Most of us remember Lana Lang from Smallville. But, ever wonder where she is now? Let's take
a look at what Lana from Smallville's been up to in that time and what the Canadian actor
looks like today.
Kristin Kreuk was just 18 years old when she made her first bow as Lana Lang on Smallville.
During a 2008 interview with Metro, she openly admitted that she really didn't know what
to expect from the job. According to her, she was, quote, "new to the business" and
wasn't expecting her initial 13 episode contract to turn into what it did. Kristin ended up
playing Lana in a total of 158 episodes of the long-running show and was the third most-credited
cast member after Allison Mack and the would-be Man of Steel himself, Tom Welling.
Kreuk was delighted when Smallville became a hit, but by the time she reached her mid-20s,
the ambitious actor felt as though it was time to pursue bigger things. She explained:
"I love the people and it's a wonderful show to work on but I realised there were things
I couldn't do due to the schedule on Smallville. [...] I just wanted to try something else.
It's not that I was bored with the show."
The Canadian only appeared in five episodes of Smallville's eighth season, just enough
time to have one last kiss with Clark and wrap up their tragic love story. Kreuk admitted
being satisfied with how her arc ended even if she, quote, "may be in the minority". She
revealed during an 2011 interview with Hollywood Life:
"I liked that she gained inner strength and [...] had the courage to walk away from Clark,
that her commitment to a greater good outweighed her very human desire to be with Clark."
After spending so long as Superman's girlfriend on Smallville, Kristin Kreuk wanted to play
a strong female role in her next big project. Female characters don't come much stronger
than Chun-Li, the first playable woman in the Street Fighter video game series. The
Chinese Kempo master has been a favorite among fans since debuting in 1991's Street Fighter
II, but, unfortunately, the risk of taking her to the big screen didn't pay off.
2009's Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li was a commercial and critical disaster.
Scoring a damning 5 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and losing tens of millions of dollars, the
2009's Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li was an outright failure. It was also a big
career blow for Kreuk who seemed like the ideal choice for the role. After all, she
knew some basic Mandarin, did karate, dance, and gymnastics as a child, and even flew out
to Thailand early to make sure she was in fighting form in time for the shoot. She reminisced
about her training, telling Metro:
"I spent five weeks training with stunt coordinators. [...] I don't know if I could kick your a--
if we met on the street but, I'm decent at looking like I'm good at fighting."
She clearly had big hopes for Street Fighter as she told Girl.com that she even signed
on for one more film, but the franchise never materialized.
Still licking her wounds from the catastrophe that was Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li,
Kristin Kreuk returned to TV. She reminisced about her return and her new show NBC’s
Chuck, telling IGN:
"Smallville is a good set […] but it was just a totally different vibe. Just so, so
lovely."
"I want you to teach me Chuck.”
"Oh really do you? Well I'm assuming you're referring to the ancient art of nerd-herding
but I must warn you, the road to computer enlightenment is a long and treacherous one."
The newcomer received a warm welcome from Zachary Levi , the star of the show, and she
had nothing but good things to speak about him, saying,
"Zach is a great guy […] He's really good at what he does. I think he's adorable. He's
funny and again, incredibly supportive and welcoming."
Soon after her final Chuck episode aired, Kristin Kreuk appeared in another TV series,
Ben Hur, which wasn't widely seen outside of Canada. Despite it's low profile, it caught
the eye of a casting director looking for people to star in Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy.
Kreuk ultimately landed the part of Heather Thompson, love interest of rave-mad pill smuggler
Lloyd Buist, despite never having dabbled with drugs herself. She told Daily Record
while promoting the movie:
"I was straight, totally straight. […] I used to go with my friend and would just play
all night. I was probably the only one who wasn't high. I had a great time."
Being the only sober one meant that Kreuk was able to observe everything going on at
these parties and crucially remember them. Those wild nights became inspiration for the
actor when it came to filming rave scenes in Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy. She revealed to
Defective Geeks:
"I think it's a little raw and relevant to my experience growing up in high school […] Not
my personal experience necessarily, but watching certain kids and the reason it was really
popular when I was in school."
Unfortunately, popular isn't a word you would use to describe this film. With a Rotten Tomatoes
score of just 15 percent, Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy was another misstep for Kreuk.
Kristin Kreuk got to visit the Sundance Film Festival for the first time in 2011, but it
wasn't the dream experience she hoped it would be. She was there representing Japanese filmmaker
Shunji Iwai's Vampire and was already facing an uphill battle. In short, it was released
at a bad time.
Twilight mania was still in full swing and The Vampire Diaries was huge, which meant
that every single member of the press that Kreuk spoke to about Vampire asked what was
different about her movie. She defended the picture by telling Click on This at Sundance:
"It's pretty much the opposite of all those things. [...] It's not about vampires. It's
a very serious [film]."
Kreuk really wasn't kidding when she repeatedly told reporters that Vampire was absolutely
nothing like Twilight, but people still weren't prepared for it. Iwai's film follows a killer
schoolteacher who believes he's a vampire. He targets suicidal women for their blood,
and things get rather intense. Kreuk told eTalk while promoting the movie:
"It's pretty brutal, and it's beautiful, as well, but you know, there comes a point where
some people are walking out of the theater. [...] It was hard for people to watch."
The actress later revealed that her overall experience of the famous Sundance festival
was unfortunately underwhelming, even saying that she tried to go to a party but felt silly
even just going.
Having dealt with themes like drug addiction and ritual murder onscreen in 2011, Kristin
Kreuk opted for something much lighter and infinitely weirder in 2012. The former Smallville
star joined forces with crewmates Amanda Tapping, Robin Dunne, and Billy Boyd for a bonkers
sci-fi comedy called Space Milkshake. Dunne told The AU Review.com that:
"People see the title and they go, 'What does that mean?' and basically, it means nothing…
[what actually happens is] a rubber duck comes to life and tries to kill everyone and then
falls in love with Amanda Tapping's character. As you would, right?"
"But I was on my way here for you…" "For me?"
"I promised you that one day, I'd give you the world…"
It remains Kreuk's oddest outing, but the actor thoroughly enjoyed making it. When she
spoke with FansShare shortly after wrapping the movie, she called it, quote, "a funny
little comedy [that was] pretty goofy and fun."
Despite efforts from the cast to drum up interest, very few people saw Space Milkshake, before
quietly being dropped on VODin 2015. There are no critical reviews for the movie on Rotten
Tomatoes, but viewers loved its sheer wackiness, giving Space Milkshake an audience score of
96 percent.
By the time Space Milkshake saw the light of day, Kristin Kreuk was starring in The
CW's Beauty and the Beast, the show she's best known for after Smallville.
When The CW reached out to Kreuk about the role, she clicked with her character immediately
and decided it was time to return to the small screen.
She plays homicide detective Catherine "Cat" Chandler, a character she found both, quote
"strong [and] complicated". She told Assignment C in a joint interview with co-star, Jay Ryan:
"When I met with the girls that created the show, executive producers Sherri Cooper and
Jennifer Levin, I just fell in love with them and I thought we would have a very good opportunity
to create a female character that was really interesting."
The critics were split on the revamped Beauty and the Beast, even though a following grew
around the romantic fantasy series. It won People's Choice Awards in 2013, 2014, and
again in 2015, but that's when the network decided to pull the plug. The fanbase was
simply too small and that was reflected in the ratings.
Kristin Kreuk returned to The CW to star in another of the network's offerings in 2018,
legal drama Burden of Truth.
The show follows Canadian corporate attorney Joanna Hanley as she defends the people of
her rural hometown from a shady pharmaceutical giant.
It was originally supposed to be set in the Toronto area, but major rewrites took place
when it became apparent that shooting in Manitoba would be cheaper. Kreuk told CBC about this
choice saying:
"Once we started developing the scripts to suit a Prairie story, I really love it. I
think it's a special spot in our country that we don't see often."
For Kreuk, Burden of Truth is special, too. The actor serves as an executive producer
on the series, and she's used her sway to shine a light on the problems still faced
by Canada's original inhabitants. When asked about the subject, Kreuk explained:
"[The show] looks a lot at systemic racism and how that affects our court systems and
our justice systems and how police forces look at indigenous people, and we put a very
critical eye on it and I think that's important."
Playing an attorney is a far cry from the roles she's been previously known for, and
Kreuk is relishing that fact.
"You've said her name… five or six times now. Did your lawyer instruct you to do that?
To… make it seem like you saw her as a human being…?"
She told Brief Take in 2020:
"It's so rare, at least in my career, that I've had the opportunity to live in such a
real world […] [and] I'm very grateful for that."
Since then, the show began its fourth season in January 2021.
Kristin also has a lot to say about how she's been handling the Coronavirus pandemic.
She's just like a lot of us, in that her formerly frequent outings to her favorite Toronto restaurants
have been few and far between since COVID hit. But, she's doing her best to keep herself
and everyone else safe since dozens of actors have died of COVID-19.
She captioned a July 2020 Instagram selfie,
"Please wear masks — it helps. Truly,"
A few months after her post, the actor joined former Smallville co-star Michael Rosenbaum
on his podcast, Inside of You, for a candid catch up, and she was asked how she had been
dealing with life in the age of COVID-19. She had this to say about how she was coping:
"Most of the time, I'm able to just move forward, like, I try not to get stuck in it…"
"I just go, 'Okay! That's just the way it is right now,' and I can step back and not
get completely invested."
She went on to stress that she's not in control of her emotions 100 percent of the time, but
she does feel a whole lot safer being based in Canada.
Later in her chat with Rosenbaum on Inside of You, Kreuk praised her country's response
to the unprecedented health crisis, saying:
"The government supported people with money…" "...Whereas I feel like you guys have been
left in the lurch a little bit in that way."
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