Karina
Lombard is currently
best known for her role as the woman who seduced Tom Cruise on the
beach in The Firm, or as Brad Pitt's wife in Legends
of the Fall, but beginning next summer she will be known to
a whole new fan base as the woman who seduces Mia Kirshner's previously-heterosexual
character in The L Word.
A
Showtime series set to premiere in the summer of 2003, The L
Word features a cast of well-known and semi-known actresses,
including Jennifer Beals, Pam Grier,
and Laurel Holloman, among others, and revolves around Kirshner's
character Jenny as she moves to L.A. with her boyfriend and subsequently
begins to question her sexuality after befriending her new lesbian
neighbors (played Beals and Holloman).
In
the pilot, Lombard plays the pivotal role of Marina, "the fabulous
seductress who rocks Jenny's world" according to series creator
Ilene Chaiken. In a interview with Curve magazine, Kirshner
describes her initial sex scene with Lombard as "not pretty
and "not sexy" since her character Jenny is crying because
she's frightened by the implications of her first sexual experience
with a woman--but her affair with Marina profoundly moves her, and
sets off a chain of events which changes her life irrevocably.
Karina
Lombard has the most diverse ethnic background
of any of the The L Word cast members--her maternal grandparents
are Lakota Indians from South Dakota and her father is Swiss Russian-Italian--and
she speaks English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Born in
Tahiti, Karina moved with her father to Barcelona with she was only
a year old and subsequently attended a number of private Swiss boarding
schools.
Although
Lombard admits that she was never really educated about her Native
culture because her father and his family discouraged it, she maintains
her Native heritage "is inside of me and I feel quite connected
to it." Consequently, she always tries to ensure "that
Native Americans be represented in the best and most truthful light
possible" in the roles she plays.
On
a trip to New York as a teenager, Lombard was "discovered"
by Bruce Weber for an ad campaign on Native Americans. She got her
acting start at eighteen as a half-Tahitian and half-English girl
in the Canadian miniseries L'isle, and then moved to New
York to launch her American acting career with a small part in The
Doors in 1991. Two years later she won a "First Americans
in the Arts" award as a Native American Actress for her role
in Wide Sargasso Sea, in which she played a Creole woman
in Jamaica. She also played a Native American woman in 1993's Legends
of the Fall, as Brad Pitt's wife, and had a memorable role
a year earlier as the prostitute who seduces Tom Cruise on the beach
in The Firm.
Along
the way, she also appeared as a slave girl in Kull the Conquerer
(1997), a photographer in Footsteps (aka Deception,
2001), and a police chief in the 2000 telefilm Murder at the
Cannes Film Festival.
Early
cast photos released by Showtime don't
appear to feature Lombard's character Marina as a prominent part
of the series after its pilot, and interviews with Chaiken or the
cast seem to focus primarily on the characters played by Kirshner,
Beals, Holloman, and Grier. Hopefully Chaiken and the writers will
find a way to integrate Lombard's character more prominently
into the series on a long-term basis, and next January we will find
that Marina is more than just a short-term plot device.
January
2004 Update From watching
the first half of the first season of The L Word, and hearing
spoilers about the second, it is clear that Marina has a persistant
presence on The L Word throughout the first season. But
whether or not she will factor into the second season remains to
be seen. More
information, news, interviews and commentary on The L Word
available here.
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