FROM the supermum in Robert Rodriguez’s PG-rated fantasy Spy Kids to the lesbian parole officer in the Mexican director’s graphic crime thriller, Sin City, even Carla Gugino admits that she’s a hard actor to pin down.

“I like to keep myself interested.”

Early in her career, Gugino’s eclectic list of credits — spanning the Pauly Shore comedy Son-in-law, Broadway productions of Mice and Men and Arthur Miller’s After The Fall, action fantasies Sucker Punch and Watchmen and TV series such as Californication and Entourage — confused casting agents.

“But one of the perks of age is that it starts to be recognised as a body of work,” she says.

At 43, the star of upcoming disaster movie San Andreas, in which Gugino plays the estranged wife of Dwayne Johnson’s helicopter rescue pilot, is only nominally showing signs of slowing down.

“(Acting) is the love of my life. I could do it 365 days a year. But I am trying to be a little bit better at living my life in between,” she says.

Having gone straight from the set of M. Night Shyamalan’s “dark, cool and complicated” 10-episode TV thriller Wayward Pines to the $US100 million earthquake movie that takes place on the infamous Californian fault line, Gugino is hanging out to do another comedy.

But despite San Andreas’ gruelling production schedule, the actor describes the process of making her third film with Johnson (after Race to Witch Mountain and Faster) as thoroughly enjoyable.

“My character really goes through the ringer, so it’s challenging on an emotional level — and a physical level, because I have also been doing a lot of stunt stuff,” says a cosmetically bruised and battered Gugino during a break in production at Village Roadshow’s Gold Coast’s studios, dried “blood” caked realistically across her face.

“But still, there is a very light energy to this production. I did a six-day week last week. There was three days of major stunt work and a really emotional scene. We had one day off — and I was still, this morning, at 6am when the alarm went off: let’s go to work,” she says.

“I’m having such a good time every day even though I have my own actual bruises from the stunts as well.”

Part of the appeal, she says, is the sparkling Gold Coast backdrop.

“I don’t think I have ever been on a location that I have loved more than this.”

One of the highlights of her stay, says the actor, was a climb to the top of Mount Warning — a sightseeing activity that doubled as training given the jam-packed shooting schedule.

“I convinced my trainer, because it was my only day off, that instead of the gym we should do something out in the open.

“He presented it like: let’s just go for a little hike. Cut to a four-hour round trip. And then there’s the chain you use to pull yourself up because it’s so steep.

“But it was amazing. And it counted as our work out.”

Gugino even got up close and personal with some of Australia’s native wildlife during her trek.

“I jumped over a six foot python,’’ she says, getting out her iPhone to produce photographic proof.

While the advance promos have concentrated on San Andreas’s spectacular visual effects — crashing tidal waves, crumbling skyscrapers, cracking fault lines which expose deep fissures in the earth — Gugino says that at its core, the film is a smaller, human drama.

“Even just reading the script — it was scary, thrilling, edge of your seat — but it’s also got a huge amount of heart,’’ she says.

“I was genuinely moved by the journey of these characters and I was not expecting to be.”

Having spent many years living in southern California, Gugino is no stranger to earthquakes.

“When I was about 20, I was in LA in a big one that terrified me. It was big enough for a ton of my friends to move out of (town). But that didn’t happen for me because … well, I feel the same way about flying. I am like, if it’s my time to go, I am going to go.”

Hurricane Sandy, however, taught her an important lesson.

Now based in New York City with boyfriend Sebastian Gutierrez, Gugino experienced the full elemental force of the destructive 2012 weather event.

“We live on the tenth floor of an apartment building. They had warned us to fill our bathtubs -basically they told us everything we were supposed to do. The City was very good about it. And we did nothing. So we were without power, water, an elevator for eight days. And it was freezing. Next time, I will not do that!”