Few actors will admit picking their profession strictly for fame and fortune. Ask why they do it and they'll no doubt mention passion or art - they might even scoff at the question and say acting chose them.

Not Grace Park. She became an actor ... for the catering.

"When I started doing a bunch of commercials, when I showed up they're like 'Do you want to have lunch?' and there'd be this huge table of steamed mussels and fresh-made bread and salads, just a massive spread," she says, laughing. "When I grew up, we'd go to a nice dinner - besides McDonald's - twice a year. That was it. The rest of the time, we were at home. My mom cooks very well, thank goodness, but if you only go out twice a year and then all of a sudden this is totally available every day and you get a [trailer] ... it felt like I was being taken care of, and it was pretty awesome."

Well, at least she's honest.

These days, Park is as hot as the lunches she loves. She's probably best known for her dual roles as cylon-humanoid copies Sharon Valerii/ Sharon Agathon on the cult-hit Battlestar Galactica, her roles opposite Benjamin Bratt on A&E's The Cleaner and as Homeland Security Agent Liz Carver on the second season of The Border.

"She's young, she's enthusiastic," says Park about her character. "When you meet her, she's in Idaho and B.C. trying to crack this FBI Most Wanted case about child brides crossing the border. Eventually she does so well that she gets a promotion over into Toronto to work as a Canadian liaison with [Immigration Custom Services] guys."

The fictionalized border hopping should be second nature to Park, who was born in Los Angeles but moved to Vancouver with her Korean parents as an infant. She got her break on the CBC show Edgemont and, south of the border, has done well to avoid Hollywood's ethnic stereotypes, something she attributes mostly to luck.

"Maybe [those roles] just didn't come by my way," she says. "I remember doing one thing, I did an audition and I finished it and they're like, 'Great ... can you do that with an accent?'"

Park, who originally wanted to be an architect, says her degree in psychology [from UBC] helps her get into the heads of the characters she plays.

"I'm really fascinated by how people create themselves," she says. "How they think, not what they think, but how they even decide to think that way at all. For that reason, it's really fascinating to explore these people and I think this year I started liking acting. It took a while for me to get there. There were moments ... but this was the first year I said, 'I actually like acting.'"

Food for thought.

- Season 2 of The Border airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on CBC. Park can also be seen in her first feature role in West 32nd, which screens at the Asian Film Festival this weekend. Info at: www.vaff.org.