Winning roles with a roll of the dice
Dominika Wolski walked into the audition for a role in CBC’s upcoming series jPOD wearing men’s underwear stuffed with unmatching socks.
She was supposed to be undressed for the scene, but decided to gamble and wear guy’s ginch instead.
“I just thought it was funnier than being naked and taking those kinds of risks has paid off before. That’s what helps me make those decisions again and again and again,” said the former Vernon resident, who graduated from Vernon Secondary School in the mid-90s.
The directors, seeing a quirky connection between Wolski’s rendition of a character called Ellen Steel and the new TV show, based on Douglas Coupland’s bestseller jPOD, gave her the role.
Wolski beat 4,000 other actors who wanted to be Steel, a costume designer with Kill Bill-style martial arts moves.
“It’s like a dream role,” she said.
In the premiere episode, airing Tuesday night, Steel goes from looking demure in a dress to fighting bad guys inside an embassy using a tactic titled Monkey climbs tree and breaks coconut.
In a second episode, Wolski’s woman gets tricked into getting on a barge heading for China after eating pot in her underwear.
Before her two-episode stint with jPOD, which documents the eccentric lives of five video game company workers and stars Alan Thicke, Wolski didn’t have experience with either marijuana or martial arts.
“That’s part of the joy of being an actor – when you get to learn something new.”
It’s been a year of firsts for Wolski, who made it back to her parent’s house in Coldstream twice this year, most recently at Christmas after a four-month Hollywood hiatus.
Over the holidays Wolski spent time with her parents, Szczepan and Lucyna, marine biologists who run the Shuswap River Hatchery.
She got her dad to make her soup and walked around their yard to hear snow crunching under her boots.
“It’s just those little creature comforts.”
“This was really the big year,” Wolski said from Vancouver, where she lives.
The actress became the face of the new eco-couture jewelry line from celebrity designer Elizabeth Moore’s Froote label and recently landed the role of Miranda May in the sci-fi film The Vanquisher, which she’s currently shooting in Vancouver.
All that after 2006, when she walked the red carpet with Leonardo DiCaprio, who used her and boyfriend Nick Bicanic’s documentary Shadow Company as research for the blockbuster Blood Diamond.
Wolski, who recently ordered a pair of hemp underwear from England, wants to use her position to promote clean diamonds and environmentally-friendly jewelry by wearing it whenever she can.
“I feel like that’s something I can do,” Wolski said, adding she had Froote design the necklace she will wear in The Vanquisher and also wore her pieces in the jPOD episodes.
Whether it’s outside a premiere or on the set, Wolski said she rarely worries about who is who around her.
Immigrating to Canada from Poland and trying to learn English at the age of seven was the lesson of a lifetime for her.
“Once you overcome that, Los Angeles doesn’t seem that intimidating. I don’t ever think, ‘I can’t do this.’”
Something about small city life or being surrounded by and nature and animals, including a German shepherd she thought was a sibling, might have had an impact too.
“I’m really grateful for my roots. I’m very grateful something in me doesn’t have that craziness about being famous.”
Wolski, who hasn’t seen jPOD yet, is excited to watch it and hearing her parents’ reaction.
“I think they’ll enjoy the mix of comedy and me being this funny, crazy person. It’s a really good exhibit of acting.”
Wolski, whose other dream role would be to play a female Indiana Jones, enjoys acting as anyone more complicated than a doll.
“It’s really easy to get typecast. I often get dumb blonde or the girl drinking a beer in the corner and I say to my agents, ‘please don’t send me out for that.’”
“It’s a lot more interesting to play crazy people.”
When she’s not going for acting gigs, Wolski also works as a model, photographer, and screenwriter.
Judging by her checklist of accomplishments to date, it won’t be long before she’s watching the scripts she has co-written come to life.
Intrigued by tales that evoke the possibility of true love, Wolski’s works do just that.
“I’m really into romance, not in the sense of a chick flick ... but in the sense of an adventure.”
Watch Wolski in the jPOD premiere, airing Tuesday at 9 p.m. on CBC. The Vanquisher is expected to be released late in 2008.
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