A selection of quotations from Tricia Helfer, compiled from various publications and interviews.

• Acting & Battlestar Galactica
• Acting & Other Roles
• Discovery & Modeling
• Herself & Family
• Nude Feature in Playboy
• Other Topics

On her favorite aspect about Battlestar Galactica‘s Number Six:
“I think what I like the most about Six is her diversity in a way. I know Six gets noticed a lot for her sensuality and things like that, but what attracted me to Six in the first place in the script in the miniseries was her intelligence, her strength and her vulnerability, and everything all mixed into one which I find is indicative of what women are and what women can be. It was interesting to me to have a robot character which embodied so many of these things that many women try to hide.”
– Battlestar Galactica convention, 2005

On the technical difficulties of filming Six’s scenes on Battlestar Galactica:
“Technically, to film those scenes is really hard, because it takes a while for the other actors to get used to not being able to look at your or just look through you or that dead space of time. Technically, it’s hard as an actor because you’re in a scene but you’re not in a scene? Like, often you’re hiding behind the cameraman or you’re stepping over the wires and ducking under the table; you’re hiding somewhere and waiting for that opportune moment to slide into view.”
– Square Off, May 12 2006

On researching for and portraying Gina on Battlestar Galactica:
“Because I’m fairly new at [acting], I’m kind of like a sponge. I watch everybody else, and really research quite a bit, in particular for Gina, that clone that was quite beaten and tortured, so to speak; a lot of research on post-traumatic stress syndrome and also watching prisoner movies that people would tell me about. But it’s a fun departure for me, from having the Number Six character that’s usually the seductress to then go and be beaten on the floor and have a very vulnerable character.”
– Square Off, May 12 2006

On acting and debuting on Battlestar Galactica with little prior experience:
“It was a challenge — everything’s still a challenge — as it should be. If it’s not a challenge, people take it for granted.”
– Calgary Herald, February 1 2008

On her Battlestar Galactica experience:
“Not all my experiences have been positive, but Battlestar, which has been my predominant job since I started acting, is like a family environment where everyone adores and supports each other. It has helped me develop as an actor because it has allowed me to take risks – I’m not afraid to put myself out there.”
– Calgary Herald, February 1 2008

On the future of Battlestar Galactica:
“You know, it’s a difficult question because BSG for me, and I think for the cast, was such a rare experience. Being two years removed from it, you realize what a special unit we had. They’re still some of my closest friends. It’s rare that you have a cast, crew and production team that really becomes a family. So it would be hard to go back unless it was the same group -– maybe that will happen down the road. [...] I mean first we’d have to discuss how the Cylons suddenly started aging [laughs]. I think we’d all be open to it if there was a great story to tell and the whole team came back together. But I don’t think anyone would want to go back if you have only a couple people. We saw some of that in The Plan -– some of the team was there and it was weird being on set in a way. Yes, it was Brother Cavil and The Cylon’s story, but it did feel a little different. I think to come back after time away, it would have to be the same team and a great story.”
- The New York Post, August 4 2010

On never getting recognized for Battlestar Galactica‘s Number Six:
“I don’t look like my character. I don’t look like Number 6. Maybe during the first two seasons I did, but when my hair fell out, from all the dye they put in my hair, I had to wear a wig from that point on. People don’t recognize me. Even last night, I was doing a screening at a panel in the SAG building and I had a huge Battlestar Galactica fan come up to me and say he didn’t even know it was me until they announced my name on stage. So people say I’m a bit of a chameleon. I don’t walk into a room and someone says, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s Number 6.’ I’m not that recognizable and I think that’s what can keep you in a box is when you look so much like the sci-fi character you play.”
- UGO.com, August 3 2010

On wanting to avoid being typecast post-Battlestar Galactica:
“After Battlestar Galactica, I was offered a lot of science fiction roles but you turn them down because you’re building a career. Unless they were up to the level of quality that Battlestar was, you don’t want to go down this slippery slope where you might get stuck into a bad sci-fi world. In the stage of your career where you are building… I’ve only been doing it since 2002; you have to be really careful not to be put in that box.”
- UGO.com, August 3 2010

On how she landed her role on Battlestar Galactica:
“Yes, in January of ’03. It was the same casting directors that had done CSI. So they took me straight to producers. Being brand-new and green, I didn’t really know anything. But I auditioned for it, and I thought it went pretty well. But I didn’t hear anything for about two months. And then I got called back to test for it. And we had a work session. I had to ask what a “work session” was. It went extremely well, with the director Michael Rymer. And then tested the next morning. It was just a terrifying experience. It’s five hours long. No food. You don’t eat before you go in, because you’re nervous. They went through all the girls, and then all the guys, and then started pairing everybody up. I was the last group, and I ended up with James Callis, who played Baltar on Battlestar. And I’m about 5 inches taller than him. By this time I was exhausted, as he was. We heard it was the sexy role, so the other girls are all in cute little outfits with high heels, and I’m in flats and trying to be short. I just went, ‘Well, I’m not getting that role.’ But James heard somebody say, when we were in the room, ‘That’s it.’ That was the next five years of my life.”
- Back Stage, August 18 2010

On portraying Gina on Battlestar Galactica and her method of acting:
“When you’re doing a character for a long stretch of time or for a series that goes five, six, seven years, you kind of can snap into that character so quickly after a while. There was a scene in Battlestar that was a drastic change from the kind of more glamorous character that I usually play. I was supposed to have been gang-raped and tortured, and I wanted to stay in character for that scene. So that day I didn’t want to be taken out of the chains between setups; I wanted to be on the floor. I wanted to be uncomfortable. Everybody keeps coming up to you, ‘Can I get you this, can I get you that?’ ‘No, I just want to be here. I want to feel uncomfortable.’ That brought out something that wouldn’t have happened if I was getting up and joking around in between scenes. But if it’s more of a lighthearted scene, then you may take more liberties and go off into your trailer and be your own self.”
- Back Stage, August 18 2010

On never having dreamed of a career in acting:
“I thought that you had to be kind of ‘crazy’ and outrageous and outgoing to be an actor.”
– Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, April 10 2004

On her first film role in the 2003 thriller White Rush:
“I’d really love to play a character that’s not based on looks. I did a film — White Rush — where my character was out camping for a week. In one scene she has to run through trees and everything, and the makeup people are putting on lipstick and curling my hair, and I’m like, ‘Hello? Rough me up! I’ve been camping.’ And they’re like, ‘But it’s film, darling. You have to look good.’ I want to do a role where it’s realistic, where you wake up in the morning looking like you look when you wake up in the morning.”
- Toro, May 2004

On her early guest appearance on CSI:
“People thought it would bother me, coming from a modeling world, to play that [kind of a role]. [But] I’ve seen anorexia, I’ve seen bulimia…”
– Square Off, May 12 2006

On how her modeling career has affected her as an actress:
“I certainly wouldn’t go, ‘Oh, I wish I hadn’t modeled,’ but I definitely want people to say, ‘Okay, I think we can see her in a role that isn’t glamorous.’”
– Square Off, May 12 2006

On looking straight into the camera for a video game role:
“In film and television you almost never look at the camera, you just never break that line.”
– Game Head, 2007

On new roles post-Battlestar Galactica:
“For me, it’s exciting because Battlestar was one of the first things I got. I had transitioned from modeling into acting, and the first year I was out there I got Battlestar, so I was incredibly lucky in one respect, but in the other respect I’m like, chomping at the bit, ready to get out there and prove that I can do other things.”
– The Hour, December 6 2007

On the role of Celene in Walk All Over Me:
“Jumping into the dominatrix role, there was some sort of parallels between Number Six, who has been quite manipulative of Gaius Baltar, the scientist, so it was quite easy for me to step into the boots and be commanding and domineering over someone. But the movie’s not really about just being a dominatrix.”
– The Hour, December 6 2007

On the transition from model to actress:
“You step into another realm. To be a good model there is an element of acting involved, ‘coz you can have the most beautiful woman and she just can’t bring anything in front of the camera. So you have to be comfortable in front of the camera. One day you’re modeling business suits and one day you’re ‘heroine chic’ and whatever. But to translate that to a character, and the thoughts and emotions, and to be verbal, and, you know, one of the biggest things is getting over messing up. On a modeling set there’s ten people, on a film set there’s like, 50, 100, 200 people and you’re kind of like, you stumbling in your words; you’re just a human being. You trip coming up onto the stage, or you fumble a line, and now you just laugh about it, like, ‘that’s gonna make the blooper reel!’”
– The Hour, December 6 2007

On being in the moment as an actor:
“[If you're afraid of messing up] then you’re not in the scene. If you find yourself going, ‘Oh, I’m messing up,’ then you’re not there. [raises fingers to temples] Then you need to do more preparation prior to the scene.”
– The Hour, December 6 2007

On preparing for a scene:
“A lot of people laugh at me now on sets, because I jump like a bunny rabbit before scenes, because I’m the kind of a person that has a lower energy level in general. I’m thinking, if I’m supposed to come into a scene in which I’m running to the door and I’ve got something exciting to tell people, I can’t just — ‘Action!’ ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ — like this. I have to be jumping up and down to get the energy going. So I jump around like a bunny rabbit and make an idiot of myself, but you have to learn to just let that write off and not care about it.”
– The Hour, December 6 2007

On how her modeling career affects how she is perceived as an actress:
“It’s one thing going into a movie audition with acting experience, but going into a TV or film audition with nothing but a modeling background is tough because they assume all you can do is walk in a bikini and maybe chew gum at the same time.”
– Calgary Herald, February 1 2008

On her early acting experiences:
“I enjoy a challenge and I certainly want to be given opportunities to grow and learn. If some doors didn’t open in the beginning, it was disheartening, but I certainly didn’t expect to change careers and be an overnight success story.”
– Calgary Herald, February 1 2008

On how she sees acting:
“You know you’re in it for the craft, you’re in it for the project, everybody in the project is involved. The show wouldn’t get made without the crew. It’s a collaboration and it should be a collaboration, that’s how some of the best work is made. I think that was certainly the most important lesson in my early career which has followed me through to now and that’s the way I like to work.”
- Examiner.com, June 26 2010

On how she chooses her roles:
“I want to somehow connect to the character. I want to find something in there that will challenge me as an actor, maybe challenge me in a way that I think reveals something about myself. I think every role has a bit of you personally in it, that you connect with. So it’s really about that, it’s that I’m excited to play the character. You want to know who this person is. That’s what I’m interested in, in playing the character. And also obviously working with people, that I want to work with.”
- Examiner.com, June 26 2010

On portraying the iconic Farrah Fawcett in 2004:
“Yeah I mean obviously when you’re portraying an actual living person, or was at the time, she’s such a cultural icon, there’s an added pressure to your take on the character. Everybody’s going to have an opinion on how well you’re portraying that person. It was early in my career and I was just trying to keep my head above water. I actually met Farrah maybe two years after I shot it and I felt better about my performance after meeting her. I felt I had captured some of her innocence. I watched a lot of her old interviews that she had done at the time. The film was really all about the hit of making her into a star and really all the overwhelming that that entails.”
- Examiner.com, June 26 2010

On her dream role:
“A dream role that I’d love to play is a book role from a book called The First Stone. I’d love to play the lead female character Lisa in that. She starts out college age and ends up about the age I am now. It’s a political story, love story, based in Saudi Arabia and deals with the facade. Fascinating book, one of my favorite books. That would be my lead role, Lisa.”
- Examiner.com, June 26 2010

On her favorite TV guest appearance:
“It’s hard to say because like you just said, they are varying. I think I could have a favorite if they were all the same type of show, but since they all have different tones, it’s hard to pick a favorite. You like them for different reasons. If I had to pick… It would be Two and a Half Men, strictly because I never did comedy before. I never did a sitcom, a three camera half hour show; it was definitely a challenge and something new. I’d certainly like to do more of that and it’s obviously great to have the number one sitcom comedy show on your resume. That was definitely something I was glad to do.”
- UGO.com, August 3 2010

On how she broke into the business:
“I didn’t grow up wanting to be an actor. I thought you had to be kind of wild and crazy to do that and didn’t realize there was a whole other side to it. I started modeling. I was discovered, as they say. And toward the end of my modeling career, I was thinking, “Okay, this isn’t really doing it for me anymore.” I got into acting classes strictly to help with commercial auditions. And I fell in love with it from the first class. It terrified me, and I found it a huge challenge. I was living in New York City at the time. I started studying at Penny Templeton Studio and doing night classes while I was still working. About a year and a half later, I quit modeling and moved out to L.A. That was January 2002. I came out with representation. I was with a commercial agency in New York, Innovative Artists. I had my commercial agent come to one of the showcases my class did. They took me on theatrically from that. I got CSI that year, just a guest role, [through] auditioning.”
- Back Stage, August 18 2010

On her late acting debut and the challenges of acting:
“When I started, in one way I was going up against girls that have been acting a lot longer than me, and their résumés are a lot longer. But I wouldn’t have been ready earlier. I was very shy. The modeling business is hard enough as it is, mentally. But acting is worse than that. You can really get torn down and really pumped up, and you have to be in a stable-enough place within yourself to know that this is what you want to do. I probably would have been a psychologist; that’s what I was aiming for in school, until I got sidelined. But that’s what I find fascinating about acting, is getting into the character. My first role in L.A. was on CSI, playing a model. I had no lines. The model had body dysmorphic disorder. I auditioned for the schizophrenic sister. The director said, “There were only two of you who came in here, and you look more like a model than she does. Will you take the role?” I found that a challenge for the first job: no lines but a deeply troubled character.”
- Back Stage, August 18 2010

On how she landed and prepared for the role of Alex on Dark Blue:
“I auditioned. I didn’t have a script to go on. There were four pages that they had written just for the audition. I had about a week or two to prepare. While they were working on contracts and everything, I immediately went out and got books on the FBI. I watched the series, all 10 episodes practically in a row. I thought it was a different take, and I liked the character pieces the actors got to work with. But I didn’t know what my character was going to be. I had a call with Danny and a couple of the writers, and they told me what they were thinking of the character. It’s great to sign on because you want a job, but in the other way you’re thinking of the next five or six years of your life, and you don’t know what the character is. But they told me about their idea of the character, and I liked what they had to say. So I took them for their word, and they held up their end of the bargain.”
- Back Stage, August 18 2010

On her transition from model to actress:
“I did that as well. Slightly different. I wasn’t busing tables. I was 28, and I had a modeling career behind me. But the same kind of emotion behind it is when I was moving out to L.A., I said I’m giving up modeling, cutting the ties. I sold my apartment in New York and moved out to L.A. I didn’t know a soul. I felt like it was going to be too easy to run back home to New York whenever things got a little tough. I knew I had to immerse myself. I also had to get rid of that stigma of model-turned-actor, so I had to shut off the modeling — so much so that a few casting directors were like, ‘Did you model?’ ‘Yeah, years ago.’ It’s really not a bad thing, but I was so against that sort of stigma. I knew I had to cut ties to devote myself and feel I didn’t have a safety net.”
- Back Stage, August 18 2010

On being discovered and the demands of the modeling industry:
“I was tall and — I thought I was skinny, but apparently I wasn’t skinny enough. I was a twig growing up and I always had this self-confidence issue because I was so skinny, and then I’d just started to put on some shape when I met him [model scout Kelly Streit].”
– Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, April 10 2004

On Kelly Streit, the model scout who discovered her:
“Looking back over the last 14 years that I have known Kelly and Mode Models, I cannot think of one time that I regret taking his advice or listening to his expertise. He is direct, truthful, full of integrity and fun, and first and foremost cares about his girls’ lives — who they are and what is best for them personally. I am honored to also call him a friend.”
– Maxim, November 2005

On being discovered:
“I would definitely not have entered the modeling world if I hadn’t been ‘discovered’, as they say.”
– TV Guide Watch This, 2007

On being discovered:
“I wouldn’t even want to guess the probability [of being discovered], actually. I would’ve never got into [modeling] on my own.”
- Late Show with David Letterman, January 19 2007

On what she would’ve done had she not entered modeling:
“I would’ve probably gone into Psychiatry. You know, when you’re a little farm girl, you don’t really think you look like the cover of a magazine. You forget that there’s airbrushing, hair and make-up and all that.”
– Late Show with David Letterman, January 19 2007

On her early modeling experiences:
“You know, my first story walking on the runway was — you know, I was a shy, little farm girl. That’s not what I thought I was gonna do. I was, as they say, ‘discovered’, landed in Paris, doing Chanel, and the right-hand man of Karl Lagerfeld was so angry with me after the show, because I walked with my right arm stuck to my leg. Well, not stuck there, but it didn’t sway like the other one swayed. All the other girls on the show were known models and they all had drivers and everything, and I was schlepping on the subway. And so I had my portfolio with me, which was really heavy, so my right arm never moved when I walked. So that translated to the runway. And I watched myself and I went, ‘Oh my gosh! I walk like this!’ [mimics stiff walk] It was a precursor to being a robot!”
– The Hour, December 6 2007

On her modeling experience and hosting Canada’s Next Top Model:
“I haven’t really been involved at all [in modeling] for six years. I quit modeling in 2002 when I started acting, but I did foray into it with Canada’s Next Top Model, but, to be completely honest, model reality shows are not like modeling in real. They’re certainly not like the modeling business. It’s about making a good TV show. To be honest, that’s why I’m not doing further seasons of it is because I’m not a fan of reality shows. I’m glad I did the first season and experienced it and was in the producing end of it, but it wasn’t where I wanted to put my focus and my time. It was taking pretty much my whole hiatus between the Battlestar seasons. I couldn’t do film or whatever. Instead, the next hiatus I did the film Walk All Over Me that went to Toronto Film Festival and the Weinstein Company bought. So that’s where my focus was, and I realized it while I was filming it too. This isn’t where my focus is and I’m not really enjoying it, so I shouldn’t be doing it. I think the modeling business, when I was in it, it’s cyclical, just like anything, and it goes through cycles. When I started modeling it was the big super model era of Naomi and Christie and Cindy and Linda and all that. Then they went to this period where it was all nameless, faceless models walking the runway, and then it got back to the super models where you knew them by their first names, Giselles and everything. I think now its back in a nameless, faceless, multiple girls, but again, I could be wrong, because I haven’t picked up a fashion magazine for about six years, so I could be completely wrong. I had a great time doing it and I traveled the world and I met a lot of really wonderful people, so I certainly don’t degrade modeling.”
- TheSciFiWorld.net, July 4 2008

On if she misses modeling:
“No, I don’t. Ten years was enough. I traveled the world and had some great experiences, but I needed more of a challenge and I needed more to do with my mind.”
- TheSciFiWorld.net, July 4 2008

On her childhood on the family farm in Alberta:
“We were farmers, so we had farm work. We had to kill chickens. I didn’t have to kill a chicken, but I had to clean a chicken. Chopping it up and pulling the guts out.”
– Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, April 10 2004

On growing up without a television:
“We had no television. I would go over to my grandma’s to watch hockey games, you know, she lives across the yard, but other than that we didn’t get a TV until we started dating, my oldest sisters and I.”
– Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, April 10 2004

On herself:
“I’m a very driven person. That’s probably got a lot to do with my upbringing in Canada. I’m hard working and I have a strong base. I expect the best of people and I expect to give people my best. That’s certainly been with me throughout my whole life.”
– Calgary Herald, February 1 2008

On herself:
“I’m an Albertan, that’s just who I am.”
– Calgary Herald, February 1 2008

On what drives her:
“I want to be challenged. I want to be proud of what I do and I want to learn. I want to learn new things and keep learning and growing. I kind of am a bit of a workaholic and I like to keep busy and active so I think that’s what drives me.”
- TV Tango, July 23 2010

On her Playboy feature:
“Of course I called my parents and all my sisters and asked for permission, even at 32 years old.”
– Late Show with David Letterman, January 19 2007

On her Playboy feature:
“It wasn’t something I’ve always wanted to do. It was something that I’d been thinking about for a while and really waiting until Battlestar had kinda got going. I looked at a lot of people who had done it – like Charlize Theron and the list goes on and on – and realized it’s something that was really quite prestigious to do. You know, I take my clothes off half the time in Battlestar, anyway. Why not?”
– TV Guide Channel, February 15 2007

On working with photographer Sante D’Orazio for Playboy:
“It was a really small shoot. We were in Acapulco and we really didn’t make it out of — this is going to sound bad — his room or the suite next door.”
– TV Guide Channel, February 15 2007

On her Playboy photoshoot:
“It was a great experience. I was looking forward to the pictures coming out. You’re worried in the beginning and you’re a little nervous, but after the shoot experience and how fun it was I was really looking forward to the photos.”
– TV Guide Channel, February 15 2007

On her Playboy feature:
“They approached me right after Battlestar came out, and I said ‘No’ to it eventually because I thought, you know, I want people to know me as an actress first and that I have some chops – certainly not Meryl Streep – but that I have some chops. So it took a little while for the critical acclaim to come; once Battlestar won a Peabody Award and up here [in Canada] I won a Leo Award for Best Actor, then they re-approached me and I thought, you know, ‘Now maybe the time is right. I’m young enough yet so I think I can do the job.’ And I had creative control. Coming from a modeling background I look at some nude photography as art.”
– The Hour, December 6 2007

On her Playboy feature:
“This actually made a difference in my decision. There was some fake naked picture of me on the internet that was going around, and I’d go to a science fiction convention, and there’s someone trying to get me to sign this picture that’s not me, and I’m kinda going, ‘I might as well put a nice naked picture out there so that these fake naked pictures go by the wayside!’ “
– The Hour, December 6 2007

On the 2007 WGA writers’ strike:
“Of course you want to get out there with them and support them. It is a very complicated situation, but the way it’s been so far at least that I’ve seen it is, they’re not really stopping people from going on and it’s more kind of on a corner beside.”
– The Hour, December 6 2007

On her and Katee Sackhoff’s secret tequila tradition before a live TV appearance:
“Certainly not to say we get toasted before doing live TV, but it started when I did Letterman. Someone suggested that since he keeps the studio so cold, so I took a bottle out of the mini-bar and it helps calm the nerves. It’s our tradition. Katee was so sweet when I did Two and a Half Men, the night of the live taping –- which I’d never done before -– she showed up with a teeny bottle of Patron. That’s what friends are for.”
- The New York Post, August 4 2010