Moss knew the part would give her a bigger movie-industry profile, co-starring with Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne.

So the Vancouver native didn't hesitate when she was told by directors Larry and Andy Wachowski the shoot in Australia would last a year. She didn't flinch at the prospect of taking kung fu lessons for four months, either.

She jokes about it now, but the grueling commitment did have its after-schock.

"When I got back home all my girlfriends were going like, 'Who are you?' " remembers Moss. "All my girlie girl was gone, and I was pretty much, like, 'Yeah.' "

The former model smiles sweetly. "But my girlie girl's back now, so I'm all right."

You bet she is. The Matrix has elevated 26-year-old Moss a few career notches. Reviewers took notice of her role as one of the cyber-punk global rebels. Directors and producers took notice, too. Not bad for the former West Coast Canuck tyke who figured she didn't qualify for show business.

"When I was a kid, I didn't know Canadians could be actors," she says. "I thought just Americans could."

Despite her early misunderstanding, Moss has done just fine, first as a model in Europe and then as a struggling actor based in the home for struggling actors -- Hollywood.

"I moved to Europe 10 years ago to model, and moved here eight years ago.

"But I still work in Canada when I can," she reports. "I feel very blessed."

She was also honored in her homeland. In 1996, she earned a Gemini nomination for a guest role on the TV series Due South. Her first TV job was on Dark Justice. And she's had parts in films such as Sabotage and The Secret Life Of Algernon, and she can be seen in the upcoming picture, New Blood.

But Moss admits that her breakthrough arrived with TV's Models Inc.

'There was nothing like getting Models," she says. "It was the first sort of validating thing where you get picked from a bunch of people. It was like I won the prize for that moment."

Getting the sought-after Matrix role was something else again, although the Wachowski brothers insist they were convinced she could do it the first time they met her.

Certainly, the more Moss found out about the demands, the less confident she became.

Not only was her character involved in lots of martial arts sequences, Moss had to do them while attached to a single pull wire which gave her lift and allowed her to literally run around walls. It was an incredibly effective special effect. But also dangerous.

"I was really scared when I first started doing the wall thing, because I rehearsed with padded walls, mastered it that way. Then they would take the pads off for the shoot. Believe me, this whole wire thing was about trusting."

Trust she did, and she pulled it off without major injuries.

But wait a minute. She wants to get back to that Wachowski brothers thing, when they said they wanted her the first time they saw her.

"Oh, is that right?" says a playful Moss, pretending to lose her girlie girl self for her tough Matrix persona. "Let me tell you, I auditioned six or seven times to get the part."

Then she grins again, just like a girlie girl should.