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Erin Chambers looks so sweet, perky and petite, but the 28-year-old Oregon-born Brigham Young University graduate doesn't always play the good girl.
On an episode of the CBS series "Without a Trace" this season, "I was a killer, I slept with a married man and I set up bombs to destroy an ROTC building," Chambers said this week. "It seems like lately I've played killers or liars."
So playing a naive LDS missionary, plunked down in Austria with a spotty ability to speak German, was a welcome change. "It's exciting to play something that is my value system, that is something I really believe in and am passionate about," Chambers said of playing Sister Rachel Taylor, the lead character of "The Errand of Angels," a missionary drama opening in Utah and eastern Idaho theaters today.
Sister Taylor's story is based on the real-life missionary experiences of Heidi Johnson, a mother of four and BYU alum. "I kept a really good journal on my mission and always planned on doing a book or something," Johnson said.
When she started seeing a wave of movies about male LDS missionaries - notably, Richard Dutcher's "God's Army" and Mitch Davis' "The Other Side of Heaven" - Johnson said, "I felt an urgency to go through and gather my stories."
Johnson connected with Christian Vuissa, an Austrian-born filmmaker (who, incidentally, graduated from BYU in 2002, the same year as Chambers) who served his mission in Leipzig, Germany. "My mission president is Heidi's father-in-law," said Vuissa, who directed the 2004 LDS romantic comedy "Baptists at Our Barbecue" and founded the LDS Film Festival held every January in Utah County.
Vuissa said he was most intrigued with Johnson's dealings with her mission companion, an abrasive native German speaker. That became the basis for Sister Taylor's companion, Sister Keller, played by Viennese actress Bettina Schwarz.
The character of Sister Keller is like any relationship with an annoying relative or co-worker, Vuissa said. "Missionary life condenses that," he said. "You cannot escape that confrontation. You have to kind of work it through. So it becomes a great learning experience."
"The thing that stood out the most was that universal idea of reaching out to people you don't necessarily get along with," Chambers said. "A lot of people have said at the screenings, 'I had a Sister Keller.' "
The movie was shot in Austria, where Chambers had the same cultural adjustments as her character - tasting unusual food and struggling with the language - especially when Vuissa decided at the last minute to switch a scene from English to German.
In another scene, Vuissa set up a camera at a distance in a public square and had Chambers and co-star Rachel Emmers try to get passers-by to stop and take a missionary pamphlet.
"We were really tracting, and a lot of people wouldn't stop," Chambers said. "I got frustrated because nobody would stop. At one point, I finally said, Please, just talk to me.' That was one of the hardest and scariest things I've ever done. . . . I feel like I have a lot of respect for missionaries, because what they do is really hard."
Sean P. Means can be reached at movies@sltrib.com or 801-257-8602. Send comments about this article to livingeditor@ sltrib.com.