Spotlight

Rachelle Lefevre wants to suck your blood

Montreal-born actor Rachelle Lefevre knew landing the role of villainous vampire Victoria in the movie adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s hugely popular teen vampire novel Twilight was a big deal. But she wasn’t prepared for the surveillance.

“One of my friends forwarded me a link to a website where somebody had pictures, and initially it just looked like it was pictures of vans on the highway,” says the 29-year-old on the line from Montreal. “And then I read the caption with an arrow and it said, ‘Twilight cast riding to set in this van.’ And I thought, ‘Holy Jesus.’ Here we were riding to the set and unbeknownst to us some car is behind us taking pictures through the windshield. It’s just so, so huge.”

The film, directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), revolves around 17-year-old Bella (Kristen Stewart), who’s in love with vampire hunk Edward (Robert Pattinson). Edward and his clan of vampires survive on animal blood, but there are other vampires, including the fiery, red-headed Victoria, who feed off humans.

Lefevre, last seen onscreen in Fugitive Pieces, loved being a baddie. “I’m Canadian, I’m polite, we are nice people and we are raised to be friendly, and I got total permission to be the exact opposite. There are a million ways Victoria can be played, there are a million forms of evil, and I think the obvious choice to play her would have been to play pure meanness, but then I thought, what can I bring to this? Why cast me instead of somebody else? So I made her playfully menacing, and that was a really fun discovery for me. Catherine really latched onto it and said, ‘Have more fun, make it even more delicious,’ so I did.”   

Ingrid Randoja

Photo by Jocylen Michel