Actress Daniela Amavia's eyes used to roll back at the mention of science fiction.

But that's all changed since Amavia landed a lead role in Sci Fi Channel's miniseries Frank Herbert's Children of Dune.

"I thought it was all about putting the equalizer on the neutralizer and going at warp speed or something," Amavia said Wednesday from Los Angeles. "I discovered something quite interesting. We still tell very epic stories, more than in present-day stories. It's interesting because when you look for anything larger than life, ultimate jealousy, love until death, belief in religions and gods, that's in science fiction today.

"So I kind of fell in love with the genre as I was doing it because I discovered that that's the only place. Think of Star Wars, think of all these stories, they're larger than life. Lord of the Rings. So I've kind of discovered that it's not all about guns and spaceships and that's the stories I like, ones about human beings, and love, and men, very sexy men."

This realization wasn't instantaneous, though. The actress said her first reaction to getting the part was fear.

"At first I was terrified because I thought I would never understand what this was about. But as I was going into it the director said something very smart to me. He said, 'Look, these people just happen to live 10,000 years from now. Aila is still looking for love.'"

The three-night, six-hour event picks up 12 years after Frank Herbert's Dune, which Sci Fi aired in 2000. Amavia's character of Alia Atreides is now 16 and a new queen who has been thrust into this new position after her brother, Paul, has walked away from it and Alia think he's dead.

"She thinks she's doing things for the right reasons, but she's creating tragedies around herself. She's starts going mad, and at the end she's about 32, and in a moment of clarity, she kills herself.

"It's an interesting arc for an actor to play. You get to be someone who truly believes in what's she's doing. In the meantime, she's creating this horror around her. That's quite deep, I thought."

Amavia, who's lived in Los Angeles for 11/2 years, had only three weeks to prepare for the role of Alia before flying to Prague in the Czech Republic for one week of rehearsals and five months of shooting last summer.

"After getting through the first panic, I hunkered down with the books and basically decided to just not panic about it, and go for things I understand first, which is her marriage to this wonderful man who's an enabler, her drug addiction, all the things that jumped out at me at first. Those were the ones I used to make me understand what this is about, which is a very tragic woman on a search for love."

The challenging role also required that the slender actress with an exotic look learn martial arts.

"We called him 'The Punisher," Amavia recalled. "He would scream at me in Czech. The only English word he knew was 'again.' But I think he did a good job of training us.

"It didn't used to be this way. Mostly your character was left behind while the guy went out there and saved the world or whatever. Now we get to get out there and kick some behinds."

Also portraying a strong female role in the film is Susan Sarandon as the evil Princess Wensicia.

"She was incredibly gracious to us but she didn't need to be. She could have just showed up and done her thing and ignored us and we would have been still happy," explained Amavia in her lilting accent, thanks to being born in Greece, raised in Germany and also living in London before coming to the States.

"She (Sarandon) was so supportive, especially of the young female actors, because she's been there, so we felt like she was one of the girls, but also sort of a mother hen."

Amavia's own mother calls her a "Euro-mutt," due to the family's having lived in several places in Europe. She modeled to finance her way through drama school, did some 11 feature films in Europe, and was honored with the German equivalent of an Academy Award. She wrote, directed and produced the short film Rockin! Good Times and produced and starred with Vanessa Redgrave in the film Venus & Mars, set for release this year. An acting offer, and her father, led her to move to Los Angeles in 2001.

"My dad always wanted to come to America. He had picture books of the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. And he never made it, he died before he made it, so I kind of felt like when I got the offer to come that I was going for the both of us somehow.