Ali Larter plays the most dangerous woman on TV. So you don’t argue when she wants to push back an interview.
“I’m in an orange jumpsuit in jail right now,” says Ali Larter, answering her cell phone. “Can I call you back in a half-hour?”
On NBC’s supernatural sensation, “Heroes,” Larter has a split personality. She’s Niki, a doting single mom who resorted to hosting an online peep show to support her young son, Micah. But without warning, Niki can transform into Jessica, a ruthless killer who can decimate the scariest gang in Las Vegas with her bare hands.
A half-hour later, the phone rings. “Sorry, it’s hard to get away because Niki is so emotional right now,” Larter says, laughing. “She’s in confinement while she figures out what is happening to her.”
Fans of “Heroes” have been pondering the same thing. Niki is the most mysterious of the superheroes on the show.
“We wanted one character to be a little more difficult to figure out …,” says Tim Kring, “Heroes’ ” creator. “You wouldn’t be far off if you chose to look at her as the Incredible Hulk.”
Larter has her own answers to prime time’s most persistent personality puzzle.
“I think Niki and Jessica are motivated by the same thing: Micah,” she says. “They both want to protect him. They just go about it different ways. As for Jessica’s extraordinary strength, I think of it like those stories you always hear of a mother being able to pick up a car with one hand.”
In any case, the 30-year-old actress is enjoying her time as the most complex character on the season’s biggest hit.
“I get to play a single mom and be vulnerable and have these emotional scenes with her son,” she says. “And the next day, I’m seducing a senator.”
The enormous popularity of the show carries a price. “Trepidation of paparazzi,” Larter says. “That’s the only thing that makes me nervous. I went to the movies with friends last week, and the paparazzi were following us. … That was a new level for me. It threw me a little bit.”
Larter, who made a splash in her first film, “Varsity Blues,” went on to star in a succession of teen flicks like “Drive Me Crazy” and the “Final Destination” films. She abruptly withdrew from the industry and moved to Manhattan in 2002.
“I wasn’t happy with the way things were going,” she says. “I needed time to figure out who I wanted to be in this world and who I wanted to be in this business.”
Moving back to Tinseltown three years later, her first audition was for “Heroes.”
“I’m so proud to be working on something I believe in,” she says. “I’m in love with my boyfriend, and I have a nice dog.”
