Life is just dandy for Katheryn Winnick.

"One week I get to crawl under the covers with the sexiest man alive and the next I get to be buried alive in Romania," says Winnick about being an actress.

In the comedy Failure to Launch, now playing, Winnick plays the girl Matthew McConaughey takes to bed in the opening scenes of the film.

Her stint in the horror Hellraiser: Hellworld is what found her playing almost dead in Romania.

She's now filming a TV pilot called 13 Graves for Fox and heads to Bulgaria next month to film When Nietzsche Wept.

"I play Lou Salome. She was a famous poet from Russia. (Friedrich) Nietzsche fell in love with her ... when she rejected him he fell into despair," says Winnick.

"He ended up a patient of Josef Breuer, who is considered one of the fathers of psychoanalysis."

Winnick, 27, says her Fox show is "a cross between National Treasure and Lost.

Because she is so busy with her acting career these days, Winnick has had little time for her first love -- martial arts.

With her parents and siblings, she is the proud owner of Win-Kai Martial Arts Studio in Toronto.

When Winnick was seven years old, her parents enrolled the whole family in martial arts.

"I fell in love with martial arts immediately. It consumed my youth. I got my first black belt at 13. When I was 16, I ranked second in Canada in tae kwon do and karate."

Her martial arts training is what paved the way for Winnick's acting career.

"When David Cronenberg was filming eXistenZ in Toronto in 1998, he brought me in to teach martial arts to Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Winnick approached acting in much the same way she did martial arts.

"I decided if I was going to be serious about an acting career I'd best relocate to L.A."