New life gives 'Six Feet Under' actress new slant on death

At the moment, the actress's focus is on her family.
By JAMES ENDRST
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
NEW YORK -- Rachel Griffiths has a new outlook on death. It's got nothing to do with her role as recovering sex addict Brenda on HBO's black-humored "Six Feet Under," which is in its fourth season (9 p.m. Sundays).
No. It's all the life-affirming eye-opener known as motherhood.
Until she gave birth six months ago to her son, Banjo, Griffiths said her attitude about "the end" had always been: "I'll just meet death when it comes -- whatever. You can't fight it."
The thirtysomething Australian-born actress even had a playful picture of her final hours in mind.
"I always had this idea I would die very graciously, you know? Succumb to the wasting disease in a very kind of romantic, consumptive way," she said, laughing.
Those days are gone.
"Now that I've had Banjo, I'd fight like a demon for every breath," she said. "If I were given a death sentence today, I'd just be so mad. I'd be so angry."
No escape
Of course, there's no escaping death on "Six Feet Under," which does, after all, open week after week with some poor soul buying the farm and moving on to the Fisher & amp; Diaz Funeral Home in Los Angeles.
Besides Griffiths, the show's stars include Peter Krause, Frances Conroy, Lauren Ambrose, Michael C. Hall, James Cromwell, Mathew St. Patrick and Freddy Rodriguez. Special guest stars this season include Mena Suvari, Ellen DeGeneres, Veronica Cartwright and Michelle Trachtenberg. As for Brenda, as usual, she stands apart.
"My character doesn't really deal with the death part of it," said Griffiths. "I'm not kind of soaked in its embalming fluids the way that the Fisher cast are."
Griffiths, whose husband, Andrew Taylor, is an artist, is more focused on family than work at the moment.
Character is healing
And Brenda is going through a period of -- what shall we call it? -- sexual healing?
"I guess that no one is ever fully recovered, right?" joked Griffiths. "Always maintain the humility that one is only in recovery and not cured."
After three seasons, Griffiths (whose first big break was playing Rhonda in the 1994 Australian feature film "Muriel's Wedding") said she would find it difficult to play Brenda the way she does if this season had been her first.
"Sometimes I have to stop myself judging some of the characters on 'Six Feet,"' she said. "It's like, 'Stop behaving like you're in your 20s. Get ... over yourself."'
She gets over it, though.
"Sometimes," she said, "I justify it to myself by saying, 'Well, they live in L.A."'