Buffy The Vampire Slayer

AZURA SKYE—"BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER"

In season seven of “Buffy,” Skye plays Cassie Newton, who escapes a murderous cult only to die in Buffy’s arms from a heart attack. “It’s kind of a joke,” Skye says, “whenever I tell my mom that I’m working on something, her first question is always, ‘Oh, do you die?’ because I die on screen so much. I don’t know why, maybe I have some sort of tragic quality.” In addition to her “Buffy” stint, Skye’s overdosed on the bathroom floor in 28 Days and fallen off a bridge and gotten hit by a train in One Missed Call.

It’s always kind of an exciting day when you get to go to work and play dead, because everything is centered around you, yet you’re a very passive part of the scene. I kind of go into another place, like a type of meditation. You don’t want your chest going up and down, so you try to get your heart rate slow and get really comfortable. The most challenging part is there’s usually a big light source just off the side of the camera, so it’s hard to keep your eyes from fluttering. I kind of imagine myself to be like a doll with glass eyeballs. As for falling gracefully, I have a lot of ballet training and I’m a fairly physical person, so I think that probably helps. It’s definitely a skill. I think I’m just good at turning into a ragdoll and collapsing.

In One Missed Call I have a vision of myself dead, and I was very cadaverous looking in that scene, so I had about three hours of special effects makeup. And then they tried putting contact lenses in and I hadn’t been fitted for them before, and as soon as they put them in my eyes started tearing like crazy and it washed off all their hours of makeup, and we had to start all over.

When I was doing 28 Days and I overdosed on the bathroom floor, Sandra Bullock’s character keeps slapping my face to get me to try and wake-up. She’s a very experienced and gentle slapper, and she did it with a limp wrist, but the next day, the right side of my jaw was very sore, and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with my face, and then I realized, ‘Oh, I was slapped about 30 times yesterday. That probably had something to do with it.’