Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Musetta Vander was a true man-eater when she came to Sunnydale High as teacher Natalie French.

“I get a lot of people who say they wish their teacher were like me,” says Musetta Vander, best known to Buffy fans as the seductive substitute teacher Natalie French.

Appearing in the first season’s “Teacher’s Pet,” Vander says her trip to the dark side allowed her to really cut loose as an actress: “It’s always more fun being on the bad team,” she says. “There’s always more crazy things you can get up to. I don’t prefer (playing villains), it’s just that there’s more range to what you can do with it. There’s no real limits on playing a villain.”

Few roles call on an actress to devour the heads of her lovers as Vander did on Buffy. But other than her on-screen noggin nibbling, Vander says the off-screen moments were a wonderful experience.

“I found the show really easy to work with,” she says. “Of course, most of my scenes were with Nicholas Brendon. He was really the person I spent most of my time with, but I was impressed with how hard they all worked.”

Still, the most impressive stunt belonged to Vander, who was able to spin her head all the way around. How did she manage that?

“They would make me stand on exactly the same mark, and I turned my head in whatever direction,” says Vander. “Then they’d match it (digitally in post production) and keep my head turning, to make it look like my head was doing a 180-degree turn. That was pretty cool.”