ake into consideration that her range has spanned such classical characters as Helen Keller, a young girl without sight, hearing or speech, to the immortal Glory, a god hell bent on destroying the world. Not a bad resume for a young actress from Delaware, Ohio. She took her love for the stage in a direction many attempt yet few conquer, but Clare Kramer is an outstanding actress who has a unique outlook on her profession, or maybe that should be 'inlook'. She's the consummate professional, highly articulate and thought out in her responses; then the relaxed young girl kicks in and she'll let drop a classic, 'Rad' or 'Dude, that's so awesome'. Make no mistake, this is no valley-girl, Clare is just your average, easy going, 20-something who is enjoying life. There are a band of actors who'll study their craft; exploring it, discovering what it has to offer them and what they can offer it in return, Clare is one of those unique individuals who sees just a bit beyond the camera lens. She understands her characters, she reasons and connects with them and she finds ways to portray them that are honest, colorful and quite a pleasure for her fans to watch and explore.

During the Starfury Bad Girls Convention last November, upstairs of the con in the 'green room', our UK staff writer/photographer Julie Reynolds and myself had the unique opportunity to interview someone who's never been on Angel, in fact, Glory had never even met the guy, yet a character just as admired by his fans as the fans of his counter vampire slayer, Buffy. We started out the interview with a little bit of levity. Two of the wonderfully overwhelming things about visiting England are the politeness of its people and their accents! Julie, who has a Yorkshire accent but resides in Milton Keynes asked Clare if she would mind her snapping a few photos during the interview, to which Clare stared blankly and asked after a brief pause, "What'd you say?" To which I whispered, 'It's the accent.' "I know!" Clare laughed, "Isn't that awful? I'd be like [during her previous question and answer panel], 'I'm sorry could you repeat that?' " Julie admitted that, "There're actually quite a lot of accents down there [in the conference hall] as well. Even I don't understand some of them." Still not quite sure of our present situation she asked Julie, "So, take pictures now? Or later?" so Julie made it easier on Clare by saying, 'I was just going to take them sort of natural as we go along.' "That's totally fine," responded Clare with a smile as she relaxed and settled in.

One of the more interesting aspects about the work that Clare involves herself in is the true variety of it. It seems by looking at the film work she had done of late and her involvement in Buffy, that she chooses her projects based on the pure enjoyment factor. The characters may be similar but they aren't constantly the same and there is always a quality that is challenging. It seems that she is always craving something different. "I am, you hit the nail on the head," Clare affirms. "I want diversity, I want characters that are different and I want projects that I'm going to enjoy doing, you know? Because if you're not enjoying your work, what's the point?" No bones about it, Clare cuts it right to the quick.

"I don't know why I connected so deeply with [Helen], but I just felt like I knew the pain she'd been through."

As a young girl, while figuring out what direction she wanted to follow, Clare was inspired by a profession not so unlikely for little girls with dreams of being in the spotlight, only it's not what you'd expect. Her ultimate career choice wasn't so much a result of what influence brought her into acting as what the option was that drove her away from her first passion. "Well, when I was young-young, I always wanted to be a ballet dancer," admits Clare. "My mom was a ballet dancer up until before I was born then she, obviously, stopped dancing and started teaching Kindergarten. I always took ballet and loved it, and thought this was going to be fabulous and a great career. Then the older I got I was like, 'That's a really hard job, where you can't eat,' " she emphasizes with a giggle. "So I was kind of looking at different things and just settled into acting. And then once I started studying the craft and the history of acting, that's when I really fell in love with it."

Clare started to become serious about action during her freshmen year of college. An interesting fact of the Joss Whedon alumni is that both Clare and Julie Benz (Darla) went to New York University. Although the two never worked together, nor had met until the Starfury Convention, they became fast friends over the course of the weekend. The West Coast has always been considered an actor's haven, and the University of Southern California the utmost in film schools to attend. But the East offers its own unique drive and opportunity that tends to tarnish the Hollywood shine for some and yet raise the bar for others. Clare agrees that NYU is a more definitive school for acting in terms of its distinctive benefits. "I definitely think so. The beauty of that school is you spend two days a week at NYU and you spend three days a week studying at a studio, which is where you learn your craft. You don't learn it from the 'college', you actually go out into the community and study things at different places. That's what drew me to the school and I think that's what draws a lot of different people, because there's the history of the studios as well as the University for your academics."

Earlier in the day, while Clare was holding her Q&A panel she spoke to fans of her performance as Helen Keller in the stage version of The Miracle Worker. The true-life story depicts the early life of Helen (1880 - 1968), although blind, deaf and mute from the age of six months, she learned to read, write and speak. Anne Sullivan taught Helen the principal of symbolic communication, their story shows the strength and power of human will and its ability to triumph over the most devastating disabilities. I was unaware that Clare had theatre experience and was very eager to ask her about this portion of her background. As it turns out she has been doing it for about seven years prior to getting into film work. "I did the National tour [of The Miracle Worker], I did (she pauses to reflect a moment) close to one hundred performances of that. It was awesome."

The Miracle Worker, stage presence personified

The story is one production that offers a lot of material if you're one to examine a role for a specific approach to the characters. Classic stage performances have previously featured Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft as well as the later film adaptation with Ms. Duke in the opposite role and Melissa Gilbert filling the shoes of Keller. But Clare opted not to refer to what had already been done and did not do a heavy on the research. "I didn't," she admits, "I didn't because I connected so deeply with that character from the beginning. That was one of those roles where I was just like, (she snaps her fingers - not with arrogance but with confidence) 'I got it!' I knew that I had it from the second I started doing my audition because to me, it felt so right. That's the kind of thing that you live for as an actor. And I don't know why I connected so deeply with her, but I just felt like I knew the pain she'd been through." Hmm that's odd, I respond. "I know," Clare laughs. "It is. It's weird, then I'm all, 'What was up in my former life?' You know?"

A role such as this one is challenging on many different levels. It offers not only a physically demanding performance but an emotionally draining one as well. The biggest challenge and most rewarding factor about the stage is that, unlike film and television, the actors don't 'break' until the act ends. Include the additional element of Clare having to feign her missing senses and you find she relished in her audiences reaction. "I would have people come up to me after the performances," she explains, "which was a huge compliment, and they wouldn't know if I really was blind and deaf because I was somehow able to like 'un-focus' my eyes almost. I could only use the peripheral vision to just have the basics of where I was, but then everything is touch and stuff like that." Clare also spoke of how she prepared for the role by submerging herself in a pool to experience and grasp hold of the sensory deprivation (which Helen lived with her entire life) and took that method acting acuteness into her performance.