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You may not recognize the name, but you've likely seen her on TV.
Canadian actor Kimberly Huie has a long list of credits to her name including Grey's Anatomy, Beautiful People, Desperate Housewives, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, NYPD Blue, Any Day Now, Pensacola and Chicago Hope.
She recently wrapped up filming her third season of G-Spot, a comedy series on Showcase filmed in Halifax. And after six weeks on set, she's finally back home in Los Angeles, behind the wheel of her 2003 BMW 325i sedan.
"For me, a BMW is sleek, stylish, but not an overt statement. There are certain BMW models that are more limelight-friendly than others. Mine goes under the radar, but it gets me there without a lot of flash.
Kimberley Huie, a familar face from TV shows such as G-Spot, loves her ‘zippy, reliable’ BMW 325i. (Ann Johansson for The Globe and Mail)
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"I appreciate how it drives. I'm big on the turning radius because I tend to have to execute quick turns because I overshoot where I mean to go," she laughs.
Huie's first car was an Isuzu Trooper she bought in Toronto for $11,900. "This is before I became a bit more green-conscious," she says.
"I loved it. It was a used car. Unlike my other cars, I had no information about its history. In retrospect, I think it had a checkered past. I think it had some questionable repairs, but I loved it.
"I loved the 4x4 aspect. It was great for road trips. Whatever you needed, you just threw it in the back and off you went. I really thought, after I had been in it for a while, I'd never go back to a car. But now I love my little car," says Huie, who also recently filmed an independent movie, Passenger Side.
The Isuzu wasn't the most reliable vehicle on the road. "In the Trooper, I was driving to a job from L.A. to San Diego ... all of a sudden, it felt like something went horribly wrong underneath the car and I barely could steer it.
"I was in the far left lane; I cut across all the lanes and navigated over to the shoulder. A gentleman stopped and said, 'Are you okay?' I said yeah. He said, 'That was incredible driving — it was like Formula One driving, watching you get across to the shoulder.'
"I think I must have been guided divinely because I don't know if I could ever repeat those manoeuvres again," says Huie, who studied history and political science at the University of Toronto before launching her acting career.
She moved to California in 1996, driving her Trooper from Toronto to Los Angeles, but the SUV didn't last much longer.
"I had the Isuzu until it died. Then I had to find a car in a hurry.
"A friend recommended her mechanic and his specialty was BMWs. He said this is a car that will go forever and ever. I drove an old one of his and I bought one on the spot. I loved it. It was a big boat, too — a 1992 525. It was a gas-guzzler, but such a solid machine."
Unlike most of her friends, Huie didn't get her licence at 16. "I was a late-license person. I didn't get it until university. Then I didn't use it for a while because I had an accident. It's one of those classics — I wasn't even supposed to have the car where I had it. We were living in the suburbs and I was going downtown. I was supposed to take the car to the subway, but I thought it made more sense to drive it all the way downtown.
"I was on my way back to get on to the [Don Valley Parkway]. All of a sudden, bam! Traffic was stopped and I didn't stop in time and I hit one car and they hit another. It was horrible.
"It was my mom's Crown Victoria that she just got. I was so upset and shaken up she overrode all the disciplinary outrage," recalls the Jamaican-born Huie.
She took her driving test twice, but not because she failed the first time. "I had to do it all over again when I came to L.A., not just the written but the road, too.
"It's really embarrassing because you've been driving for a while; it didn't happen to me, but I know other people who failed. I did the test in my own car, the Isuzu, so the kilometres were the larger numbers and the miles were the smaller number. I remember the instructor saying 'I have a feeling you use excessive speed, but I couldn't really tell because I couldn't read the numbers so I can't take marks off.'"
She laughs before confessing, "Yeah — I love to drive fast. I'm always telling the officers I never speed. But I do!"
On the road, she listens to a variety of tunes. "It's pretty eclectic — reggae to alternative rock. I try to recreate the road with the music. Stretches of road are more contemplative and melancholy and then there are stretches where you're gunning it and no one is around. You want to let the windows down and just scream into the night!
"One of my favourite drives is Highway 1 from Los Angeles to San Francisco. And it's also one of the last drives I took with my mother before she passed so it's really sentimental now. With her, I rented a car because I didn't want to chance anything happening with breakdowns [with the Isuzu]."
Huie has no plans to dump her Bimmer. "I still want to keep her cause she's small, zippy, reliable. She doesn't take up a lot of space; I have space to park her.
"But I would love to get something else — the new BMW Hydrogen 7 … I'm really anxious to one day get behind the wheel of one of those."
