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Malin Akerman is used to winning people's hearts, usually with sweetly comedic turns in such lighthearted films as The Heartbreak Kid and 27 Dresses. Her latest role as the latex-clad, butt-kicking superhero Silk Spectre II in the just-released Watchmen, however, is likely going to launch her into a new stratosphere of fandom - one that goes way beyond adolescent boys and devotees of the Watchmen series of graphic novels.

Working on a highly anticipated, big-budget comic-book adaptation - fans have been waiting 20 years for its release - was a first for the Stockholm-born, Ontario-raised Akerman, whose parents moved to Toronto from Sweden when she was 2, and who spent a good portion of her youth in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.

Another unexpected first was going brunette. "I prefer being a blonde," she says.

Yet another was the chance to work on set in British Columbia, a province Akerman had never been to before. "I'd lived my whole live in Canada, but never been to Vancouver," says Akerman.

"That was mainly because my family is so spread out around the world, when we travelled we'd go to Europe, and Vancouver's the other way. But I've always wanted to go there because I'd heard how beautiful it was - and it really is," says the actress, who arrives at our interview wearing a black peasant blouse with dozens of tiny, silver skull appliqués.

There was, however, one part of the region the 30-year-old is all too happy to forget - a well-known mountain trail called the Grouse Grind, which figured heavily in the cast's physical training. "It takes about an hour to walk up it. Our workout was walking up this mountain every day and trying to beat our own time. That was not fun."

It seems to have worked, however, as proven by her scenes in Zack Snyder's subversive fantasy epic. Besides the unforgiving costume and impressive jump kicks, Silk Spectre, a.k.a. Laurie Jupiter, has a couple of particularly amusing - and revealing - love scenes with her two of her fellow watchmen: pudgy, retired masked avenger Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson); and the glowing, azure Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), whose nearly unlimited powers enable him to pull off particularly impressive bedroom tricks.

"Here's the thing: The end result is beautiful," says Akerman, of the racy scenes. "It's classy, it's really sexy and amazing. I always check out a script to see if it's gratuitous or not, and in this case it was beautiful. Of course it's a big deal, in a sense. But this whole film is about the extent of where you go with human nature, and that's part of what we do as people. You fall in love and you make love."

Adapted from the 1980s comic-book series by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons that was collected into one of the most acclaimed graphic novels ever published, Watchmen was long considered impossible to turn into a film. The movie underwent two decades of development hell before Snyder (thanks to the success of his previous graphic-novel adaptation, 300) got the go-ahead to make a remarkably faithful adaptation of the violent, complicated comic.

A main concern of the film's marketers is whether or not Watchmen will draw enough female moviegoers to make a profit on its $100-million-plus budget and nine-figure production-and-promotion investment. Akerman, admittedly biased, says she thinks the film has just as much appeal to women as it does to your average fanboy.

"Maybe I'm not a typical chick, but I really enjoy it," Akerman says. "I'm not usually big on violence, but it's not violent just to be violent. There's an amazing storyline that goes through it. It's really cerebral. It's like a piece of artwork. ... Plus, there's romance in it as well.

"I had male cousins when I was growing up who had stacks of comic books and were always re-enacting the fights - the Pow! and the Bam!" she recalls. "I just thought it was a lot of boy stuff, and I was into Barbies and dressing up."

At 17, Akerman won the Ford Supermodel of Canada competition and a few years later was landing TV guest spots and small movie roles. She moved to Los Angeles in 2003, and was soon making more lasting impressions on such cable series as Entourage and Lisa Kudrow's The Comeback. (She also began singing for a now-defunct rock band, the Petalstones, in which she met her husband, Italian drummer Roberto Zincone.)

Next up are two more comedies: The Proposal, with Sandra Bullock and fellow Canuck Ryan Reynolds; and Couples Retreat, which pairs Akerman with Vince Vaughn.

Whether or not Silk Spectre opens new doors, she's as pleased as she can be about where her career has taken her so far. "Me, happy? Ecstatic!" Akerman says. "I know this sounds clichéd, but it really is my dream coming true. Which is crazy. I feel so lucky."

There are times when she longs for home, though. "I miss my friends in Canada," she says. "All of my real friends are there, and the places that you grew up in ... it's nostalgic. No matter where you go or how much you love a place, you never get as strong a feeling for that as for the places where you grew up."

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