When we left Alias, it had been a hell of a day for Sydney, the lethal butt-kicking double agent played by Jennifer Garner. She had dispatched the genetically altered double who had been masquerading as her roommate Francie. She had interfered with the plan by evil agents of SD-6 to activate The Telling, a 500-year-old superweapon created by a Renaissance inventor Rambaldi. And she had engaged in a face-off with her mother Irina (Lena Olin), a former KGB assassin and bad-girl in general before mom disappeared off the rooftop by bungee, blasting her way through windows to escape. And oh yeah. As the season finale ended, Sydney woke up in Hong Kong, apparently two years after the fact.

"What can I say? It's been a crazy year," says Lena Olin, who has just been nominated for an Emmy as best supporting actress in a drama for Alias. The gregarious 47-year-old Stockholm-born actress (a one-time protege of Ingmar Bergman) was introduced this season as Irina Derevko, Sydney's mother, who had been presumed dead since Sydney was six years old. As with most things in Alias, Irina's ultimate intentions were unclear. This is, after all, a show where the heroine started off working for what she thought was the CIA, only to find that the group - SD-6 - was an international crime organization. As for Irina, her re-appearance put her at odds with Sydney's father Jack (Victor Garber) - a good/bad guy himself. By season's end, the needle seemed to lean toward dad-good, mom-bad. But there's more to come.

"They left it a little open as to whether I got killed, because they are trying to figure out a way for me to do a couple of episodes next year," Olin says. "I hope they do, because I had so much fun on the show." She's not the only one. On one Alias Internet fansite, fans voted 98% in favor of Irina returning.

Perhaps inspired by the psychotic terrorist Olin played in the over-the-top 1994 movie Romeo is Bleeding, Alias creator J.J. Abrams courted Olin heavily to take on her first U.S. network TV role (her previous TV experience had consisted entirely of televised productions of Chekhov and Shakespeare back in Sweden). "I remember the first time I met with J.J., I was, like, TV? I don't know. And the way he started describing all the elements of Irina's character, he was very passionate. And I was like, but J.J. I live in New York! And he was, like, "Then she also...' It was as if he didn't hear me."

Thus convinced to temporarily abandon her husband, Swedish-born director Lasse Hallstrom, and their two children Tora and August, Olin crammed her year in L.A. with work, adding a part in the Harrison Ford film Hollywood Homicide to the Alias workload.

That character, Ford's flakey psychic girlfriend, was a blessing. "I loved the idea of doing something with lightness and charm, because I tend to get dangerous complicated women. I'm always getting parts that are torrid and dangerous and that's not the way I am." But that's the way it's been since her breakout role as a temptress in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. She's often called upon for nude scenes (which at 47, she's still splendidly qualified). "I really don't mind showing my body," she says. "But the kissing part is tricky. Kissing is like prostitution, it's the worst part."

The physicality of Alias, however, gets a thumbs up from Olin. "I've always been athletic and always enjoyed that part of life. I was always the one who threw myself from the top of the mountain with skis, and playing with the boys and playing hockey and soccer. If I'm playing, I'm like, 'Let's go!' I enjoy that part of life." In fact, she says one of the things she'll miss is the training. "I'd see a trainer a couple of times a week for Alias because we do so much physical stuff. And I want to stick to that 'cause it makes you physically strong and I haven't had a cold this whole year!" Future Alias appearances will have to wait a few months. This month Olin is back in Stockholm, shooting the caper film The Swedish Job with Harvey Keitel and Billy Bob Thornton. The movie casts her as a bored wife of a Swedish cop, a woman primed for a fall from grace. "I'm a bad girl again," she says. Some things never change.

(thanks to Neal for typing this!)