It’s all or nothing for Kiwi actress Rose McIver, who’s setting out to leave her mark on the world.
She’s worked on a host of Kiwi productions, from Shortland Street to Legend of the Seeker to Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones.
Now though, she’s now best known for playing brain-eating crime-solver Liv Moore on US television show iZombie.
This sees her living full time in LA, and while she talks fondly about missing New Zealand, she’s calling California home.
“I miss the seasons. That with the way the sky changes you’re able to start anew. It gives you some markers in the year and without that it’s kind of strange, it’s one really long, hot day,” she says.
“And I would love to do projects back home, but really I just want to work on something that I adore and wherever that takes me is where I’ll go.”
Where that’s taken her now is into sci-fi/horror territory.
Her character is a zombie who has to eat brains to stay alive. She takes on the memories and character traits of whoever’s brain it was, and uses the insight to solve crime.
Yet she says being a zombie is the least important part of the show.
“We call it a zom-com-rom-drama,” McIver laughs.
“Liv’s just a girl who’s had a really painful relationship break-up and change of career path and is still trying to work out her own identity. She’s in her mid-20s, and I look around at myself and a lot of my friends who have experienced a lot of these things where you’ve just got to assess your connections with people and what you’re doing with your life and your meaning.”
But McIver’s selling herself short. She’s been living in LA for five years and is now on a show which gives her stability and steady work for the foreseeable future – something she says is a luxury in the entertainment business.
“It’s great to be able to build a character that you know and can stay with for a couple of years, that’s really fantastic and you develop great relationships with people you work with and you’re able to play more as an actor, I think,” she says.
That said, she’s not ruling out any more film or theatre work or even moving back home, it’s all just a matter of finding the right project.
“I don’t want to ever be somewhere wishing I was somewhere else, so while I’m here this is home, but I’m very open to seeing what the next few years brings.”
Source: bleedingcool.com