Eliza Dushku goes from 'Buffy' to group sex

FORBIDDEN DESIRES: Kuno, left, and Eliza Dushku costar in "Sex and Breakfast," about couples who experiment with group sex.

In 'Sex and Breakfast,' the 26-year-old actress explors a controversial topic.

By Rachel Abromowitz, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 29, 2007

IF you make a movie about group sex, you must be prepared to own up to your point of view on the subject. But when actress Eliza Dushku, star of the indie "Sex and Breakfast," which opens in limited release Friday, is asked whether she's pro or con group canoodling, she giggles, before fessing up, she's more of a monogamous kind of gal.

"It doesn't even make sense to me," she says on the phone from her childhood home in Watertown, Mass., where she spent the Thanksgiving holiday. That would be a pass from Dushku, 26, best know for her stint on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and as the title character on the series "Tru Calling." That's why they call it actin. "Let us live it up for you," she cracks.

Sex is certainly a hot topic in Hollywood, whether it's sexual dysfunction, unplanned sex, too much sex, too little sex. Sexual problems seem so distinctly less nihilistic -- so eminently solvable -- compared with the war in Iraq or global warming or anything else in the newspapers. The burdens of sex are driving such comedies as "superbad," "Knocked Up" and "Juno," as well as the TV dramas like "Californication" and "Tell Me You Love me."

Now come the twentysomethings' turn. "Sex and Breakfast" tracks two couples ("Home Alone's" all-grown up Macauley Culkin, Kuno Becker, Alexis Dziena and Dushku) who've lost the passion in their relationships and consult a therapist who advocates commnunal sex. Still, Dushku points out, the movie in less risque than your average Paris Hilton sex tape.

Although she doesn't play the girl next door, Dushku, a sloe-eyed beauty with an insouciant air, steers away from her more typical screen image as "the bad, sexy girl." She was pleased when writer-director Miles Brandman, 26, offered her the other female lead, the not-so-adventurous-as-she-thinks woman who's "more personal and just vulnerable at times, raw."

Dushku has been acting since she was 10, debuting opposite Juliette Lewis in "That Night." She played Arnold Schwarzenegger's daughter in the James Cameron film "True Lies," traveling for nine months to locations all over the world. "I hung off airplanes in Miami. My poor mother was standing on the rooftop. My mother is a political science professor. Never, ever in a million years would sh ehave put me in this business, except I tripped and fell in my brother's audition when I was 9."

Dushku admits that she got "sober" a couple of years ago, and that has made a difference. "I'm clean and relatively unscathed by the whole process."

Up nest is "Dollhouse," the TV reunion between Dushku and "Buffy" creator Joss Whedon. Part "Truman Show," part "Alias," the series will beging shooting after the writers strike is settled. The new show concerns people who live in a biosphere who are imprinted with personalities and sent on spy-like missions, after which their memories are wiped. Dushku, who also executive-produces the series, says, "It's the ultimate outlet for me to direct this constant stream of crazy energy. I get to be a new personality every week."