The plucky, 19-year-old Australian actress got on a plane to Los Angeles little more than a year ago to look for an agent and now she is starring in the hit sci-fi drama Roswell, a second series of which begins this week on TV2. (The opening episode screens on Sunday, then moves into its usual Tuesday timeslot.)

"It’s all been such a whirlwind and I feel really lucky," an exited De Ravin told TV Guide on the Los Angeles sound stage at Paramount Pictures where the one-hour drama is shot.

The former dancer from the small Victorian town of Mt Eliza joined the cast midway through the show’s first season, playing the newest alien on the block, Tess harding.

The drama is set in the tiny but notorious town of Roswell, New Mexico, where teenagers Liz (Shiri Appleby) and Max (Jason Behr) forge an otherworldly connection when he saves her life and risks his own.

Liz discovers that Max, his sister Isabel (Katherine Heigal) and his friend Michael (Brendan Fehr) are surviving descendants from beings on board the fiery crash of an alien space-craft that popular legend says plummeted to the desert in 1947.

Since emerging from incubation, the three teenagers have grown up quietly among Roswell residents, experiencing firsthand all the emotions that come with life on Earth and the struggles of adolescence.

"I’m the fourth alien," De Ravin says of her character, "and since I really am an alien in Los Angeles, I can relate!"

"On the show, we hatched out of pods and the other three hatched slightly earlier, so they left me behind. I grew up with the head alien until I met up with my fellow teenage aliens again, but because I’ve been around this powerful alien guy all my life, I’m a bit more in touch with my powers than they are and this creates a lot of problems for everybody."

De Ravin’s own resident alien adventure began in December, 1999, after the former student of the Australian Ballet Company who had danced since she was nine decided she wanted to shift her focus to acting. "I just wanted to get into the more theatrical aspects of performing and I did a couple of episodes of Beastmaster, but I never really acted in Australia" she says.

So what possessed this soft spoken blond teenager to head off to Hollywood to begin that transition without knowing a soul?

"Everything happens here and it’s just such a bigger pool of everything happening than in Australia," comes out of the mouth of the babe. "Practically everyone who lives in LA is in this business one way or another and I thought I’d give it a go."

"I didn’t know anyone when I got off the plane but I came for a week to get an agent and that out of the way and I stayed in a hotel and made my appointments and got an agent and went home."

De Ravin then moved to Los Angeles in February and studied with Prime Time Actors Studio workshop while looking for work.

She landed the Roswell role in her first week of Auditions before she had even found an apartment!