Laurence Leboeuf in a scene from the series Durham County, which returns for its second season tonight on The Movie Network and Movie Central.

The first thing you need to know about Laurence Leboeuf is she's a girl.

Certainly there's no question about that when you look at her.

But if you merely are reading her name on a page, and especially if you're a casting director in English Canada or in the United States, you might assume Laurence Leboeuf is a dude.

"It's very French, a female French name," said the bilingual Leboeuf, 23. "It's pretty common in Quebec now.

"But when I was in Los Angeles doing auditions, and you're waiting in the waiting room, you have to sign your name so they can call you up. So the woman comes out and I'm standing all the way at the end of the row, and there are tons of people in the room, and she says, 'Uh, could Low-Raunse come up -- is there a guy in here?'

"And I'm like, 'No, it's me!' Right away my cover was broken."

Certainly Laurence Leboeuf is going to have more and more trouble going undercover if her acting career continues to provide great exposure in both of Canada's official languages.

Tonight on The Movie Network and Movie Central, Leboeuf will continue her role as Sadie Sweeney in the second-season debut of the dark and acclaimed Canadian drama Durham County.

The role of Sadie was a pretty big one in the first season, and it's even bigger in the six-episode second season.

Leboeuf also had a recurring role in the first season of the CBC series Being Erica, playing the wife of Erica's longtime friend and forbidden love interest.

Leboeuf already has established a big name for herself in French-language TV shows and movies. Quebec definitely has its own star-making machinery and French Canada tends to support its own art with far more devotion than English Canada supports its own art.

So with her Quebec career humming along, why did Leboeuf ultimately decide to work on her accent and tackle some English roles?

"It's all about travelling and seeing wider in life and opening my horizons," Leboeuf said.

"I love Quebec and I love doing French television and French movies. Some of our movies are really beautiful. And it's true, in Quebec, in French Canada, there is a really big star system, with our own gossip magazines, and people know their French Canadian actors and love their theatre. That is a big difference with English Canada, which is very much influenced by the Americans.

"But the world is so big and that's pretty much that. Why not?"

Leboeuf said she always was fascinated by the English language, even though she had no opportunity to learn it when she was growing up.

"I used to play with my dolls and pretend they spoke English together -- of course, it really was more like gibberish," Leboeuf said with a laugh. "I always wanted to speak it, but my family didn't speak English and I didn't have any English friends.

"When I was in Grade 9, I had a friend who came from Massachusetts, she came to learn French. So I sort of learned English with her. And then I started to ask my agent if I could do some auditions in English, because I thought my vocabulary was getting to the point that it was okay.

"So I did some English auditions, and I got (the YTV series) 15/Love, and 15/Love made my accent a lot better."

As the second season of Durham County begins, Sadie -- who is the daughter of Hugh Dillon's character Det. Mike Sweeney -- still is haunted by what happened to her at the hands of a lecherous killer. Now, even though that lecherous killer is behind bars, he remains determined to drive a wedge between Sadie and her dad.

It's a beefy role for Laurence Leboeuf, whose striking name -- striking in English-speaking circles, anyway -- actually works to her advantage in terms of getting noticed and standing out.

"True, I guess, yeah," Laurence Leboeuf said. "So now I'm 'Low-Raunse.' "