Out of this World

Whether she’s playing an alien on V or an earthly delight on Homeland, Morena Baccarin is clearly a star from another galaxy.

By Linda Marx. Photography: Eric Hason

When an actress starts at age six months playing baby Jesus in a nativity scene on a Rio de Janeiro stage, it should surprise no one that she would later became an alien, superhero, bereaved widow of an Iraqi war hero presumed dead, and a standout in variety of other diversified roles, including a con artist and Simon Baker’s derailed lover on TV’s The Mentalist.

“My mom was a Brazilian actress [Vera Setta] who was doing a holiday stage show when I was a little baby,” says Baccarin, 32. “Since I kept crying in the theater, she brought me onstage to shut me up…so I instantly began playing the baby Jesus.” She laughs. “Where do you go from there?”

As the star of the new Showtime drama Homeland, a former series regular in the critically acclaimed Firefly (and later in its big screen adaptation, Serenity), and the face of the sci-fi stunner V, in which she starred as the leader of the Visitors, an achingly beautiful woman much of the time but a badass-looking alien lizard when she was crossed, Baccarin has indeed shown her depth as an actress.

And it started at home. Her father, Fernando Baccarin, news editor of the Brazilian TV giant Globo, was transferred to New York City when she was seven years old. But when the family arrived in Forest Hills, Queens, Baccarin’s mother was unhappy with what she saw. Blame it on Rio. “Mom hated it, and we soon returned to Brazil, where I was born,” recalls Baccarin. “But when I turned 10, Dad found us a place to live in the West Village. Mom loved that part of New York, so we relocated and all enjoyed it.”

Dress by Christian Dior and cuff by Kara Ross; photographed against Liaisons Bianco backdrop.

Baccarin was brainy, academic and not really into acting during those early years. A good student, she had hoped to become a writer. At Public School 41—then New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies—she was a classmate of Claire Danes, now her co-star in Homeland, and eventually became a gifted addition to the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts class of 1996 (where she graduated after only three years)—and she excelled in everything she touched.

“I was shy and into academics and research, and never thought I could act,” she says. “But at age 13, I took acting classes, got bit by the bug and realized I loved it.” She entered the theater program at The Juilliard School for the Performing Arts in New York, but found the prestigious college’s program quite challenging. While a student, she was featured in serious productions like Mary Stuart, The Importance of being Earnest and Love’s Labours Lost. And she was also one of the subjects of the PBS-TV series American Masters, which featured the school.

But along the way, she had issues with Juilliard’s overall focus being too narrow in scope. “Juilliard was amazing, but very difficult,” says Baccarin. “I learned discipline while studying there, yet the program was not for me. I didn’t like that we were focused only on theater and no other aspects of acting. I needed a broader range.”

After graduating in 2000, she performed with New York theater companies while trying to get noticed in various TV and film areas. She was hired in the Central Park production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, where she was Natalie Portman’s understudy.

Thanks to her beauty and talent, Baccarin soon appeared in several movies, including the fashion world comedy, Perfume (2001) and comedy-drama Roger Dodger (2002). “I learned by trial and error and by just doing parts as they came along,” she says. “My first big break was Firefly.”

While working in New York, the aspiring actress was given a treatment of Firefly, the cult space Western, and she read it from cover to cover. Baccarin was to play an intergalactic space prostitute. However, she wasn’t smitten with the part, so she turned it down.

But two months later, after auditioning in the Los Angeles pilot season, she was playing a role on the Guthrie Theater stage in Minneapolis when swirled around again. Its casting director urged her to read for the part. Writer/director Joss Wedon thought she was different, and perfect for this piece—so he hired her as a series regular, and later, for Serenity.