Interview with Mira Furlan, Lost's Danielle Rousseau

Mira Furlan was born in Yugoslavia, now known as Croatia. She started her acting in Yugoslavia where she produced a number of films and was a well-known actress. In 1991 she moved over to New York with her husband where she had to start her career again because no one really knew her outside of Europe. She is now known for some of her work in America, including Babylon 5 and the TV show Lost.

I got the chance to have a chat with Mira Furlan when she attended the event Armageddon in Melbourne, Australia. She joined a number of actors and actresses including, Helen Slater, Alaina Huffman, AJ Buckley and Travis Wester.

She spoke about her experience in Lost and in Babylon 5, the different experience she had when she moved over to America, the reason why she became an actress and which country she would love to visit.

When conducting the interview Mira had just flew in and was quite tired because of the 20 hour flight to Melbourne, “I’m very tired because it is a very very long flight, but it’s a beautiful city very charming and cosy”.

Although she did star in the TV show Lost, Mira talks about how she wishes her character’s role in the storyline was much bigger. She pictured a different story arch for her character, however, was killed in season 4 and later shown in flashbacks, “It was a beautiful role, unfortunately it didn’t have the development that I would have liked. For me it was just a stretch of that character”.

When asked who she wished she had more scenes with in the Lost cast she answered Terry O’Quinn who played John Locke.

Coming from a country she knew so well and a lot of people knew her was hard for Mira but it definitely changed her life for the better. Mira talked about how filming in Croatia or Bosnia is so much different to filming in America. What is considered a big or huge production in Croatia is a very low budgeted production in America.

For Mira, she knew she wanted to be an actress at a very young age, when she was in high-school she performed in a play and she had an epiphany on stage that she knew she wanted to do this for the rest of her life, “On that stage I had a feeling of empowerment and magic, those two things together, it mesmerised me. This profession can give you a lot of happiness but it can also have unhappiness and frustration. You have to find a good balance”.

Mira mentioned different amazing actors that have influenced her in her journey as an actor she mentioned Meryl Streep, Anthony Hopkins, Robert Downey Jr, Matthew McConaughey, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Heath Ledger. “Unfortunately some of the best are also the one that have troubles in their lives, it’s seems like an easy profession but there are definitely struggles in it.”

Aside from acting Mira has a strong passion in both music and languages, she has produced a number of songs, written a play that is being produced and she has even written a book in Serbian, which she also plans to have it translated in English. Mira speaks a fair bit of languages, including French, German, English, Croatian and some Spanish and Italian.

In Mira’s panel on Sunday’s Armageddon she briefly spoke about the shift in women roles in films when she came to America. In Croatia she was playing a lot of different women that were abused or raped or always second to a man, but when she came to America she was playing roles that empowered women and were equal or higher than a man in films. It was a different experience for her but she definitely liked the shift in power for women roles.

Mira said she had plans to try a visit Bali after the Armageddon event, however, she has to flight out to Europe six days after she returns from Australia to work on a project, which she couldn’t mention anything about it because it is clouded in secrets but will be revealed soon. So look out for any news about what Mira is currently working on!

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