But, only a few years ago, Lawless was taking her act underground. "I worked for a gold mining company in Australia," she explains in a Kiwi accent that's camouflaged on the show. "I was out in the outback digging away. There weren't nuggets lying around on the earth. They measure gold, in dirt and in parts, per million and billion. There was no gold to be seen but it was very interesting to the qualified geologist."

Lawless originally surfaced on HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS as Lysia, an Amazonian lieutenant (1994 TV movie, HERCULES AND THE AMAZON WOMEN), and Lyla, a centaur's spouse (As Darkness Falls episode, 2/20/95). She debuted as Xena in another HERCULES episode, The Warrior Princess (3/13/95). Lawless now seems so indelibly linked to the role that one assumes she was the producers' first choice. "I was sort of the local backup girl if everybody else fell through," admits Lawless, "and which they did, God bless their little hearts." While the producers were impressed with the actress' dramatic talent, distributors were insistent upon a Yank playing the title role in the XENA television series. But when the initial contenders proved inaccessible, and as production dates drew closer, the New Zealander was pitched as the Warrior Princess. One problem: the casting office couldn't communicate with the actress. It seems that Lawless, unaware that she bagged the role, had set out on a camping trip. Fortunately, within one week, the actress was told of the news and dispatched to wardrobe.

"I think a lot of people don't turn on our show because they think that it's silly karate fantasy," says Lawless. "But they're missing out on a great show. I'm so blessed to have this role which offers me unlimited challenge in all directions. I've never been bored in the role. As hard as it's been or as pleasurable, it's never been easy. The comedies are a little more rewarding than the dramas for me because they take less out of me, and they give me a lot of yucks. I do enjoy them a little more these days. I really appreciate this role. There is not an actress alive, much less dead, who has had such a wide role in any television series ever."

The series had been invariably tailored as a dark-edged, action-driven saga. However, Lawless' comic timing offered the writers some latitude to stray from the straight-faced spear'n' sandal pageantry. Warrior...Princess...Tramp (1996), written by R.J. Stewart, is one of the series' more farcical episodes. The premise united Xena with a couple of look-alikes: Diana, a naive princess, and dimwitted, bawdy Meg. A triple role usually furnishes an actress with enough time to cosmetically and emotionally slip into each of the characters. "But you haven't got time to be shooting like that," laughs Lawless. "That's a luxury we can't afford on our schedule. That's why there aren't that many physical differences between the characters, because I would have to go in one shot from playing Meg to playing Diana to playing Xena - all in the same half an hour! It took a bit of mental gymnastics but I loved that. I can't tell you how pleasurable that is. I had to method it out a little beforehand-- "'Okay, I'm playing me dressed as the princess who is pretending to be Xena.' It's pretty complex. But it's real fun. I'm the sort of actress who can't over-prepare. It just steals all my spontaneity. So I set my mind on this character, pretending to be this character dressed as this character. I'm playing Meg and, at this stage of the episode, I only know so much of the plot where another character would be further ahead in their understanding of the world. I map these things out loosely beforehand and then I just go and become it. For me, that's the most pleasurable, best way to work and seems to get the most laughs."

The gimmick was so successful that it was recycled the following season as Warrior. .Priestess... Tramp (1/12/98). The episode reacquainted Xena with Meg, who's fundioning as a bartender in a local brothel The third spoke in this comedic wheel is Leah, a Hestian vestal virgin: Lawless plays the character using her own voice but with a distinctive lisp.

In The Furies (9/29/97), a scheming Area conspires with goddesses to drive the Warrior Princess mad, a punitive strike for Xena's resistance to avenge her father's death The stage direction of the script, written by RJ. Stewart, actually alluded to the Three Stooges and Lawless 'whack-out, woo-woo-woo demeanor eclipses all memories of Shemp Howard. "I'd never seen the Stooges before the night before," admits the actress. "I kind of knew how they acted because I'd previously seen Bruce Campbell ['Autolycus'] and kids impersonating them. I'd seen a little bit but never a whole Three Stooges picture. I finally saw [a Three Stooges two-reeler] the night before, and I sort of went with it. But I'm just basically an extremely silly person, anyway. When it works, it works. I think we're going to see a lot more comedy coming up."

But the Stooges panache eventually faded. By the fourth season, two-part opener, the daily grind finally exhausted Lawless. Retreating from the usual production locations, the episodes were filmed three hours south of Auckland on a desert road.

"Those two shows were extremely dark," Lawless recounts, "and it nearly killed me. They were exhausting, physically. It was freezing and that was just the beginning of a whole block of episodes, very 'Lucy-heavy' episodes. I was really pushed to my limits. Absolutely to the limit. I really had to change my way of looking at the world after those episodes because, otherwise, I was just going to become the sort of star that I never want to be--y'know, just somebody who thinks that nobody understands their pain. Just a brat, an adult brat, and I so disrespect that lack of professionalism--like the actors who won't come out of their trailers because they think that they're bigger than anybody else. I've never fallen into that trap, but I came to the point where I was just fighting to maintain equilibrium.

"It was the bleakest landscape. But I'm over it, so I can watch it now and I'm a little more detached. But, until now, I couldn't watch it because I could see my abject misery on the screen. Then it was raining and incredibly cold. I think I just hit the fourth season slump: that usually happens in the third season, and producers know this. Stars usually go through a time in their third season where they just have a complete conniption, and they become a pain in the ass to work with. I sort of sailed through my third season but, in the fourth, I just felt this terrible slump. I managed to sort of hide it to a large degree, but there wasn't any of that joie de vivre that I usually have. I really went on a downer. I've come through it and I'm so much better and happier, and appreciate all the great things I have in my life. But, for a period there, I couldn't. I just went through a desolate time. I have the man of my dreams, a great job, a happy, healthy daughter and a wonderful home. But I couldn't appreciate it."

Lawless, in fact, is literally saddled with one of the most herculean venues on TV. Horseback riding, tumbling, springing into the air, battling Roman legions. "I do all the fighting," she explains. "I have a stunt double because we don't have time to shoot everybody else's angles. They'll shoot everything that's facing me, they'll shoot all my angles and then they'll fight again on another day with a second unit team and my wonderful stunt woman, Zee. I keep fit but I'm not a martial artist. Our fighting is more like choreography. More like dancing. I have to stay really limber and strong and healthy, but I don't do martial arts training."

"Were you trained for this kind of combat?" I ask.

"Are you kidding?," she grins. "I didn't have training. I just went to work the first two years, and got smacked around until I learned how to do it. You learn pretty quickly that way. Training?? There's no mollycoddling. The way we shoot this is akin to almost guerrilla shooting. It's not like shooting in America. We are the wild, wild west and things are generally done for real, so what you see is what you get. I do have a riding double for anything that's too dangerous or that's going to give me a black eye: as an example, working with new actors, who have never fought before, is done with a stunt woman. You can get another stunt woman but I'm a little harder to replace."

I remind Lawless about the "gag" that ruined her grand entrance on THE TONIGHT SHOW. She was supposed to schmooze with Jay Leno: instead, she wound-up in the hospital. "I was riding a horse on concrete," she sighs. "It was a Western horse and I need an English horse. It's a completely different set of skills, and a completely different set of communication with the horse. Anyway, they got me a Western horse and I don't know how to ride western, and this horse was just pissed off .

"We did it a couple of times. It was fine and then they said, 'Okay, one more time for safety.' I came trotting in, and the horse's feet went swish-out on the pavement. I'11 never forget the sound of hoofs scraping on cement. And then the horse fell. I was thrown clear and I smashed my pelvis." While their star was recovering, the producers cleverly reworked a couple of scripts. All of a sudden, Xena was inhabiting the body of Callisto (Hudson Leick), courtesy of Ares. Ms. Leick was subsequently cast as a "substitute" Xena for a couple of episodes.

As a result of Lawless' intense shooting schedule, the focus occasionally shifts to Renee O'Connor's character, Gabrielle. "We shoot from late October until March," notes the actress, "and then we have a bit of a break. And then we'll shoot in October again. It's 32 weeks of filming, but we have little breaks because there's so much burn-out from all sorts of departments. The Gabrielle shows are designed to give me a break--or when it's convention time, or I have to go and do a big thing for the industry somewhere."

A highlight of the third season was The Bitter Suite, a musical episode that tapped into the star's vocal talent. Lawless' soulful warbling, evinced at an early age, was later honed by three years of operatic training. "We did big musicals in school when I was a kid," she says. "I studied for a little bit as a singer, but halfheartedly. All I wanted to be was an actress, really, and so it's not like I've sung forever. Because of the amount of yelling that I do in XENA, and the looping after work--and when I do all the fights all over again--I just rip my throat to bits: so singing is not really an option until I finish the TV series. Possibly my voice is never going to be what it was. It is something that I would have liked to have used, but I would still choose XENA over a singing career any day.

"I did my own singing for that episode. That show was so difficult to logistically produce .You've got a choreographer-director, you've got to have musicians with the music done first. It was such a big job that I don't think they'll ever do it again. That's why other shows don't even do them. It was a wonderful chance for me to really learn to sing, and do it with a wonderful engineer who gave me a lot of help learning to sing and I just loved it."

In September, 1997, Lawless joined the ensemble of Grease, which was revived on Broadway. She was cast as Rizzo, the leader of the Pink Ladies whose hard exterior disguises a heart of gold (Stockard Channing played the role in the 1978 movie adaptation). "Grease was a great experience," she enthuses. "I loved that community. My New York girlfriend from that play came out to Los Angeles for my wedding and never stopped working here. I made some lifelong friends out of that. I just love New York so much."

Writers Adam Armus and Nora Key Foster contrived a change of scenery for the TV series via The Xena Scrolls (1/13/97). During the 1940s, an archeologist and her assistant exhume parchments which chronicle the adventures of a certain Warrior Princess and her sidekick. The episode offered Lawless and Renee O'Connor an opportunity to perform dual roles. "I loved that," laughs Lawless. "I loved putting on modern clothes. I got to use a Southern accent or something. It was just a delight. Ted Raimi was in it- just looking incredibly suave and gorgeous--and Renee played the toughie, the Barrison Ford character. Call it Renee O'Connor in the Temple of Doom. It was just a funny story. I loved getting out of the armor, you have no idea, and I looked like such a putt. I'm wearing sort of a little bonnet thing and I've got my hair pulled back. It was incredibly unflattering, but I just loved being out of costume. It was my dream. I loosely plan what I want to do and just go in, but that's my acting style. I've experimented with different ways of working, but this really works best for me--you know, what with the way my brain operates, and the way everything happens. I just go in there and love it and laugh. Anything that makes the crew laugh is generally a hit, so that's what we gauge it upon."

The two Greek icons were again drawn together for a full-length cartoon, HERCULES AND XENA-THE ANIMATED MOVIE: THE BATTLE FOR MOUNT OLYMPUS. Kevin Sorbo and Lawless literally gave voice to their TV counterparts. Peter Stack, San Francisco Chronicle critic, noted, "the multi-talented Lawless sings. She sounds like a real pop star, a surprising dimension for TV's kung-fu princess." So is Lawless now a candidate for Disney? "I'm ready baby, I'm ready," she says gleefully. "It was quite difficult at the time. I think I was a bit intimidated by the process, and I found it difficult to be Xena (a) out of costume and (b) just the sound of my own voice kind of scared me. I found that surprisingly difficult just standing around in the booth. Boy, I'm ready to do another one. The next time I do one I'11 understand how that works a little better, so I can imagine things more fully than I could at the time."

Lawless' voice was also critical to the development of the "warrior scream," one of Xena's trademarks. "[Executive producer] Rob Tapert wanted, for lack of a better word, a gimmick," she explains. "He wanted something like Tarzan's yodel. We were watching CNN and there were those Arabic women who make that sound, and he said, 'That's kind of what I want.' But I couldn't do it the way they did, so I just bastardized it and made up my own and it seems to have stuck. You don't want to hear that in an enclosed space."

As a New Zealand native, Lawless speaks with a pronounced accent identified as Kiwi, a name derived from an indigenous, flightless bird. Since XENA was initially produced for American television, the actress had to lose any trace of an accent. 'The accent isn't difficult anymore," she says. "It used to be when I came back from hiatus, it would take me a couple of days to get word perfect again. I think I'm past that part but the second they call 'Cut!,' I'm back. I start talking like a Kiwi. I think I could slip into being an American the whole time."

Lesbians see Xena's rapport with constant companion Gabrielle as sapphic bonding and embrace the TV heroine as a role model. "I guess that episode #4 or #5 had aired," relates Lawless, "so we were a way down the road when we heard how the lesbians had grabbed onto the show and gravitated towards it. We found that so amusing, and intriguing, that we started to pepper scenes with ad libs. It was just us and the crew, and some of them made it into the final cut. So, at that point, we fanned the flames and then there were things that the producers wrote that were definitely ambiguous or not even ambiguous: but we've never gone all the way, so to speak. We've never stated that and I kind of like that. I like the fact that she might or she might not be. 'What's it to you ?' That's our attitude. What difference does it make? Just as a piece of sociology...it's interesting."

Xena obviously broached a heterosexual dalliance or two. In fact, she seduces Iolaus in The Warrior Princess and is reunited with her nine-year-old son in Orphan of War. "She's had one child on the show," says Lawless. "She's learning that a new evil power had a hand in her child's early demise [pauses]...Just some nice, easy, little comedies, Dan, that's all I'm asking. I don't mind playing dual or even triple roles, but just don't let me give birth to anymore centaurs."

Upcoming scenarios, related to the TV series, are generally a mystery to Lawless: the actress isn't part of the scripting process--and she'd prefer to keep it that way. '"they don't tell me, Dan," she says with a lift of her eye-brows. "They just don't tell me. It's a big surprise to me--and a big surprise to them what they get back. That is how we work. To tell the truth, I don't like to hear about a script because it just makes me anxious. Things are either far better or far worse than I anticipate, so there is no point in me anticipating anything. I'm much better if I just hear about things three or four days before. That's a good time frame for me. We've learned not to discuss that stuff. It's on a'need to know' basis. Lucy doesn't have to know."

Only yesterday, Lucy Lawless was gold mining in the wilderness. Today, her celebrity is global: though HERCULES has been canceled, XENA has been renewed for another season. "The series has changed my life in every way, I guess," she said. "My daughter is the one constant in my life and now my husband. I own one pair of socks from my old life. Everything has changed. I still see my old friends but so rarely. I've had to accept my work as my social life because I spend so much time there. I always look to be happy so, when things are a little bit of a struggle, I learn to deal with it. I used to just sail through life: but now I don't sail. It's very re- warding but it's hard work. I've had to become much more responsible. I can't just take a day off work because there are people who depend on me to pay their mortgages. I've had to become more responsible in every sort of way."

Adhering to the demands of the role is a challenge for the 31-year-old actress, who slaps-on Xena's signature steel and leather for 32 weeks per year 'That's why I don't need to get too far ahead," explains Lawless. "I'm always fighting to keep on top of it, health-wise and work-wise. I've got to be physically on top of it. And I've got to be happy. I'm the morale officer. I'm in so much of the show that everybody is looking at me all the time: if behave badly, it effects everybody so I'm very cognizant of my responsibilities toward everybody. They're working the same hours I am and they're not getting paid the same money. They come to work with joy, so why shouldn't I? It's always about trying to be a better person."

So what's on Lawless' agenda once Xena permanently retires? "More kids," she says quickly. "Professionally, I don't want to just tell silly stories. I don't know what it is that I'm going to do, but I want to do something that makes a difference. I want to be part of something that either makes people laugh or makes people think and feel. I don't want to do anything in between. I would pick my projects carefully."

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