To say Star Trek: Voyager's Jeri Ryan was bitten by the acting bug at an early age would be a understatement.
"My first acting job ever was in my fourth grade school play, called Gracie at the Bat and I played Gracie," said Ryan in a phone interview Monday. "And at the end of the play, Gracie gets carried off on the shoulders of these two boys who just happened to be the two cutest boys in the fourth grade class. I had the biggest crushes on them. Well, that to me, said acting's pretty damn cool!" she said, laughing.
Her first venture into the professional world of acting came her freshman year of college. Though, you can't exactly call it a big break.
"I was an extra when I was a freshman in college in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, but it got cut out of the movie," she said.
These days, nobody's leaving Ryan on the cutting room floor.
In addition to her work on Voyager, where she portrays the popular character, Seven of Nine, Ryan will be appearing in next month's Wes Craven Presents: Dracula 2000.
"I play a reporter who is investigating a plane crash in the Louisiana bayou and runs a little too close to Dracula," she said.
Ryan was eager to talk of the upcoming film, and spoke highly of the experience.
"It was a lot of fun, everybody was great. The director is an absolute sweetheart, and to be quite honest, I was pretty shocked at how efficiently everything was run," Ryan said.
Sticking to the schedule was of the utmost importance on Dracula 2000 which -- with a Dec. 22 release date -- will barely make it out this year.
"We just finished re-shoots and added scenes last week," Ryan said. "So basically they're turning this film around in the amount of time it takes us to turn around an episode of Voyager. So it was quite the assembly line to get this going."
One of the main obstacles for Ryan was fitting in shooting on Dracula with her Voyager schedule.
"The biggest challenge was my schedule, because we shot this in the middle of my season on Voyager," she said. "So I would fly back and forth. I'd fly to Toronto or fly to New Orleans where we were shooting, and work for a couple of days on Dracula then fly back (to Los Angeles), and at 5 a.m. the next morning, report to Voyager. I would finish and I would immediately go to the airport. I would literally be on the set with my bags in the car and take my makeup off in the car as they're driving me to the airport to get on the plane."
But, in the end, the hectic pace wasn't the worst thing Ryan had to endure. Filming in the Louisiana bayou left the actress feeling thoroughly grossed out.
"It was mating season for some bug that they call the love bug, cause they would fly around all paired up. They were everywhere," Ryan said. "You would open your mouth and three of them would fly in your mouth. They were stuck in my hair. Every time you go to sit down, your chair is black, covered with bugs. It was really gross. You go to take a bite of food, and it's covered with bugs instantly before you can get it to your mouth."
Luckily, she won't have to worry about that on Voyager.
"We don't have bugs in space," Ryan said, laughing. "No space flies, thank God."
Ryan became involved in the project after Miramax executives approached her with the role.
"They came to me with this project already underway and said 'we're going to add a little for you,'" she said. "It was great, because it was a small enough role so that I didn't have to work in every scene and it could work, logistically, with my Voyager schedule."
It's a luxury that Ryan has only recently been able to take advantage of.
"I've only maybe in the last six months been able to realistically look at outside projects to work on during Voyager because until this season it wasn't in my contract to have any out clauses to work on anything else."
Ryan said she enjoys appearing in both television and film -- but didn't have a favorite between the two.
"I go back and forth about that. I'm used to the pace of television. We shoot seven pages a day, maybe eight pages a day," she said. "In a film, we're shooting one and half to two and half pages a day, so that means one scene -- you're spending 12 to 15 hours a day on one scene. So if it's a scene you don't particularly care for, you're doing it all day, whether you like it or not."
Ryan said one of the best aspects of working on Voyager is the warm reception she gets from the fans.
"(At the conventions) you walk into a room, you could literally trip and fall on your face and they would give you a standing ovation. It's not a tough room to work, it's very, very flattering," she said, laughing. "They're so warm. I mean Star Trek fans really are the most passionate, dedicated, loyal fans that you could ever hope to have. It's really great fun."
She may have risen to cult status around the world as her role of Borg beauty Seven of Nine, but Ryan was initially against doing science fiction. As a matter of fact, she originally wasn't interested in Star Trek.
"It's kind of by default that I ended up doing sci-fi. That wasn't a conscious choice. I actually was trying to avoid doing Star Trek in the beginning because science fiction has never been my genre to watch," Ryan said. "And Star Trek is notorious for having actors who are then unable to break free of that Star Trek role and do anything else. That was initially a very big fear of mine. Fortunately that's not going to be the case."
She has only been looking for post-Voyager projects for the past month or two, but so far, the roles look promising. Ryan said she has been offered parts in several TV series and movies that look "very interesting."
However, Ryan didn't comment on exactly which projects she's leaning toward, or whether there will be any movies based on the Voyager series.
"It's still premature to say exactly what I'll be doing after Voyager," she said.
However, one things for sure -- Jeri Ryan's not likely to leave the public eye anytime soon.
