In a cafe near the American Academy of Dramatic Arts she saw actor Rae Dawn Chong at another table. Down didn't have the nerve to go over and say hello.

"She was my favourite actress as a kid. She did a "Tales from the Crypt" and I loved her."

Fast forward to today and Down is in her second season on the paranormal adventure series "Mysterious Ways" (8 p.m. Friday, KING), co-starring with Adrian Pasdar and Rae Dawn Chong.

"I won the show lottery," the 25-year old Down says.

Not that she didn't buy a whole lot of tickets beforehand, so to speak.

There were her two years of study in L.A., jobs as wairess, toilet cleaner and nightclub coat checker, as well as roles in amateur and professional theatre.

"I dressed up as a bunch of grapes for a wine fest in 1997, right when I got back to Vancouver. People kept grabbing my grapes."

As a girl she wrote skits for classmates and for the animals at her mom's Langley home. But the professional life had to wait.

"My mom was set on me getting a standard education," Down says. "I'm grateful for that. I moved to L.A. when I was 19 - I knew my mother was scared but she kept it to herself. If I didn't call for a few days, I'd get this 'Um, are you dead?' call."

Down got a Vancouver agent when she finished her studies and moved back in with her mom, a freelance writer. Her first on-screen role was as a woman with AIDS-related cancer in a "Da Vinci's Inquest" episode about assisted suicide, and then she did a rivetting four-episode arc as a sexual assault victim on "Cold Squad".

Then came the call to audition for "Mysterious Ways". The month-long audition process involved reading for a casting director, then for the show's producers and finally for network brass.

"The first, you forget about it, put it on tape," she says. "The second, you're a little bit nervous. By the third audition you're wanting it like your right arm. I could barely speak."

In April 2000, she won the part of Miranda, a deadpan physics grad student who investigates apparent miracles.

"She's not good in social situations," Down says of the character. "I get to shoot a gun, ride a horse. I get stories where things happen to me."

The show airs in the summer on NBC and on Pax TV during the regular season.

During the December-April break between the first and second seasons she kicked back, taking violin lessons and walking dogs for the pound. She isn't living large - she has her own apartment now but with a roommate. "I go out for dinner a lot. If I see a magazine I like, I buy it."