Lauren Maher Struck Gold With ‘Pirates’

As she prepares to hop a flight to Las Vegas for a Memorial Day weekend of premieres, parties, and pampering, Lauren Maher can only sit back and laugh at the whirlwind of a ride that her life has taken over the years.

“Hopefully, it will make me feel like I made the right choice,” the young actress says, laughing as she awaits her trip to Sin City. “I can remember once living in some sort of basement studio in Queens and everybody thinking this was a great deal!”

Aw, the life of every actor, it seems. From rags to riches, you might say, particularly when you happen to strike gold in one of the biggest blockbuster projects of all time — the “Pirates of the Caribbean” trilogy. Maher, along with fellow actress Vanessa Branch, play two of Captain Jack Sparrow’s favorite wenches. They have seen their roles steadily increase with each adaptation, the latest of which, “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” is currently kicking off the summer film season.

Raised in Boca Raton, FL, Maher remembers catching the acting bug very early on. “I just started doing plays in high school, and loved it so much that I started doing community theater,” she recalls. “I was pretty aware early on that I wanted to go to college for theater.”

She did just that, enrolling at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, despite the pleas from her parents to remain close to home. “I wasn’t having any of that,” a laughing Maher says of going against her parent’s wishes. “I knew that I wanted to go to New York, and that’s really the place to go in the States to study theater.”

In the midst of achieving her degree in theatre arts, Maher would also spend time studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York City.

“It just gave me a nice, big tool kit to use,” explains Maher, who has also studied at Richmond College in London. “Just living in a place like New York City — you have so much access to the theaters, the museums, the art galleries, and the concerts, that you learn so much just by being there. It just adds to your life experience, and I think that the more life experience that you have as an actor, the better actor you can be. You have more to draw from.”

Tired of blizzards and New York winters, Maher would eventually shuttle out west to L.A. “When I first moved to L.A., I was still heavily focusing on theatre,” she says.

In 2000, Maher and some of her friends helped form WolfPack Production Company, a non-profit theatre company. During that time, she helped to produce numerous Shakespearean plays, as well as works by Sam Shepard and the Firesign Theatre. She remained a part of the team until 2005, when the desire for more film work increased.

“For me, I’ve always wanted to explore,” Maher explains. “I love theater, and I find it more rewarding than anything else, but there’s also great films being done out there and great things to learn doing film too. It’s just nice to do both.”

When she auditioned for the first installment of the trilogy, “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” Maher confesses that she wasn’t sure what to expect.

“I remember being puzzled at first,” she recalls. “I had followed Johnny Depp’s work for years and I thought, ‘Johnny Depp in a Disney film? What is this all about?’ So I knew that something was going to be interesting from the get-go. I showed up on the set and saw him with his dreads and the whole get up, and thought, ‘OK, here we go, we’re on to something here!’

“It was very obvious that everybody on the set really knew what they were doing, so I knew that it would be great, but I think the way this took off, the fire that spread across the world, nobody could have known that.”

The success, Maher says, is due to many reasons — from the amazing writers, directors, and cast, to the current moment in time.

“I think people really need and want fantasy in their lives right now,” Maher says. “With everything that’s going on in the world, I think that it’s a great escape.”

The actress is quick to praise many of those behind the film, particularly writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio.

“You know, Ted and Terry write great scripts,” Maher says. “These are the guys that wrote ‘Shrek’ and they wrote ‘Aladdin.’ They are clearly keyed into something that people love worldwide. They are incredible talented writers.”

As a young, up-and-coming actress, the experience to work with director Gore Verbinski and Depp has also paid dividends.

“He was just an amazing person to watch,” Maher says of Verbinski. “Here’s this man who’s directed this massive trilogy, the scope of which has almost never been seen on film before. He’s always smiling, he’s so enthusiastic, he gets so excited about things, and yet he’s holding it together. When they were shooting parts two and three, he was shooting two blockbuster movies at the same time, out of sequence, yet managed to have all of the elements in mind — to the characters stories, to the shots, everything. I was just really amazed by everything that he was able to hold in his mind at the same time, and the grace in which he pulled that off. I was just very impressed by him, both as a human being, and as a director.”

Her praise continues at the mention of working with Depp, someone that she has admired for many years.

“Just watching a performer like that, you can learn a lot,” she says. “He approaches things with a lot of ease and grace, but he’s also very fearless. You really get the feeling that he’s willing to try anything. It’s not about his ego. He’s willing to try and do whatever works to serve the script. So it’s really nice to see someone, on that level, have that kind of openness to their performance.”

With a role steadily increasing in each part of the trilogy, Maher says that she is excited about this third, and final, installment.

“It’s great, I really enjoyed it,” she says. “It’s more character-based I would say. You really feel like you’re getting to know the characters a lot more. It’s quite a dark film. And there’s parts of it that are really kind of different, that are almost a little experimental that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to see in the middle of a blockbuster Disney film, but it works really well.

“Plus, there are some great battle sequences that are some of the best that I’ve ever seen. I’m really glad that they ended the trilogy with a bang.”

Not surprisingly, her work on the trilogy has led to many new opportunities. “It obviously opens a lot of doors,” she says. “It’s something that you can put next to your name that people recognize extremely easily.”

Recently, Maher completed shooting the horror film, “33 Griffin Lane.”

“I play a really creepy, blind woman with white eyes,” Maher says of the film. “I had great fun with that because I got to scare all the children on the set!”

Up next, she will begin shooting in the fall for a film currently titled, “I Thought You Were Dead,” in which she plays the lead role. “It’s a romantic drama, so I’ll spend most of the film crying!” she says laughing.

For many, spending countless hours in the midst of pirates, swords and horror films, could present a challenge. But when your mom works as the science director of a museum, you tend to develop some thick skin.

“I remember going into my mom’s office when I was a kid and she was sitting at the computer with an iguana on her shoulder,” recalls Maher. “When I was little, I thought it was completely normal to have a boa constrictor around your neck.”

Maher loves to tell the story of a time back in the ’80s when her mom invited someone to the museum to help build awareness about the potential extinction of Florida panthers.

“Needless to say, it’s kind of hard to get a hotel room when you have a panther,” Maher says, breaking into a laugh. “So this guy wound up staying at our house, in the guest room, with his panther in a cage. It was a little creepy, especially because I was about eight years old at the time and very small. I was always a very skinny, short kid. The panther definitely looked at me differently than anyone else.”

While she has been granted a once-in-lifetime opportunity to be a part of one of the most successful film projects in history, Maher remains extremely grounded and down-to-earth. Part of that may be due to her interest in yoga, which originated while she was in college.

“I really love it,” says Maher, who is writing a book about yoga. “It’s a big passion of mine and I practice every day.”

Maher, who is certified in Kundalini yoga, has turned that same passion into a valuable way of giving back and helping others, assisting the non-profit group weSpark, which is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for cancer patients and their families and friends. She dedicates much of her time teaching a modified version of Kundalini yoga to cancer patients during, and post treatment. weSpark was founded by former actress Wendy Jo Sperber, who passed away from breast cancer in 2005.

“It was a little intimidating at first, because you really have to alter the style of teaching, especially if you have people in treatment who might be fatigued and dealing with these health issues,” explains Maher. “I just sort of developed a really gentle version of Kundalini that I teach and it seems to work really well.

“I think that a big part of healing is just calming down your mind and taking some time out for yourself. Hopefully, the yoga can help facilitate that.”

As if there was any doubt, it’s obvious that Maher’s choices in life have proven to be gold for many.

For more information on Lauren Maher, be sure to visit her official website — www.laurenmaher.com