Gabrielle Anwar had her first burst of fame in 1992, when she tangoed with Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman. Fifteen years later, the English actress emerged from the doldrums of what she calls "a lot of B, C and D films - you know, latter end of the alphabet work" to play mature, confident and frankly sexual characters on Showtime's The Tudors and USA's Burn Notice. "Those women are not your typical ingenue. They know what they want," says Anwar, whose parents are an Oscar-nominated film editor and an actress. And she agrees that "there is definitely some life experience needed" to play them. "I've made that leap, which is perhaps why I'm still employed," she says.
Anwar's alter ego on Burn Notice, which starts its third season June 4, is Fiona, the trigger-happy ex-girlfriend of Michael (Jeffrey Donovan), an intelligence agent turned detective. "It's not a big stretch," she says. "I mean, I haven't played with firearms the way she has, but I definitely have very tumultuous relationships with the opposite sex." To wit: Anwar has three children by two men, one of whom she married briefly but both of whom she counts as close friends. "I've got baby daddy city going on!" she says, laughing. "We're extremely close; it's quite the blended family. It's out of the box, but I've never been one for cubic living." For her, marriage was a mistake from the get-go: "To be honest, wife was not my greatest role," she says.
Her role on Burn Notice, however, she loves. "It's just a tremendous amount of bloody fun," she says, "and there's this passionate aspect of Fiona and Michael's relationship which I thoroughly enjoy. To play that and get paid for it is just comical."
Anwar is looking forward to "becoming a wiser, riper, more beautiful human. I'm open to so many things now." But she's not making any ironclad plans: "If there's one thing I've learned," she says, "it's not to put all my eggs in one future basket."
