LOS ANGELES (TNA) – A police officer’s job is to serve and protect, but one actress who plays a lot of cops prefers to make people laugh.

Aisha Tyler jokes she has been stereotyped as a “beautiful, intelligent, black police officer” onscreen and while she plays it straight in her movies, behind the scenes she’s all laughs.

Although Aisha Tyler plays a lot of cops, she's all about laughs off camera.

Tyler, who got her start on the Los Angeles comedy circuit, says laughter definitely was the best medicine on the set of her latest flick, “Death Sentence,” where she plays a cop trying to protect Kevin Bacon’s family from a violent inner city gang.

“We filmed in Columbia, South Carolina, and everyone stayed in the same hotel – it was like going to summer camp,” she laughs.

She says although she had to play a hard-ass on screen, she had a blast hanging out with the fake gangsters at the hotel bar every night.

“I was the queen bee because I was the only girl with all these boys,” says the actress. “We took over the hotel bar every night, played movies on their flat screen TV and watched UFC – it was great.

“All the guys that play gang members are also stunt guys – they look terrifying, but everyone is really sweet – it was a dark movie but we had a lot of fun.”

Even Bacon got in on the action, giving people rides to the set and hanging out at the bar after a long day of work.

“Besides all the running and shooting all day, it was a very relaxing set,” assures Tyler.

But while it was all fun and games off-camera, Tyler says she took her role as a sympathetic police officer very seriously.

“It’s a very strong female role in a very masculine film,” she says. “It needed an emotional center to anchor the story down. She has sympathy for him [Bacon], but she has to uphold the law, which is pretty serious.”

It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it and Tyler is up for the challenge. In fact, she loves playing cops so much that she’s even written a movie about female cops so she can star in it.

“I really wanted to make a movie that’s uncompromising,” she explains. “I didn’t want to make it soft because women were in it – I want the audience to believe they are real cops.

“Lots of action movies are fun to watch, but you never believe they’re police officers. They tend to be big and broad. I want people to believe the women are real and in real peril, which is something you don’t see with female cop roles.”

Tyler says she had no problem researching for her untitled flick because she’s “played a cop three or four times” and always asks real officers the rules of the road during filming.

“I’ve always found law enforcement attractive,” says the actress. “I like strong women and really respond to the idea of people who put their life on the line for others.

“I find that attractive and an interesting story to tell. It’s unique—most of us wouldn’t go out on the street every day and put ourselves before other people.”

Although she’s immersed herself in cop culture, Tyler insists she loves to keep things light – and she credits years of doing stand-up as well as TV gigs such as “Talk Soup”  and “Friends” for her sense of humor.

“When I first started I would wear these really baggy clothes and no make up, nothing feminine at all,” she stresses. “I got a lot of work on the gay and lesbian circuit; I’ll tell you that, which was great because it meant a bigger audience for me!”

She still does stand-up, and admits that now that she’s a big star she puts a little more thought into her onstage appearance.

“There are no more jeans and a giant shirt,” she laughs. “I remember I’d wear these combat boots and my lucky shirt – it was a denim shirt, probably double XL, and I wore it EVERY DAY!

“One day a promoter came up to me and was like, ‘Dude, you just need to take that shirt off!’”

Tyler took the advice and her career has been full speed ahead ever since – not bad for a girl who thought she wanted to be a lawyer.

“It was such a fluke,” she explains. “I was on a path to becoming a lawyer, but I hated going to work. I started doing stand-up because you don’t need to audition or have an agent - it’s just something you do – so I tried it, loved it and was completely seduced by it after one performance even though I wasn’t very funny.”

Tyler says working the clubs helped build up her confidence and she still loves getting onstage between cop gigs.

“It’s exhilarating like a roller coaster – it’s fun terrifying,” she laughs. “I’m not nervous anymore – I’ve done a million shows where nobody laughed, but you only really get funny during your bad shows. Bad shows make you think about what you did wrong.”

Besides drawing from her life in Hollywood, Tyler says she gets inspiration for her material from her husband, a lawyer himself, to whom she has been married for 15 years.

“He’s Irish Catholic so I have lots of material on him!” she jokes.

However, her hubby jokes are on the back burner for now. Tyler is currently filming the flick “Black Water Transit” with Beverly D’Angelo, where she plays – what else – a cop.

“Death Sentence” opens nationally on Friday (Aug. 31).

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