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When Eliza Dushku started her acting career as a child, her parents hoped it would fizzle out.
But Dushku kept landing roles, and is best known today as the television star of Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" on FOX and as a veteran of his "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer" on the WB and UPN networks.
Raised in the Mormon faith, she often visits Utah to see relatives — but she made her first appearance at Salt Lake Comic Con Friday. She invited her mother, Judy Dushku, to share the couch on stage and help field questions.
On the movie set of 1994's "True Lies," Judy Dushku said, she was impressed by the graciousness of star Jamie Lee Curtis. Curtis would always take the time to talk to everyone, asking cast and crew members about their lives, Judy Dushku said.
She told her daughter to "watch that woman. Do what she does."
Dushku shared how Curtis would handle men who ogled her or made boob jokes on set. She'd flash them — then ask, with that out of the way, could they now please treat her as an equal?
Men were comically flustered, Dushku said, and Curtis got her power back.
She quickly added: "I don't do that, mom," to laughter from the crowd.
Her character was the teenage daughter of the couple played by Curtis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
There were some rotten people on movie sets, Judy Dushku said, and she felt Schwarzenegger acted in a "grandfatherly" toward her daughter and protected the girl.
Dushku said her strong characters inspire others — people have come up to her, for example, to share how they were inspired to leave abusers.
She's been inspired by her own mother's courage and grace, she said. And she'll always be grateful that she was raised in the LDS Church, she said, although she has chosen a different path.
"There will always be that part of me that's Mormon," she said, adding she has a Mormon tattoo on her hip, declining to show it off. "That's a different show," she said.
Dushku had just flown in to Salt Lake City from Uganda, where her mother's charity, THRIVEGulu, Ugandan civil war victims through a care and community center.
"I've done a lot of cool things, and my work [in Uganda] is one of the coolest," Dushku said. "Come with me. Let's do awesome [stuff]."
More memories:
• A nickname she had in Uganda translated as Eliza the Accident. (She was, for her parents.) "I think they saw my freak flag."
• Dushku had a great time on "Dollhouse," but wishes it could have gone on and reached its potential.
• Team Angel or Team Spike? She passed the question about the "Buffy" rivals to her mom, who picked Team Angel. (Dushku loved them both.)
• Favorite Whedon project? It's like picking between your kids, she objected.
Reporter Sheena McFarland contributed to this story.
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