{alltv} Morena Baccarin tackles a 'larger-than-life' character in 'V'

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When V returns to ABC Tuesday (9 p.m. ET), Morena Baccarin as Anna, leader of the Visitors, will continue to be up to no good.

"In the first episode of the new season, you see what the red sky is and what my plans are with that," she says. "By the second episode you'll see a full lizard body—not mine," she hastens to add, "but you will see some weird Anna body parts, other-worldly things."

Jane Badler, who played the alien leader Diana in the original V series in 1983, will be unveiled as Anna's mother. "We wanted to find someone who Anna might be intimidated by," Baccarin, 31, says. "That was hard because Anna is such a hard-ass."

Would Baccarin say the same about herself? "I do have those qualities about me," she admits. "I'm very strong-willed and determined, but I think I'm a lot nicer than Anna and softer."

She credits her short hair with helping provide menace. "When I auditioned, I had this haircut," Baccarin says. "I'd just finished Death in Love. They wanted me to have a certain look that would remind people of a concentration camp.

"I wanted to keep the haircut for Anna, but there was a question from the network about whether it would alienate people. Some people have strong opinions about women with short hair. They find it very masculine and severe. Others think it's soft and feminine and makes your features stand out. It can be an Audrey Hepburn kind of thing."

The look works. "Everyone knows that Anna is an alien, so that element of weird is already there," Baccarin says. "I try to make her as human as possible, and I find that's actually scary. There's a cold quality to her, but I play against that and say things with a smile or in a nice way. I want to give mixed messages and confuse people. I'll say, 'Go kill that person,' but I'll say it nicely, and they'll go, 'What did you say?'"

Baccarin was born in Rio de Janeiro but moved to New York with her parents and younger brother when she was six. "My dad was a news editor for a Brazilian news station, and they had offices in New York and London," she says. "At the time the economy was in terrible shape in Brazil, although it's booming now. They were worried about us growing up there and what kind of life would we have."

Baccarin recalls the move being traumatic because she didn't speak any English. "And it was difficult not being close to my grandmother and my cousins. About a year in, my mother told my father, 'I'm moving the kids back to Brazil. You stay here, and we'll figure it out.' She put us in an American school, and we lived in Brazil for a few more years until I learned to speak a little English."

Baccarin, who attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (the school made famous in Fame) and then The Juilliard School, wouldn't mind doing Shakespeare somewhere down the line. Anna almost fits in, if you compare her with Lady Macbeth. "There's a lot of ambition in there, for sure," the actress says. "Anna is a larger-than-life character, a very complex character, with big wants and needs. She takes the expression 'Kill them with kindness' to a whole new level."