Her life has actually had a head-to-toe makeover: She now spends nearly half the year in Los Angeles, working on ''Six,'' and the rest between her native bases in Melbourne and near Sydney. (London used to figure in the equation, but three continents were a little hard to juggle.) Plus, there's now a fiance: artist Andrew Taylor, whom she'll be taking to the Emmys (''I'd rather go home empty-handed with him than with some piece of gold-encrusted iron and an empty bed''). By her reckoning, she's the third member of ''Six Feet Under'''s close-knit cast to get engaged during the two-year run of the show (''It's soooo spooky,'' she says), and there are two weddings and a baby in there as well. ''There's something about the show that makes you want to get on with living,'' notes Krause, father of a 9-month-old son. ''Against the backdrop of death...everything is a waste of time except for the business of living your life.'' Even when that sometimes seems difficult. ''It was hard going back to the second season after September 11,'' says Griffiths. ''It was hard to go to America, to leave everyone you love in the world. My partner said to me: 'Make it count.' And I was so thankful that actually I was going to work on something that we knew was -- without being really pretentious -- relevant to the human condition.''
Right now the state of Griffiths' own human condition is, in a word, tired. ''Last year I was a bit ridiculous,'' she says. ''I finished the first season [of 'Six Feet Under'] and then I did ''The Rookie,'' and then I did my own short ['Roundabout'] and then I did 'The Hard Word' and I went back to 'Six Feet Under' and then I just did 'Proof' [with the Melbourne Theatre Company].'' She's also recently wrapped the Down Under outlaw flick ''The Kelly Gang'' with Heath Ledger and Naomi Watts, as well as the Australian TV drama After the ''Deluge,'' opposite ''The Matrix'''s Hugo Weaving. ''You tend to do intense cycles of work, like maybe two years, and then just go pfff.''
Unfortunately, Griffiths will have to wait a bit for her pfff period, now that she's gearing up to cowrite and direct a feature film (about a life-crisis-afflicted twentysomething gal who decides to reinvent herself). She's already taken a few steps behind the camera with auspicious results: She brought home prizes in Toronto, Palm Springs, and Aspen for a 1998 short film she wrote and directed titled ''Tulip,'' about a widower and his depressed cow; and this year, she won the Best Australian Short Film trophy at the Melbourne International Film Festival for ''Roundabout,'' an unflinching look at one man's paralyzing anxiety attack.
And if she could direct her own final act? ''I think I'll be one of those fit old ladies walking along the beach, you know? Six in the morning, coupla dogs, and hopefully a sweet old man who's fit and wiry next to me.'' And when, at last, her number comes up, the real-life Fisher families of the world can put away their scalpels and body makeup. ''I'd like to just be sent out to sea on a funeral pyre, have people on the beach and a big bonfire,'' she says. ''And the sharks can eat what's left of me.''
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