkuː/;[3] (born December 30, 1980) is an American actress
known for her television roles, including recurring appearances as Faith on
Buffy the Vampire Slayer[4] and its spinoff series Angel. She starred in two
Fox series, Tru Calling and Dollhouse.[5] She is also known for her role in
films including True Lies, The New Guy, Bring It On, Wrong Turn and Jay and
Silent Bob Strike Back,[6] as well as her voice work on video games.
Dushku came to the
attention of casting agents when she was 10. She was chosen in a five month
search for the lead role of Alice in the film That Night. In 1993, Dushku
landed a role as Pearl alongside Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio in This
Boy's Life, a role that she said opened a lot of doors. The following year, she
played the teenage daughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis in
True Lies. She had parts as Paul Reiser's daughter in Bye Bye Love, as Cindy
Johnson in Race the Sun, and roles in a television movie and a short film.
Dushku took time off
from acting to finish her junior and senior years of high school. She was
accepted to the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and Suffolk
University in Boston, where her mother serves as professor of government and
previously served as dean of the campus in Dakar, Senegal.
After completing
high school, Dushku returned to acting with the role of Faith on Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, a Slayer much more troubled than the main character Buffy
Summers. Though initially planned as a five episode role, the character became
so popular that she stayed on for the whole third season and returned for a
two-part appearance in season four, after which the remainder of her original
story arc was played out as part of the first season of the Buffy spin-off
series Angel. Repentant and rededicated, Faith returned as a heroine in other
episodes of Angel and in the last five episodes of Buffy. Dushku was inundated
with piles of fan mail from legions of prisoners. She said:
I've been getting fan mail from maximum
security penitentiaries and death row. What are the authorities thinking of in
playing a show with young teenage girls to Death Row inmates? They write
everything – disgusting things that you don't even want to know about. And they
send me pictures – "Oh, here's a picture of me before I was
incarcerated!" – and there's some guy sat on the sofa with a bottle of
beer and a moustache, and a big gut. It's so creepy. Way more creepy than
Buffy.[10]
In 2000, Dushku
starred in the hit cheerleader comedy Bring It On.[6] She followed that up with
Soul Survivors,[6] reuniting her with Race The Sun co-star Casey Affleck. One
reviewer described the film as "84 minutes of everyone's wasted
time".[11] In 2001, she appeared in The New Guy with DJ Qualls and City by
the Sea with Robert De Niro and James Franco.[6] The latter film garnered
attention from a wider adult audience and several good reviews. The same year,
Kevin Smith invited Dushku to be a part of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.[6]
In 2003, Dushku
starred in the horror film Wrong Turn,[6] and The Kiss, an independent
comedy-drama. Starting that same year, she starred in a new Fox TV series, Tru
Calling, where she played the main character, medical student Tru Davies. After
having a grant pulled out from under her, Tru is forced to take a job at a
local morgue where she discovers her power to "re-live" the previous
day over again if one of the deceased asks for her help to change what has
happened. Dushku turned down a role in a spin-off of Buffy The Vampire Slayer
which would have been about Faith. She has had many roles as a "bad
girl" in movies and relishes the opportunities. In an interview with Maxim
in May 2001, Dushku says of her roles, "It's easy to play a bad girl: You
just do everything you've been told not to do, and you don't have to deal with
the consequences, because it's only acting." -Wikipedia