Dog Day Afternoon
Two and a Half Men star Emmanuelle Vaugier
gets tough in her new primetime series

Zink, Spring 2010

Vancouver native Emmanuelle Vaugier just finished throwing an extravagant party at her home in L.A. “It was this past Saturday. It was fantastic!” says the Two and a Half Men star who — with wavy brown hair, olive skin and chiselled cheeks — looks like a perfect blend of Jennifer Beals and Jennifer Esposito with a dash of Eva Green’s sex appeal, thanks to her French ancestry. “It took me over two months to plan it. It came together really well, and I can’t believe it’s all over now.” The actress, who had the event catered by famed chef Nick Lorenz with low-fat vegan food, apparently knows how to throw a house party Hollywood-style.

It’s hard to believe that the 33-year-old actress, who just finished a four-year stint as detective Jessica Angell on CSI: New York, has any free time to throw a blowout, let alone one that takes two months to plan. Aside from her recurring role as Charlie Sheen’s ex-fiancee on Two and a Half Men, Vaugier is also busy filming the McG-produced Human Target, a new show about undercover F.B.I. agents airing after American Idol, which the actress describes as “Mr. & Mrs. Smith meets The Bourne Identity.” And when she’s not on the set of a TV show, the Saw II actress is travelling the globe filming movies, like the upcoming drama Hollywood Untitled, as well as thriller Dolan’s Cadillac, based on a story by Stephen King.

To be fair, Vaugier’s free-f lowing vodka bash (thanks, Grey Goose) wasn’t exactly a Paris Hilton-esque party for the sake of partying. “I called it the ‘First Annual Winter Fur Ball,’” explains Vaugier, whose purpose for holding the event was to raise money and awareness for the Best Friends Animal Society, a Utah-based rehabilitation facility for homeless animals. But let’s get one thing clear: B.F.A.S. isn’t just about saving cute baby seals and staging celebrity photo shoots with piles of f luffy kittens. The organization is the real deal. “They took 22 of the Michael Vick dogs [from the underground dog fighting scandal] that they’re working with diligently every day,” insists Vaugier. “The handlers are working with [the dogs’] aggression issues. Their main purpose is to educate people, to place animals in the right home, and to work with animals that are not ready to be adopted yet but will be.”

Vaugier is an adamant animal lover, not an animal accessorizer. Whether she’s shooting Jason Bourne-worthy stunts with costar Mark Valley on the Vancouver set of Human Target or bantering with Charlie Sheen in front of a live studio audience in L.A., Vaugier’s jet-set toy poodles, 14-yearold Lily and 10-year-old Isabelle, are always close by, either on set or in the cabin of a plane. Lily and Isabelle are 21st century “haute” dogs, to say the least.

“They are polar opposites,” says Vaugier with the same tone you’d expect to hear come out of the mouth of a doting mother. “Lily is the princess who likes to sunbathe and is finicky about food. She needs to be pampered. Isabelle is the little tomboy who runs around, loves to play with her toys and will eat until she throws up, if you let her. Isabelle will run through a puddle and Lily will walk around it. That sums it up in a nutshell.”

The actress sends her pooches to stay with their grandmother — Vaugier’s mother who still resides in Vancouver where the actress was born and raised as a firstgeneration Canadian (her mother and father are both from France) — when she’s away working on a movie. The actress, after all, is a self-described workaholic. “I’ve been lucky enough to f loat in and out of both TV and film, as well as comedy and drama,” says the former model who first rose to fame on Vancouver-based shows like Smallville before moving to L.A. permanently in 2001. “I feel really lucky that I haven’t been pigeon-holed into one thing. You fall into certain things. It’s hard to dictate until you get to a certain level.

“They’ll let Charlize Theron do Monster because she’s Charlize Theron,” Vaugier elaborates. “It works differently for everyone else. You have to fight to do stuff that’s against the grain for what they see you as, but once you’re at a certain level of star status, you’re given a free pass to go do those movies because they let you have a little more leeway, or you can finance them yourself, and then you can do whatever you want!”

While Vaugier might not be at Charlize Theron’s level yet, life, it seems, really is quite the on-going party for the actress. “I was on the back of a motorcycle with Mark Valley [on the set of Human Target], and they had us zip-lining through the air. The motorcycle was on a zip-line,” explains Vaugier. “It was like a ride in an amusement park. I thought, ‘I love my job. I love my job.’ On days like that I think, ‘how did I get so lucky?’”

Written by VICKI HOGARTH
Photographed by MIKE ROSENTHAL
Styled by ALEXIS BECK