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Dichen Lachman, born on the 22nd of February 1982 in Kathmandu, Nepal. Lachman is an Australian actress.
She earned recognition starring as Katya Kinski in the television production Neighbours from 2005 to 2007 and as Sierra in Joss Whedon's science fiction drama series Dollhouse from 2009 to 2010.
Lachman went on to portray Suren in the supernatural comedy-drama series Being Human in 2012, Tani Tumrenjack in the military action-drama series Last Resort (2012–2013), Jiaying in the superhero drama series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2014–2020).
She was cast as Reileen Kawahara in the cyberpunk drama series Altered Carbon (2018–2020), Frankie in the crime drama series Animal Kingdom (2018–present), and Ms. Casey in the thriller series Severance (2022–present).
Lachman has appeared in numerous films, such as Aquamarine (2006), Bled (2009), Lust for Love (2014), Too Late (2015), Bad Therapy (2020), and Jurassic World Dominion (2022).
Born in Kathmandu, Nepal, she moved to Adelaide, Australia, in the early 1990s with her family. Her mother is Tibetan, and her Australian father is of German descent.
She attended West Lakes Primary School, Gilles Street Primary School, Norwood Morialta High School, St Mary's College, Adelaide, Annesley College and the University of Adelaide.
She moved to Los Angeles shortly after she finished with the Australian TV drama Neighbours in 2007.
You'd gone from a regular role on Neighbours to a regular role on Dollhouse. Those 2 years must've been pretty intense for you...?
"Yeah it was. It was a lot of fun. The time between leaving Neighbours and going through to Dollhouse wasn't actually that long, it was only a year and a little bit. I feel lucky and very fortunate to be working again and it's on a great show."
Joss Whedon was well known for his strong female characters but were you at all concerned about the moral and ethical issues that Dollhouse throws up...?
"I never had any reservations about it. I was only ever excited. I thought they were issues that needed to be raised because sometimes people are trying to change who they are and I think this show clearly shows that that's not really the way to go."
"Also, when I auditioned for the part I hadn't actually read the script because no one had it, no one was allowed to read it. So I just had a general idea about this house that had these people with their memories erased because something bad happened in their pasts - that's all I knew."
"I think maybe a couple of people, who might have had a little more bargaining power than me, might have read the script because Joss really wanted them for the show, specifically them. But as far as me and a few of the other younger people were concerned it was just a great opportunity."
"All these studios are now part of multinational corporations. It's a big departure from the studio just standing there on its own. So I think it is opening up some doors."
"People are realising that not everybody is watching shows exactly when they're on. There's so many ways now to watch things. I think the studios are just learning to acclimatise to the technology which is moving so fast."
"They're going to have to find new ways of advertising because people want things faster. I think they underestimate the audience sometimes and Dollhouse has proved audiences are becoming more savvy."
Lachman first filmed an ad in Australia for Wanadoo, which aired in the United Kingdom. In 2005, she joined the cast of the Australian soap opera Neighbours as Katya Kinski.
She had auditioned for the role of Elle Robinson, but the producers decided to create the part of Katya for her.
Lachman played a small role in the feature film Aquamarine. After she finished shooting the role of Aaren in the film Bled, Lachman joined the cast of the film Aztec Rex in Hawaii.
In an interview with The Soap Show, Lachman said she had appeared on the BBC television show Ready Steady Cook while visiting England in late 2006.
In the interview, she explained that she was in Los Angeles to advance her acting career, but said she would love to work in the UK and Australia.
On the 26th of March 2008, it was announced that Lachman would portray Sierra in the television series Dollhouse, created by Joss Whedon.
In an interview with ScifiNow in 2009, Lachman responded to the rumor that she would star in an upcoming television show based on Star Wars by saying, "I am a huge George Lucas fan."
"I love those movies and it would be a dream come true - I'd love to do it, it would be incredible."
She was named one of the 100 hottest women on screen for 2009, by the lesbian media site AfterEllen.com. "What a privilege to be there," she said.
She guest starred as an insurance agent/street racer on NCIS: Los Angeles. She also appeared as Amy Hanamoa, the widow of a murdered police officer, in an episode of Hawaii Five-0.
Lachman made a guest appearance in an episode of the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood, for its fourth series Torchwood: Miracle Day. Additionally, in 2011 it was announced in Variety that Lachman would be joining the cast of Being Human as a series regular.
Lachman also made a brief appearance in the web-series The Guild during Season 5, episode 8 as a party guest during a gaming convention.
In 2012, it was announced Lachman would be joining the Shawn Ryan–driven pilot Last Resort for ABC, and she subsequently appeared as a main character during the show's 13-episode run.
She also guest starred in the second season of the Jane Espenson scripted web series, Husbands.
Between 2010 and 2013, while working on other productions, Lachman and her close friend Anton King produced Lust for Love. King wrote the script in 2010 and used Kickstarter to raise funds to make the movie.
The initial goal was to raise $70,000; however, when the deadline was reached on the 11th of November 2011 more than 1,500 people had pledged money, with a final figure of US$101,030 being raised.
To complete the movie, additional funds were raised through friends and family. British filmmaker Jack Wylson came on board as a producer, Australian actor Adam J. Yeend as co-producer, and Adam Bricker as director of photography.
Additionally, Alessandro Ongaro of Luna Pictures Entertainment also made major contributions during post production.
In 2014, Lachman began shooting in Canada, where she joined the cast of The 100 in the role of Anya and had a recurring role on ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
On the 11th of June 2015, a new movie called Too Late, starring Lachman, was released during the Los Angeles Film Festival.
On the 22nd of October 2015, it was announced that Lachman landed a recurring role on the third season of Michael Bay's action-adventure TNT series The Last Ship.
Lachman had been cast as Jesse, a helicopter pilot who lives off-the-grid. She starred as Reileen Kawahara in Netflix's original television series, Altered Carbon, an adaptation of the 2002 novel of the same name by Richard K. Morgan.
The first season was released on the 2nd of February 2018. Also, starting in 2018, Lachman began a recurring role as Frankie on Animal Kingdom during its third season.
In 2020, she returned for small story arcs on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Altered Carbon, and she also appeared in the film Bad Therapy. In 2022, Lachman joined the main cast of Severance, which premiered on Apple TV+.
She appeared as Ms. Casey, a wellness counselor. The series received acclaim from critics and audiences, with Lachman being nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Streaming Series, Drama at the 2nd Hollywood Critics Association TV Awards.
Soon after she appeared as antagonist Soyona Santos in the film Jurassic World Dominion. Lachman was then announced as the titular character in Steven Brand's noir thriller Joe Baby.
She has been married to Austrian-born American actor Maximilian Osinski since January 2015, and gave birth to their daughter that May.
Lachman had shrugged off the role of Reileen Kawahara when she didn’t hear back from casting for four months. It was an uneventful lead-up. She received sides, sans any contextual clues to the plot, and submitted a self-taped video audition.
Then she got the call.
“What is this?” She’d actually forgotten. “There’s no callback? Do they want to see me again?”
“No,” Lachman’s agent told her. “They just want you to do the role.”
“I subsequently found out Laeta was a fan of Dollhouse and The 100, so she was familiar with my work,” the actress says. “This is the biggest show I’ve ever been a part of and I just feel lucky to have been a part of it and humbled watching everyone’s work on the show.”
The 10-episode, multimillion-dollar series, which became available for streaming February 2nd, is one of Netflix’s highest-budgeted undertakings yet.
An adaptation of the 2002 cyberpunk novel by Richard Morgan, the first in his Takeshi Kovacs trilogy, Altered Carbon stars Joel Kinnaman as Kovacs (pronounced Ko-vach), a body-swapping soldier summoned to solve a murder in the year 2384.
Human consciousness has been digitized and can be “sleeved” into new bodies, establishing a world in which the rich live forever and reprobates evanesce in the dark, debauched underbelly of society.
“It’s woven in such an intricate fashion, you can’t really say the show is just one thing,” Lachman explains. “It’s a love story. It’s a murder mystery. It’s action packed. There are all of these philosophical ideas, too. You walk away thinking, If I could live forever, would I even want to?”
Lachman portrays Kovacs’ sister, first appearing in episode one as a figment from his past; she gets her big reveal midway through the season.
At the risk of leaking a spoiler, let’s just say Lachman’s grand entrance is badass, evidential of the months pre-production she spent training in Japanese combat.
Along with Kinnaman, the cast includes James Purefoy as a “re-sleeved” murder victim in search of his own killer. Martha Higareda plays a well-meaning cop intent on closing the case.
Renée Elise Goldsberry as Quellcrist, a futuristic Robin Hood hell-bent on quelling elitism.
Will Yun Lee as Kovacs’ “birth sleeve”; Ato Essandoh as Kovacs’ gun-slinging ally; and Chris Conner as the personified consciousness of a hotel where Kovacs resides.
These characters are complicated and not always who they appear to be. The plot is layered with flashbacks, visions, and alternate virtual-reality dimensions.
Timelines seem to intertwine, leading the viewer through a supremely satisfying plot twist to a finale that may very well render all of us worthless until the second season finally airs - according to Kalogridis, “the biggest success is that the whole thing actually makes sense."
Lachman did not tell her parents in the beginning that she intended to be an actress.
"I feel like if I would have initially told them that I wanted to try it, they would not have received it well. Not because they do not have an incredible amount of respect for the profession, they watch more movies than anyone else I know."
"The reason I think it wouldn’t have been well received was because of the unknown. When you are from a tiny third world country, or one of your parents is, it is a fear, simply of the unknown."
"If someone wants to become a lawyer or a doctor it's simple, you go to school and get good grades, you will graduate and get a good job."
"But, saying I want to be an actor without having any relationship to anyone who has ever done it, it’s impossible to even think about how someone does that."
"Acting is like an apprenticeship in a way, you need to just start and slowly gain more knowledge and form relationships. Hopefully, if you are lucky and talented and work hard you may be successful but there is no formula for it."
The international compilation album produced by Deeyah titled Listen to the Banned featuring banned and censored musical artists from The Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Sisterhood was founded by Deeyah to help empower young Muslim women by giving them a platform to express their creativity through music and other art forms.
Deeyah founded Memini in early 2011 as a digital memorial for the victims of honour killings worldwide. Memini means remembrance in Latin and it features the stories of young women around the world who have lost their life in the name of family and community honour. Memini aims to include as many stories as possible of these tragic cases to acknowledge what has happened to these women by raising awareness about the extent of the problem of honour killings.
Babel is inarguably one of the best films of 2006. Director Alejandro Gonzalez Irritu and his co-writer, Guillermo Arriaga weave together the disparate strands of their story into a finely hewn fabric by focusing on what appear to be several equally incongruent characters: an American (Brad Pitt) touring Morocco with his wife (Cate Blanchett) become the focus of an international incident also involving a hardscrabble Moroccan farmer struggling to keep his two young sons in line and his family together. A San Diego nanny, her employers absent, makes the disastrous decision to take their kids with her to a wedding in Mexico. And a deaf-mute Japanese teen (the extraordinary and beautiful Rinko Kikuchi) deals with a relationship with her father and the world in general that's been upended by the death of her mother. Buy or Rent Film
Yabanci is a book by a Dutch woman who moved from Holland to Turkey to start a new life in a Turkish village overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. A great read for those who are considering a move abroad or have lived in a different culture. Available in English as an ebook or in Dutch in both print and popular ebook formats... take a look
To help lift your spirits and keep your wanderlust alive, Zafigo would like to introduce the first edition of ZafigoZine, a bite-sized compilation of the best and most relevant content from Zafigo that you may have missed.
This first issue of ZafigoZine features excerpts of our COVID-19 articles with helpful ideas and suggestions on how you can keep from going stir-crazy while in quarantine. Watch films that will take you to exotic locations, go on virtual tours that will satiate your craving for culture and exploration, and experiment with mouthwatering recipes that will bring the world into your home. While it may not be the ultimate fix, it is a little something to help keep your lockdown blues at bay. Visit Zafigo.com
Dichen Lachman, born on the 22nd of February 1982 in Kathmandu, Nepal. Lachman is an Australian actress.
She moved to Los Angeles shortly after she finished with the Australian TV drama Neighbours in 2007.
"All these studios are now part of multinational corporations. It's a big departure from the studio just standing there on its own. So I think it is opening up some doors."
On the 26th of March 2008, it was announced that Lachman would portray Sierra in the television series Dollhouse, created by Joss Whedon.
She also guest starred in the second season of the Jane Espenson scripted web series, Husbands.
Lachman had been cast as Jesse, a helicopter pilot who lives off-the-grid. She starred as Reileen Kawahara in Netflix's original television series, Altered Carbon, an adaptation of the 2002 novel of the same name by Richard K. Morgan.
Then she got the call.
Lachman portrays Kovacs’ sister, first appearing in episode one as a figment from his past; she gets her big reveal midway through the season.
Lachman did not tell her parents in the beginning that she intended to be an actress.
