Juliet Landau

While the exotically beautiful actress Juliet Landau is best known as the insane vampire Drusilla on TV’s BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and for the quirky characters she’s played for filmmakers Tobe Hooper and Tim Burton, she has also tried a role she really enjoyed: director. She recently shot TAKE FLIGHT: GARY OLDMAN DIRECTS CHUTZPAH, a documentary following another actor taking a turn behind the camera, which can now be seen on-line.

Oldman, no stranger to bloodsuckers himself after playing the king of them all in BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, spent three days making a music video for the Jewish hip-hop group Chutzpah—shooting the clip on Nokia phones!—as Landau documented it all. “Gary really gave me carte blanche to use everything,” she tells Fango. “Nothing was off limits. It was amazing to capture it for my documentary. When it was finished, I went to Gary’s house and when I showed it to him, he started laughing and said to me, ‘Oh my God—did I really do that?!?’

“Gary is amazing!” she continues. “To see him create this unique video was an interesting experience. The documentary is really about his creative process and watching that creativity take flight. As an actress, you’re a component to the overall project, but as the director, you’re responsible for everything!” Ironically, the only thing they didn’t talk about was wearing fangs. “We were soooo busy just making this, just running and shooting, we never got to compare notes on playing vampires,” she laughs.

TAKE FLIGHT can now be purchased on DVD (including a dozen promo interviews) or as a streaming video at the project’s official website, where you can also see a trailer and other clips. Landau will next be seen in MONSTER MUTT, a kids’ adventure directed by Drac Studios’ Todd Tucker coming to DVD January 4, “where I play a blonde Russian villainess. And I’m doing a lot of voices for animation, especially on BEN 10 and GREEN LANTERN!