Sackhoff Stretches In Sentinel

Hollywood, CA (March 21, 2006) Battlestar Galactica star Katee Sackhoff told SCI FI Wire that she's about to begin shooting The Last Sentinel, an independent SF movie with a theme similar to her day job as fighter jock Starbuck.

"My character's a lot harder, though," Sackhoff said in an interview Jan. 12 at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in Pasadena, Calif. "She's got blue hair and a scar down her face, and she's covered in tattoos, and she's pretty much just a renegade. Like, she's really bad. She's got knives like hidden all over her body. Yeah, so I'm excited."

The Last Sentinel, directed by Jesse Johnson, is set in a dystopian future in which drone soldiers have taken over the world. Sackhoff's character, called simply "Girl," is a member of a resistance cell. "There's the [drones] that they ... brought in as a police force, and they ended up taking over the world," Sackhoff said. "So it's, like I said, very similar to Battlestar Galactica. But ... you know, we'll see. She's one of the resistance fighters. I basically just get beat up the whole movie. I get beat up, and I get to have some sex. So, I'm good. Very similar, like I said, it's so similar to Galactica, it's disgusting."

That similarity gave Sackhoff second thoughts about appearing in the film, which also stars Bokeem Woodbine and martial-arts actor Don "The Dragon" Wilson. "The director Jesse Johnson called, and they offered it to me, and I read the script, and I loved it," Sackhoff said. "My only worry was that people would say, 'Wow, it's so similar to Battlestar Galactica.' Had I not done Battlestar, I would have jumped at it. And so it just took me a while to like kind of say to myself, 'What a challenge, though, to take two characters who are on paper very similar and make them different.'"

The Last Sentinel begins shooting this month in Los Angeles; Sackhoff has a few months off before Galactica resumes shooting its upcoming third season.

In the meantime, Sackhoff said to expect more travail for Starbuck as Galactica's second season concludes. "Expect her to kick some more ass, fire some more guns and fall in love and, you know, end up in a really bad position at the end of the show," she said. Battlestar Galactica airs Fridays at 10 p.m. ET/PT.