There’s a biochemical reaction inside Luisa D’Oliveira whenever she’s acting in front of the camera.
“The happiest moments of my life are creating a scene and when you reach into a character and tell a scene with such honesty it all comes together – it’s like magic is happening.”
It’s been that way for the Vancouver born and raised newcomer since grade 1. She has appeared on Supernatural and The Good Wife, but it wasn’t until recently that she pursued it professionally after a brief molecular pursuit.
“I love biology and finding out how things work,” she said. “That’s initially what I was going to school for but it just wasn’t enough.
There’s so much structure in science that you have to get through years and years of study and then you can get into the creative part and push the boundaries.”
She’s not completely blinded by science. She enrolled at a university for one year, studying film acting, staving off a return to lab.
“I’ve only been professionally acting for two and a half years and I don’t want to put restrictions on whether I want to do films or play this kind of character.”
Whether peering through the microscope or on the other end of the lens, everything learned comes in handy.
“There’s nothing wrong with trying all sorts of things because you bring everything you learn to different jobs,” she said.
It even landed her an audition success story on Stargate.
“I did the audition and I guess I can pull off nerdy scientist girl because they wanted to book me,” D’Oliveira said, adding she was working another project at the time.
However, don’t pick on this nerd. She knows Krav Maga; the same martial art taught to Mossad and the Israeli army courses through her grey matter.
“We use it for self-defence,” she says. “It really vibes with me because I love rock climbing, aggressive sports.”
Being a daredevil helps when you’re dealing with demons and lawyers. That dexterity also helped D’Oliveira in her recent project, TV movie Garden of Evil.
“I had to climb this huge 10-foot fence and then hang on the top of it for a bit,” she said. “Right when we were just blocking it out, Joe gives me a leg up and I literally shot up to the top of the fence.
“You could just hear voices from everywhere saying, ‘Whoa, whoa’,” she added. “They were calling me Spider Woman and Xena on that day.”
Even with a trip to Los Angeles as her next experiment, D’Oliveira will never lose her child-like wonder of the world.
“You think of the earth how, from our perspective, it’s so huge and vast, but if you take a step back and look at the galaxy we’re just a pin prick.”
Clearly she’s reaching for the stars.