Morena Baccarin

WHO IS SHE?:

Brazilian-Italian beauty Morena Baccarin, the 23-year-old New Yorker (by way of Rio de Janeiro), catches eyes as Inara, a revered sex worker on Fox TV’s acclaimed new "space Western" Firefly, set 800 years in the future. The daughter of a South American stage and TV actress, Morena moved with her family to Greenwich Village when she was 10 and later attended LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts (the Fame high school), before she entered the theater program at Juilliard, where Wes Bentley was a classmate.

WHAT HAS SHE DONE?:

Fresh out of college, Morena landed her first movie role in the improvised fashion world comedy Perfume with Rita Wilson, Carmen Electra, Kylie Bax and Mariel Hemingway. That was followed by a lead role in the film festival hit Way Off Broadway. Shortly before heading to Los Angeles, Morena appeared in the acclaimed Central Park production of The Seagull with Natalie Portman. Firefly is her first television show.

WHY DO WE CARE?:

This dark and beautiful actress stirs the imagination as a royal courtesan on television. She’s got the looks and the talent to make it on the stage and the screen, and she’s got brains to boot.

Playboy.com: You acted with Natalie Portman and understudied for her role in last year’s Central Park production of The Seagull. Any stories about Natalie?

Morena Baccarin: We chatted some. She’s a very, very nice, very smart girl. She’s got a great heart. She’s a foster mom for dogs before they get adopted, so sometimes I would baby-sit the dogs while she was onstage.

PB: Now that you’re starring in a sci-fi show, have you talked to her about her role in Star Wars as Princess Amidala?

MB: I haven’t. While we were doing The Seagull, I didn’t anticipate that I’d be in space, too. I did talk to her about doing that and what it was like. She said it was very intense in terms of costumes and everything you have to wear. I can now understand, but I think mine are a little easier. They’re very simple, but I get to wear the most exotic and interesting costumes I think.

PB: On Firefly, you play Inara, a "companion" or highly revered sex worker better compared to a courtesan than a call girl. On the show, companions are universally respected and they choose their partners. Is this an enlightened attitude of the future, do you think?

MB: I think so. I think it could be something very interesting because she’s modeled in some ways after a geisha. There’s a lot of ceremony and history that comes with being that character. They say that geishas are keepers of tradition, and Inara has a very old-fashioned feel to her. She went to a companion academy, a training school, as a child, where she learned different languages and different instruments. Very cultured. It seems like she’s a keeper of an older tradition in a world where everything is so fast and about survival, and it’s more about indulging the senses and the arts. It’s so fun.

PB: What is Inara’s code of behavior?

MB: She doesn’t sleep with any crew on the ship. That would be bad. There’s this thing called the Companion Database where a client enters their name. I will look it up and pick and choose really carefully whom I’ll choose to be my client. You start to have the same clients over and over because you do know them and it’s more revered that way.

PB: What kind of research did you do for the role?

MB: I’ve been fascinated with geishas for a long time. I read that book Memoirs of a Geisha, and I really loved it, and there’s another book called Geisha: The Life, the Voices, the Art with beautiful pictures of geishas today in Japan. I’m reading a book right now about legalizing prostitution. I’m very curious about that because I’m not sure how I feel either way. There are pros and cons to it. There are very strange and interesting arguments. The argument is that it might clean up its association with drug dealing if it were legal. For example, places like the Mustang Ranch seem like a very controlled environment. But also, it’s bizarre because it seems to me the women there don’t really live like regular people. They’re confined to that space and they’re objects.

PB: Were you a big sci-fi fan before this show?

MB: No, I never really watched sci-fi shows. I loved Star Wars, of course.