C7

By The Canadian Press

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She's quite possibly one of the most ubiquitous actresses you've never heard of, but a glance at Michelle Forbes's resumé reads like a compendium of the best-loved TV series in recent memory.

The dark-haired beauty currently appears in In Treatment and True Blood, had stints on 24 and Lost, and was a regular on the defunct cult hits Battlestar Galactica and Homicide: Life on the Street.

Now Forbes is joining one of Canada's most acclaimed series, Durham County, as the alluring but troubled forensic psychologist Pen Verrity.

The second season begins Monday on The Movie Network and Movie Central.

Managing her career has been a juggling act lately, Forbes admitted in a recent interview from her home in Los Angeles, where she was in the midst of shooting HBO Canada's True Blood.

"That's why I usually shy away from those seven-year contracts - those five- and seven-year contracts scare the bejesus out of me," said Forbes of lengthy commitments often demanded by TV productions.

"I can't imagine not going off and having other adventures, I just can't imagine it. And the great thing about working in cable (is) ... you've got another six months to go off and do other things, like Durham County."

In Durham's typically dark fashion, we're introduced to Forbes's character Pen by way of a disturbing act of violence and wrenching female anguish, which is simmering just below her confident facade.

To the outside world, Pen is the assured police psychologist who helps the tightly wound Det. Mike Sweeney, played by Hugh Dillon, cope with the aftermath of his daughter's horrifying abduction by serial killer Ray Prager, who Sweeney captured at the end of last season.

It's now one year after that violent showdown and Sweeney is on a career high.

But his personal life is in shambles - he and his wife are separated and daughter Sadie is secretly tormented by memories of her encounter with Prager.

Pen, meanwhile, is on her own dark descent. She takes dangerous liberties with a woman suspected of killing her own baby, and buries her own grief over the drowning death of her daughter, and the subsequent breakdown of her marriage.

"This is a woman who is not only living in intense fear all the time but she is constantly recycling her failures like a mantra in her head," said Forbes, describing Pen as a "dream" role that's affected her deeply.

"When she goes into her manic episodes and into her delusional episodes, it was challenging in a beautiful way, because that's what you're looking for as an actor - to go as deep as possible and to plumb the depths of the thing that a lot of times we want to avoid as human beings."

While Durham's first season could be considered a study in male rage - and the corresponding need to conquer and be powerful - season two focuses on women and "how rage and confusion and pain and trauma manifests in us, which is usually through self-harm, initially," said Forbes.

The 44-year-old actress credits co-creators Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik, Janis Lundman and Adrienne Mitchell with creating a powerful, unique point of view that's little seen on TV on either side of the border.

"I've never seen a full-on female creative team like this," Forbes said. "It's still a very male-driven industry and that was really wonderful working with these women - these very interesting, thoughtful, passionate, dark, eccentric women on Durham County.

"There's just a shorthand that you have and it took me a while to sort of get out of the idea that you have to battle these men when talking about issues with women."