Eva Longoria Chases "The Sentinel”

In Theatres April 21

Covered up in a pants suit and using her wits instead of her body, Longoria says Jill is much closer to her than Gabrielle Solis. “I’m from Texas,” she said. “I grew up with guns and I grew up with my dad, educating us early about guns and we used to go target shooting all the time. So we would shoot beer cans and coffee cans and anything that exploded and made noise, we’d shoot it. Then before Desperate Housewives I did LA Dragnet which required intense SWAT training from the LAPD and that was way more intense than the training for this movie. The Secret Service, they’re more tactical. When they pull their gun, they intend to use it where SWAT and all of that they use their guns every day. So I was really comfortable with this and all the roles I’ve played before Desperate Housewives were cops and detectives and all of that, those kinds of roles. So this was coming back home to me.”

The uniform and all the accompanying gadgets were new though. “It was really easy for me. It was fun to put the earpiece in, to speak in our wrists. I felt like I was playing make believe instead of doing a movie because everybody wants to wear the glasses, everybody wants to have the Men in Black suit. Kiefer obviously looks much better doing it than I do.”

Despite a veritable battle of the network stars culling from 24 and Desperate Housewives, Longoria found Sutherland to be more of a mentor than a rival. “He has a well of wisdom when it comes to life and he had a lot of life lessons. He had a lot of things to tell me about the business which I was like a sponge absorbing everything. He was just really inspirational to me for him to have been through everything he’s been through in this business, all the way from being a child with his father to a hit show like 24, it’s just an amazing career that he’s had and everything that he’s been through personally too. And yet he’s still the kindest human being you’ll ever meet. He was really concerned about protecting me in the business. He was like, ‘Just be careful. Do you understand what is happening to you?’ and I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he goes, ‘No, no, no. Do you understand that you have an opportunity to do some great things?’ He said I could be the future so and so and I could be the future so and so, so I just listened to him and a lot of tips on how to pick scripts and things like that.”

With the opinionated Douglas on the set also, and dealing with a political story involving a presidential assassination plot, things got a little heated behind the scenes. “We did have these discussions and especially because we were training with the Secret Service and they were around us all the time, we would share stories with them in administrations that they served under. The guy that we had served Carter and he served under Clinton as well. So we were kind of picking their brain and going, ‘Yeah, but isn’t he an idiot for doing this? And what did you think of that? What was the buzz in the White House?’ You forget that they’re human beings. What I love about The Sentinel is it humanizes the Secret Service because everybody does look at them as robots and just strong, kind of icons of America that can’t be touched and we can. Obviously with 9/11, obviously with what’s going on in the world today, we’re definitely open to the mistakes of the world. They can affect us just like they can affect anybody else.”

She may sound thoughtful and introspective discussing her newest movie, but Longoria remained overwhelmed and star struck on the set. “If you told me when I saw Lost Boys that I’d be doing a movie with Kiefer, I would have thought you were crazy. Even on set when Clark Johnson, the director, he’d be like, ‘Michael, Eva, Kiefer, come here, we gotta go over this.’ I’m like, ‘Michael, Eva, Kiefer? Why is my name in there?’ It’s always wild when I see the poster to the movie. I still pinch myself. I still don’t believe it and I’ve already done it.”

Back in the ‘80s when The Lost Boys, came out, Longoria wasn’t thinking about any career aspirations. Even when she went to college, it was for sports medicine. Acting just sort of happened. “I graduated from college and I had won a scholarship to come to LA and compete in a modeling and talent competition and it was just in between my Bachelor’s and Masters. I was already registered to get my Masters and become an exercise science major and wanted to work in sport injuries for a major team. So my career was already set. I already knew what I wanted to do and when I came to LA, I won the competition and said, ‘Wow, I wonder what this is about? I’m going to stay for a little bit and see what it’s about.’ That was 10 years ago.”

Now she’s poised for up to seven years of Desperate Housewives, playing new mom Gabrielle Solis. That’s where she says the really challenging work comes in . “The reason this character [in The Sentinel] was so easy for me was because she is pretty defined. Why I find Gabrielle so challenging is because she has no moral boundaries. She doesn’t live by any rules. She just kind of does what she wants when she wants to do it and because of that I’m always like, ‘She could do this. She could do that.’ There are so many colors she can play. Where Jill is very specific. She’s lived her whole life by laws and rules and she lives by the law and she has a protocol and she has procedure and she lives her life by procedure, so it’s pretty easy to make choices as an actor whenever you’re really defined as a secret service agent. There are things that are just not even an option to act.”

As last Sunday’s episode proved, don’t expect a baby to take the fire out of Gabrielle. “I think it’s a lot of opportunities for more comedic things. She’s still going to be Gabrielle. She still ain’t gonna change diapers.”

The Sentinel opens April 21.