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When you ask Amber Benson about the decidedly gay turn her career has taken, she shrugs, " I have so many friends who are gay," she says. "It's just so normal to me, and it's such a part of my life that it doesn't seem like I'm doing anything special." Her fans might disagree. A recent string of gay-themed projects - most notably, her role as doomed lesbian witch Tara on television's Buffy the Vampire Slayer - has earned the 26-year-old actor-writer-director a large and loyal queer following.

So has her personality. Exuding a down-to-earth Southern charm, minus the accent (her father never let her say "Y'all" as a child), the Birmingham, Ala., native is known as one of the nicest and most unaffected people in Hollywood. This is, after all, a woman who once got down on all fours at a swank Tinseltown party to help a waitress clean up a spilled try. But she shrugs that off, too "I'm not trying to be nicer than other people....I'm human and I'm fallible and I fuck up a lot," she says.

Maybe. But there is no denying the girl has character. For instance, she signed on to her new film, Latter Days, not because she was offered a big part - she has a small if memorable role as a tough-talking waitress - but because she strongly believes gay and lesbian romances need a box-office boost. "I loved the script so much," she says in a phone interview from her Los Angeles home. "I was like, 'I'll do anything to be in it !" The movie, about a Los Angeles party boy who unexpectedly falls for a Mormon missionary, is the first produced by Funny Boy Films, which touts itself as the world's first gay and lesbian film studio. "You don't get many romantic comedies about two gay men or two women. There's a whole segment of the population that is not getting its needs addressed, and I felt this film was trying to address them. Plus," she adds, "it has a happy ending."

Participating in a project with a happy ending is a significant even for Benson, given the gruesome and controversial end her character met on Buffy last year. "When she was killed like that, it really fucked some shit up, "she says. (Love how she puts that.....)

For nearly three years, Benson played shy, kindhearted Tara to Alyson Hannigan's adorable geeky Willow on Buffy. The couple's romance was a favorite with both fans and critics, hailed for being the longest-running lesbian relationship in television history. But when Tara was shot through the heart moments after makeup sex with Willow, it sparked the biggest backlash in the show's history. What Buffy creator Joss Whedon thought would play as a heartbreaking lover's tragedy instead played like a lost clip from The Celluloid Closet. Outraged viewers sent thousands of protest letters to the show and lit up the Web with fierce debates about Hollywood's treat of gay characters.

"You had people who posted on the Internet saying, 'Thank God, Tara's dead !" Benson recalls, "but then this plethora of people going, 'Oh. My. God. I'm never watching that show again !" (Apparently, they meant it. Buffy's ratings dropped an average of 15 percent following Tara's demise. "Really ?" Benson responds in surprise when I mentioned it.)

Whedon eventually washed his hands of the controversy by claiming he "didn't care" about social issues, but it wasn't so simple for Benson. "[Joss] wasn't Tara," she explains. "He didn't walk in her shoes."

Tara's shoes put Benson, who took her responsibility as a lesbian role model very seriously, on the front lined of the fan fallout. A frequent guest at Buffy conventions, she heard firsthand what Tara meant to the gay community - and how much her death hurt. "It's so sad that, on the one hand, you say, 'Oh, it's just a TV show,' yet, on the other hand, it had a horrible impact on people," she says. "You hate that it can be negative and hurt people."

Does that mean she believes killing Tara was a mistake ? "What I feel and what they chose are not the same thing, but...I wish they hadn't killed her," she says.

Benson was asked to return as Tara - actually, as an evil version of Tara - in Buffy's seventh and final season, which ended last May. But after all the uproar, she thought it was best to let her beloved lesbian character rest in peace. "There were a lot of other reasons [I didn't go back], but one was that I didn't want [Tara] to go bad," she says. "As an actor, of course, it appeals to me to play kind of evil and bitchy and sexy, but, as a human being who gets letters that say, 'I didn't kill myself because of what you and Alyson did,' that part of me goes, 'You're not just an actor any more ; you're making a social commentary now, baby. You've got to be responsible.' And I couldn't be responsible coming back, because as an actor you have no control."

And what about Joss Whedon's accusation over the summer that he had always planned a glorious, romantic reunion for Tara and Willow but Benson played the spoiler ? You can almost hear her wince over the phone. "Yeah, that's been bandied about in the press a lot," she sighs.

"You know, sometimes people tell you one thing in this world, and then things don't turn out the way you're told," she says. "Who knows what Joss had 100 percent planned in his mind ? I'm not psychic. I just didn't want anyone else hurt after everything that had happened. When a character has that kind of social impact, you just don't have the right to do anything else to her. I know Joss had good intentions, but for me, personally and professionally, it wasn't the right decision." (and that's why we love her ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !)

Besides she says, "I was super busy. I'd moved on from Buffy."

She's moved on in more ways than one. Determined to keep her creative options open in an industry that discards most actresses by the time they're 30, Benson - a professional actor since age 15 - has jumped behind the camera, gaining experience as a writer and director. "It blows my mind that there are so few women writers, directors, and producers," she says. "I think we're insane not to help each other and make ourselves known in the entertainment industry. We're the majority of the population, and yet we don't get the time on television or in films. It's annoying that we don't grab it like it belong to us, because it does. We have every right to tell our stories. I knew I had to get in there if I wanted to [be a filmmaker]. I had to get in there and do it myself."

So Benson, who describes herself as a classic "first-child overachiever," wrote, directed, produced, and starred in Chance, a dark comedy about a bicurious twenty-something looking for love in all the wrong places. She considers the movie, made with a cast and crew of friends, her version of film school. "It was my first foray into filmmaking. I put up all my own money and we raised money on the Internet. It was really grueling and though and mind-blowingly hard, but it was worth it in the end. It's not perfect, but it's a cute little movie and I'm proud of it."

She premiered Chance, which co-stars Buffy's James Marsters, at Birmingham's Sidewalk Film Festival last fall, but it has yet to find a distributor. So, true to her independent spirit, she's distributing the film herself over the Internet (www.chancemovie.com). "We decided that was the best way to get it out to the people...but, hopefully, someone will eventually come along and help us distribute it," she says.

Even though making Chance was a physical and financial challenge, Benson wouldn't hesitate to do it again. "If that's the only way I can make a movie, then I'll make a movie that way again," she proclaims. "I want to tell stories."

Benson's storytelling talents have been growing, thanks to her work with prolific - and profoundly gay-friendly - horror/fantasy writer Christopher Golden. The pair first collaborated on a trio of Willow and Tara comic books when Benson was still on Buffy, and have since formed a successful writing partnership. "Chris is an awesome guy. He knows writing backward and forward, and because I'm new to writing comics and writing prose, he has been basically teaching me to do all this stuff. It's like I'm taking Chris' Creative Writing 101."

Last spring, the duo created The Ghosts of Albion, a "webtainment" series that mixes audio drama with comic-strip animation, for BBC Interactive. "They wanted sort of a costume drama with a bit of Buffy feeling," she explains. The story follows the adventures of a 19th-century sister and brother who combat evil with magic. Helping the siblings are a group of ghostly advisors, including the sassy, switch hitting spirit of Lord Byron. "I think Chris first mentioned Byron, but I was like, 'Woo hoo ! Yeah !" she laughs. "We were really proud we got to bring in a sexually ambiguous character."

Ghosts provided Benson another opportunity to hone her directing skills, even though the experience gave her the jitters. "We had basically three days to record it in, and I was like, 'Are we going to get through this ?" She credits a talented and patient voice cast, which included former Dynasty and General Hospital sudstress Emma Samms and Star Wars alum Anthony Daniels, with pulling her through. "They were just wonderful," she says. "I love working with actors. And, not that I would ever say I could pull a performance out of somebody, but it's amazing to talk with actors, see their perspectives, and then help them pull a performance from themselves. It's just a beautiful experience."

Ghosts has been well-received, and the BBC has ordered up a second animated installment as well as a novella, which has Benson particularly excited. "It's my first stab at prose outside the goofy little short stories I've written for myself. I've had a really good time doing it."

The good times will continue throughout the fall as Benson and Golden not only conjure more Ghost stories but also dig into their new project : a horror screenplay. "We're still at the very beginning, but we definitely have our story down. We hope to shoot it in Ireland," she says. Meanwhile, the former TV witch says she's inspired by another famous sorcerer. "Harry Potter has done an amazing thing, in that people are reading again," she says. "Fantasy and sci-fi can really open that door for people. I love all that stuff and I'm praying that magic is real. J.K. Rowling said it's not real, but, God, I really want to believe that it is."

I loved what she had to say about Tara's death...

Quote:

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"When she was killed like that, it really fucked some shit up, "she says.

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Fortunately Fort Lauderdale is one of the cities Latter Days will be shown in. I'm organizing all the GLBT employees at work (believe me, there are a lot of us!) to do a dinner and a movie night. I want to do my part to spread the Ambery goodness.