SAN DIEGO, Calif. -- It's a condition rare to super-powered do-gooders. Spontaneous combustion? Invisibility? Kryptonite poisoning? Exposure to cosmic rays?
Try pregnancy -- which, admits expectant mother Ali Larter, means any immediate plans for a Heroes reunion had better unfold at Flash-like speed.
"I'd have to be a pregnant superhero, so they'd better hurry up," says Larter, who is due at the end of the year. "If they wait too long, I think all the actors are kind of off doing their own thing."
And while she has heard rumours of a made-for-TV film that would stitch up the loose plot threads left dangling by the cancellation of the NBC fantasy series, concrete plans have yet to materialize.
"It would be great just to say goodbye to everybody. Or hello again. Let's put it that way. When you're cancelled, you never know that's going to happen so there's not a chance to say goodbye to the family that you really create on set. Since I started working in this business when I was 20 years old, it's always been about creating the family environment whenever I'm working ... It's a bummer that you don't get to see these people and hear how their family is."
The series debuted to spectacular ratings in 2006 -- buoyed by the tagline "Save the cheerleader, save the world" but sputtered during the writer's strike the following season and never recovered. Yet it wasn't until this past May that the series was officially declared dead.
"I was actually surprised because you kept hearing how great we do internationally," Larter says. "I've never experienced anything like it in my career. I don't know if it's because they don't have as many channels or what it is. But on an international level, they embraced that show so much."
But while the odds of a reunion seem slim, she's not ruling anything out. "It could be kind of fun to play a pregnant superhero."
In the meantime, she's focused as much on the undead as the about-to-be born. The 34-year-old returns to the Resident Evil franchise on Friday, co-starring with Milla Jovovich and Wentworth Miller in Resident Evil: Afterlife. The 3D sequel is the fourth film to be adapted from the popular video game series. Presumably, more installments will follow -- and Larter is confident being a mother won't slow her down. It certainly hasn't Jovovich, after all, who has a daughter with director Paul W.S. Anderson.
"One of the things I felt very lucky about is in this industry you can do it," Larter says. "As an actress, you can have children and it doesn't take away from the kind of roles that you want to do. The actresses that I admire, when I look at Angelina Jolie and Cate Blanchett and Reese Witherspoon, they all have families. So I just feel really lucky that I work in a field where it doesn't hurt you."
Besides, there are perks to being pregnant, she notes. "I eat everything. I bake myself strawberry shortcakes and I wake up at three in the morning and I eat them. I love it. So much of the time I have to be careful, you know. I work out and play certain roles where it's important for me to look a certain way. But now it's just freedom. It's like bring on the Sprinkles cupcakes, pizza, pasta -- I'm loving it."
3D technology worth the headache
Some moviegoers may complain watching 3D makes them sick. But for Ali Larter, anyway, shooting in 3D is worth the headache.
"There's a lot of new kind of technical difficulties that come along with it. There's such a learning curve that comes with it," says Larter, who co-stars in Resident Evil: Afterlife.
But unlike many 2D films that are being hastily converted to 3D in the wake of Avatar's monumental success, the makers of Resident Evil eagerly point out they have the real deal. "We shot with the Phantom camera which is a 3D camera," Larter says. "We got the camera straight from James Cameron's Avatar, but this one's in slow motion. This camera can only shoot 23 seconds and then it breaks. Then you have to wait two hours and you start again.
"It was really fun and it was a challenge to shoot in 3D, but very exciting to be on the forefront of a new technology ... How many times do you get to work in something that's a new medium in a way? It's really exciting, really fresh and part of it is that it takes extra time and you might make mistakes. But we're the second people to get these cameras and it was fun.
"They were building rigs because these cameras had never been used outside ... You just have to hit your mark exactly. There's no room for error in 3D. They also have to see playback. When you're shooting these scenes, they'll say 'Cut!' and you'll look up and the crew is in 3D glasses and there are monitors all over.
"Some days we'd only shoot 30 seconds worth of footage but you have to be patient because the people are just learning with these cameras. They're very sensitive. You have to be sweet and delicate with these bad boys because if it's too cold, they freeze up. It it's too hot, they get steamy. But that's what's exciting about it."
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