Eliza Dushku

Eliza Patricia Dushku (; born December 30, 1980) is an American and Albanian retired actress. Dushku starred as Faith in the supernatural drama series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1998–2003) and its spin-off series Angel (2000–2003). She also had lead roles in the Fox supernatural drama series Tru Calling (2003–2005) and the Fox science fiction series Dollhouse (2009–2010), for which she was a producer.

Dushku had starring roles in various films, including True Lies (1994), Bye Bye Love (1995), Bring It On (2000), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), The New Guy (2002), Wrong Turn (2003), On Broadway (2007), The Scribbler (2014), Jane Wants a Boyfriend (2015), and Eloise (2016). She has also done voice work for numerous video games and animated films.

Dushku has since retired from acting and now works as a therapist and mental health advocate.

Early life

Dushku was born in Boston and raised in Watertown, Massachusetts, the only daughter and youngest of the four children of school teacher and administrator Philip Dushku and Judy Dushku (née Rasmussen), a political science professor. Dushku's father was Boston-born, of Albanian heritage, with his parents coming from the city of Korçë. Her parents were divorced before she was born.

Dushku's mother was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Dushku and her three brothers were raised as members of the Church. She attended Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and graduated from Watertown High School.

Career

Acting

1992–1997: Beginnings and breakthrough

Dushku came to the attention of casting agents when she was ten years old. She was chosen in a five-month search for the lead role of Alice in the 1992 romantic drama film That Night. In 1993, Dushku landed a role as Pearl, alongside Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, in the drama film This Boy's Life. The following year, she played the teenage daughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis in the action spy film True Lies.

She had roles as Piper Reeves in the short film Fishing with George (1994), as Cat in the television film Journey (1995), as Paul Reiser's daughter in the romantic comedy film Bye Bye Love (1995), and as Cindy Johnson in the comedy drama film Race the Sun (1996).

1998–2002: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and recognition

Dushku planned to attend Suffolk University in Boston, where her mother taught, but her agent asked her to submit a videotape audition for a television show starring another of his clients, Sarah Michelle Gellar. After reading the script, Dushku rushed to a local Claire's to purchase dark makeup and other appropriate accessories for the part of Faith on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When she began her work on the series, Dushku was still a minor, and had to receive emancipation to work the production's long hours. She later recalled with amusement that the judge who handled her emancipation case, who was an avid fan of the show, jokingly said that she would sign the emancipation order if she could get a signed photo from Dushku. Though initially planned as a three-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 and for the last five episodes of the series. She also appeared in the spin-off series Angel.

As an unwelcome effect of her portrayal as Faith, Dushku was inundated with fan mail from 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 mustache, and a big gut. It's so creepy. Way more creepy than Buffy.

In 2000, Dushku starred in the hit cheerleader comedy Bring It On. She followed that up with Soul Survivors, which reunited her with her Race the Sun co-star Casey Affleck. In 2001, she appeared in The New Guy with DJ Qualls and in City by the Sea with Robert De Niro and James Franco. 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.

2003–2008: Tru Calling and subsequent roles

In 2003, Dushku starred in the horror film Wrong Turn and The Kiss, an independent comedy-drama. Starting that same year, she starred in a new Fox supernatural drama, Tru Calling, where she played the main character, medical student Tru Davies. After having a grant withdrawn, 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 about Faith.

She has had many roles as a "bad girl" in films. 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."

Dushku starred in the Off-Broadway play Dog Sees God in December 2005. The play was based on the Peanuts comic strip, with Dushku playing a character symbolizing Lucy Van Pelt. She quit in February 2006 along with other members of the cast amid rumors of abuse by the producer, which were later dismissed.

She played the lead character on Nurses, a hospital comedy-drama for Fox. This was the second Fox pilot in which she was cast, but not broadcast.

She appeared in the Simple Plan music video "I'm Just a Kid" as the band's love interest, as well as Nickelback's video for "Rockstar".

On October 1, 2005, she announced at Wizard World Boston that shooting had begun for Nobel Son in which she would star with Alan Rickman, Danny DeVito, and Bill Pullman. The film was released at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. Another project released in 2007 was On Broadway, an independent film filmed in Boston. It received positive reviews, with a few of them highlighting Dushku's performance.

Dushku has had roles in five video games. She voiced the role of Yumi Sawamura in the English-language version of Yakuza for the PlayStation 2, released in September 2006. Dushku also stars as Shaundi, one of the lead characters in Saints Row 2. She was the voice talent for the role of Rubi Malone, the main character in the game WET. S She also voiced Megan McQueen in Champion Mode of the 2011 video game Fight Night Champion.

Variety announced on August 2, 2006, that Dushku would co-star with Macaulay Culkin in Sex and Breakfast, a dark comedy written and directed by Miles Brandman. A reviewer described Dushku as "charming" and giving the character "an edge". The film was released in Los Angeles on November 30, 2007. She starred in Open Graves, a 2008 horror-thriller about a satanic game co-starring Mike Vogel. She played the main character in The Thacker Case and The Alphabet Killer, both thrillers based on real-life events, one of them directed by Rob Schmidt, with whom she had worked on Wrong Turn. Both films were released in 2008. The film earned mixed reviews, but reviewers praised Dushku's performance, commenting "Eliza Dushku commands the screen but cannot reconcile the script's conflicted and increasingly idiotic agendas." She appeared in Bottle Shock, a drama about Napa valley wine. The film was directed by Randall Miller, who helmed Nobel Son.

2009–2017: Dollhouse, other work, and retirement

On August 26, 2007, Dushku signed a development deal with Fox Broadcasting Company and 20th Century Fox. Under the pact, the network and the studio would develop projects tailor-made for the actress as well as approach her with existing pitches and scripts.

Subsequently, it was announced on October 31 that Dushku had lured Joss Whedon, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, back to TV, to create a television series called Dollhouse. Dushku produced the show and played the main character, 'Echo'. It aired on Fox during the 2008–09 TV season. In an interview, Dushku talked about how Dollhouse and her reconnection with Whedon came about: