Stansfield's first job in the industry was a walk-on part in the Oliver Stone movie The Doors, and moved from there onto such cult shows as Twin Peaks and The Flash, to bigger roles in Best of the Best II with Eric Roberts and the Wesley Snipes vehicle Drop Zone. But it is the role of Alti that fans love and recognize her for. Everyone loves a villain.

GC: What attracted you to the role of Alti?
CS: Originally I didn't know that was the role they were offering me. I thought they were offering me the role of Cyane the Queen of the Amazons. So when I got the script and I started working on the Queen of the Amazons, my agent called me and said 'No, they want you to play the evil hag, Alti'. I wasn't so attracted to the role. [But] I realize that there are no accidents and you're meant to be playing whatever you're meant to be doing. I just sort of embraced her and tried to make her as scary as possible. That character made me stand up straight, be stronger, speak with more of a strong voice and just embrace a strong woman. To me Alti is so powerful and grounded, and that was why I think I was supposed to play her, in order to get to that point myself. Once I got to play her and they kept bringing me back again and again, it turned out to be a great gift. The fans really embraced Alti, and I think they were looking for another villain. They loved Callisto [played by Hudson Leick], she was the favorite villain, but I think there's always room for two.

GC: How did the character grow throughout the last three seasons?
CS: She got hotter and hotter, which is great. Initially she looked like she was about sixty, she was covered with possum pelts and could have weighed about two hundred pounds. And by the end, she's practically in a bikini having sex with Caesar. So she's come a long way. [laughs] She finally gets laid in the last episode. And she gets to take her clothes off, which is something Lucy was always rooting for. She's a good friend. She kept saying 'why are you covering her up? Get her to take her clothes off!' So she got her wish.

GC: This wasn't your first role as a villain.
CS: No. I've played a lot of bad girls. Because I'm tall and dark, I get type-cast. People think I'm a big strong tough woman, and I'm not. I get cast as evil characters a lot.

GC: What did you enjoy most about working on Xena?
CS: I think the whole look of the show. As an actor it's really fun to play around in a sci-fi fantasy world, where you get to fly and move objects with a stare and you can wear these unbelievable costumes. Most of the other characters I've played were in business suits and were just regular people. Alti used to do anything. I could come up with any reason why she was pissed. That's why I've come to think of her as "deliciously evil". She's like the smorgasbord of anything I could come up with.

GC: How much of your own stuntwork did you get to do?
CS: I got to do a lot of stuff. When Lucy was pregnant, I got to do even more. Usually they like at least one person in the shot to be the real person, and the other person is the stunt person. So when Lucy was not around I got to do a lot of my own stunt work. And then when we started working together and hanging out together and having fun together, they would have a stunt team come out, ready to jump in, and Lucy and I would go "No, no, we got it, we're into it, let's do it!" So a lot of the fighting, the hand-to-hand combat stuff, the kicking, the strangling - and a lot of the flying stuff. In the first couple of episodes - they had us way up high in harnesses and we were doing [the flying]. That was really fun to do. I thoroughly enjoyed it. For me, doing stunts and fight scenes, there's no acting involved, it's all reacting, and that's important. If you go for it, you're not acting, you're fighting. Obviously, you're not hitting anything, or getting hit, but you're putting everything into it.

GC: How long did you have to train with the stunt people in order to do some of the physical stuff?
CS: That's the funny thing is that I didn't, and that's why gradually I got better and better. But initially they just imagined that every actress in Hollywood is taking Tae Bo and karate and that they're fantastic. I was good with weapons, because I'd done Drop Zone and other movies where I had to learn how to use a machine gun, jump out of planes, so I was fine with the harness work and the flying. But swishing a sword, or anything, they'd literally come up to you five minutes before the take, hand you a plastic sword and say 'Okay let's figure out a little sequence here', and the next thing you know you're fighting twenty-five warriors. You just have to go for it. The best thing, though, [is that] they videotape everything separately for the directors, and after a fight scene, they'll let you watch and see what's not working and what does work, and that's a great tool in stunt work. This is about whether you punch somebody, or slash across the screen. It's about the 'sell'. It's if the stunt has been sold. It's not about 'Hey, did you like how you looked? Or how you said the words?' They just want to know if people will believe that you just head-butted her, even though you were two feet away from her face? I watched myself a couple of times, and you've just got to go for it, or it's just weak. I learned as I went along.

GC: Did you get along with Lucy Lawless?
CS: She's one of my best friends. I worship her. I just love her. She's been so supportive and so great I just can't think of a bad thing to say about her. [We immediately hit it off] from my first episode "Adventures in the Sin Trade". We were hanging there in the trees, with our umbrellas - because it rains every ten minutes in New Zealand - very "Mary Poppins"-like. And it was very serene and beautiful and so quiet. And they would just leave us up there, because to get us down and unharness us would take hours. So we just sort of bonded over the surreal moment of hanging in the trees. And we're close in age, and we just get along real well.

Did your chemistry as friends ever come through on the show?
CS: I think the only time it got to show was in the last episode. Before Alti to Xena was just this evil old hag, who could lure her, remind her of her dark side. She was more of a pest, and was a hard fight for Xena. In the last episode, we're fighting for the same guy, so all of a sudden we were two hot chicks - and the dynamic changes and it became more Lucy and Claire. Not to say we're two hot chicks in real life, but we were playing sex and jealousy, and that's more fun for women. 'Cause that's real. It was really fun for Lucy and me to play. It wasn't just old evil Alti, all crotchety, and not really a threat on a feminine level. When you throw that in it's a different dynamic. When you see women reacting on that level, it's more of a tango. I really loved working with her this last time. You got to see Lucy and Claire this time, a little bit. 'What if I stole your man?' It wasn't like [evil, raspy voice] 'Come with me to the dark side!' (laughs) Which is like 'Okay, whatever, you crazy bitch!' But this was like 'Hey man, back off! That's my guy!' And you can relate to that on a human real level. We'd have to shake it off afterwards and go to lunch together, and we're still making evil eyes at each other! (laughs)

GC: Before Xena you were on a memorable episode of The X-Files, playing a female Jersey Devil, how did that come about?
CS: For the "Jersey Devil", David Duchovny and I had done a commercial together, and then we remained friends. He was working on Twin Peaks, and then the dreaded Red Shoe Diaries. I was doing one, he was doing one, back to back in the same studio. We were just always running into each other and remained good friends. So when that part came up, he told Chris Carter that he knew the perfect person to play the she-monster. (laughs) They offered me the part, which was great. We shot up in Vancouver where my mother lived, so that was fun. And amazing person to play. I think they edited it well. It was just great to get back to that base, feral nature. In order to figure out what to do, I would watch animals at the zoo. I was fascinated by my dog. It was a lot of fun. My mother was a little dismayed at the time - [her] Hollywood starlet daughter standing around in a garbage dumpster in a thong, wasn't her idea of glamorous. But that was a great experience. At the time none of us knew that the show was going to become as big as it is. I got my little X-Files collectors card. I get two or three a week to autograph. And the following is huge, it's amazing. [I'm] not even surprised, though. I got the DVD of the first season and we had a little marathon here at the house and I kinda got the bug too.

GC: So you've gotten to be in a lot of great stuff.
CS: I've been really lucky. I've had some great parts in my life. I absolutely prefer [the action roles]. I don't have to worry about how I look. I think most of the time you're better when you're not aware of yourself. You can just get dirty and sweaty and having a good time. Everyone sits outside on the grass in Africa or Bulgaria or some of the other places I've been lucky enough to have gotten to work. They can't afford any trailers, so it's not like sitting on a lot at Warner Brothers waiting for someone to call you, waiting to read lines in some courtroom. I'm sorry, that's just boring. I prefer to be outside, like a kid, rolling in the dirt.

Visit Claire on the web at www.clairestansfield.com

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