It's all about balance for The Listener's Lauren Lee Smith

by Glen Schaefer

It's hard to pin actor Lauren Lee Smith down, either geographically or thematically.

The Vancouver-born Smith has been mixing locations and genres ever since showing up briefly in the Sylvester Stallone action flick Get Carter more than a decade ago, with work ranging from high-gloss U.S. TV to edgy Canadian indies.

"I go where the work is, it's a bit of a triangle between Vancouver, Los Angeles and Toronto," says Smith over the phone from Toronto, where she's just finishing the last few episodes of the paranormal cop show The Listener.

She joined the show in the second season as Michelle McCluskey, a police sergeant who teams up with mind-reading paramedic Toby Logan (Craig Olejnik). The role follows her earlier stint as one of the investigators on the ninth season of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

So two cop shows in a row make for a trend, right? Smith doesn't agree.

"This was the opposite of what I did on CSI, where I was this snarky young girl acting like the guys in a way, being this tough chick."

Her Listener character is the one in charge, and to prepare Smith spent time with a woman police sergeant in Toronto.

"She said it's very unrealistic for a woman to try to act like one of the guys, to try to be a dude," says Smith. "So that's been the challenge this season, having this writing with a very tough character, and finding ways to tone it down, so she doesn't come across as too hard-edged."

The show reunites her with Toronto's Clement Virgo, who is one of the executive producers and directed several episodes. Their last collaboration was 2005's steamy indie drama Lie With Me, a long way from The Listener's network TV cops.

"For me it's all about balance," says Smith. "I did this film last year called Hindenburg, a period piece, a big epic. Then I came to Vancouver and did the lowest budget film I've ever done in my life."

That was director Terry Miles' twisted family drama A Night for Dying Tigers, also starring fellow Vancouverites Gil Bellows, Tygh Runyan and Jennifer Beals, which played festivals last fall. Adding to Smith's pile of work this past year was a co-starring role in Toronto with actor-writer Ken Finkelman in 13 episodes of his HBO Canada sitcom Good Dog, set to premiere this March.

"I play his much, much younger live-in girlfriend," she says. "It was my first jump into the genre of comedy, so to balance something like that with The Listener ... I'd be a little bit scared to go totally mainstream, I still like doing the crazy, weird indie stuff."

Meanwhile, Smith is set to do something completely different for her after The Listener wraps. She's taking a break to spend time with her family in Vancouver.

"But if something completely opposite to The Listener presents itself, then I would be happy to do that."

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