Ali Larter never saw it coming. The actress read a television script called "Heroes," inked a deal to join its ensemble cast and shot the pilot. Little did she know that the NBC superheroes-in-the-making saga would fly high, eliciting ecstatic reviews, attracting 12 million-plus


viewers every week and earning bragging rights as the first fall series to receive a full-season pick-up.

"I've been in business for a little while," Larter says, "and at this point I've kind of learned that, for me, I'm just drawn to characters and projects that really inspire me and that I think are going to push me creatively. And with this show I found all of those elements. Really, it's got everything you could hope for.

"At the end of the day, though, you can't look to the future," she says. "You don't know how things are going to turn out. So I just went and I signed on for a project that I loved and did the best work that I could, and it's just icing that it's turned out so well and that people are responding to it."

...

Speaking by cell telephone from Los Angeles, the 30-year-old Larter says that she sees her chief challenge as making each version of Niki credible.

"I'm playing two totally different characters," the actress says. "Aren't there two sides of you? There's a side of you that, when you look at the world, doesn't have to conform to society's rules and laws. That's the side of you that wishes it could seek revenge on all the people that have hurt you.

"That's kind of a shadow, dark side of you," she says, "and then there's the other side of you that, like it or not, has to live in present-day society. That's how I cut the two characters in half. The darker half of Niki is how you'd be if you could live life without boundaries."