Orange Coast Magazine 11/1/1999 ma'am, yes ma'am!

Both on-screen and off, Catherine Bell is one macha kind of gal. Who giggles. On television, she plays the feisty, analytical Marine Maj. Sarah "Mac" MacKenzie on the hit CBS drama JAG. Together with her on-screen acting partner, David James Elliott, Bell plays an attorney with the Judge Advocate General's office, one tough cookie who can field strip an M-16 one minute and weave her way through a crime investigation the next. She's bright, she can hold her own among her (mostly) male fellow Marines and still show enough shapely calf kept in prime form through kickboxing to keep viewers with more prurient interests, well, interested. In real life, the 30-year-old former model is likely to spend her off-screen time with her husband, actor/stuntman Adam Beason, engaged in sports just extreme enough to make someone in risk management at CBS wince at the slightest mention of their latest toy. Depending on the day, that could include anything from Harley-Davidsons and motocross racing bikes to boats, fast cars, snowboards, water skis or the paraphernalia necessary for such trivial pursuits as bungee jumping or the occasional skydive. But a funny thing happens on the way to an interview with Catherine Bell. Just as you're sucking in your stomach and wondering if you should wear Doc Martens instead of heels, Catherine Bell...opens her mouth. She giggles. Incessantly. She makes jokes, she shares confidences with a breathy girl-to-girl "I've got a secret" voice and, in true homage to the San Fernando Valley she grew up in, peppers any and all conversation with phrases like "you know, it's like, um, you know, soooo cool..." OK, you think, I've got her pegged: She's a bright, ambitious woman on television, but in real life she's a very pretty Valley Girl. Wrong. For one thing, Bell can give you all the Valley-speak you want in fluent Farsi, a language she learned while growing up with her Iranian-born mother, Mina, and an extended family that took education seriously. She's also charmingly direct, ambitious and doesn't think twice about asking for what she wants. In fact, she won her role on JAG her second role on the show, actually by asking for it even after she'd been murdered once already. It seems that when the show was originally airing on NBC, Bell had a three-line walk-on role as Lt. Dianne Schonke, girlfriend of Navy Lt. Cmdr. Harmon Rabb, the character played by Elliott. The episode ended with her character being killed off by a vicious stalker even as the original network was deciding to kill off the series. CBS took a chance and revived the show; Bell took a chance and petitioned its new producer, Don Bellisario, for a chance to revive a major female role. Her persistence paid off. While they couldn't bring her old character back, the chemistry between Bell and Elliott was such that they introduced the character of Mac to the show, which is now consistently one of the top 20 dramas in prime time. O.C. A mutual friend described you and your husband as "total gearheads." What's up with that? CB: Ohmygodyes!! We're just into toys, whether it's motorcycles or race cars or computers. I've got the Palm Pilot right here with me, I've got the world's smallest phone Maybe it's just because I'm still a big little kid and I just love toys, you know? O.C. Are you a tomboy? CB: I've always been like that. I was a tomboy when I was a kid, so I was always playing baseball and basketball and football and stuff as a kid with the boys. When all the girls were getting all made up and getting into all that girl stuff in junior high I was out playing softball or touch football with the guys. I was a big geek (laughs) and I certainly wasn't the coolest kid on the block [but] it seemed normal to me. I was always skateboarding I've got scars all over my body from holding onto my friend's bike riding my skateboard and him going waaaay too fast downhill and (laughs) losing it. But I think it's cool now It's fun to be a woman and be sexy and feminine but also have that rad background, you know? But, yeah, I was definitely a tomboy. I didn't figure out the makeup or cute hair or clothes until oh, maybe my junior year of high school. A friend of mine (at an all-girls Catholic school) took me under her wing and started showing me how to put makeup on and how to do my hair and I started to like it. Right after that I started modeling. O.C. Did that change your interaction with the guys? CB: NO! I'm still one of the guys and I always will be. It's fun to hang out with the guys and they feel they can say absolutely anything in front of me Whether they're talking about sports or cars or beer or a beautiful woman, it's like, "Yeah!" I'm right there with them. I understand men much better than most women I know. O.C. What's it like being the female lead on a predominantly male-acted, male-oriented show? CB: Ummm, interesting, that's for sure. It really feels like a man's show most of the time It's a boy's world on JAG. I break it up a little and I try to bring a little (laughs) femininity to all that testosterone. The best part? Probably being able to portray such a respectable, ethical, intelligent, strong woman. That's still pretty rare in our business, unfortunately. The woman is often just the accessory or the pretty girl or whatever. Mac gets to be that but she also gets to kick some ass! Mac has an interesting background, including alcoholism and some bad relationships. O.C. Did you create that part of the role? CB: Most of it was handed to me and I generally find out about that stuff only when I get the script. But I love it. I think it's great that she's not perfect and wasn't perfect. I think that's maybe why so many young girls and different people look up to Mac and respect her even more. She came from a pretty horrible upbringing and her first relationship was a mess and yet she's now [an officer] in the Marine Corps and an excellent lawyer. She's made something of herself. O.C. I hear you get a lot of fan mail...who's it from? CB: Oh, God Military, non-military, little kids, old people everyone! O.C. What do the military folks have to say? CB: Usually great stuff...I haven't heard anything bad yet. Almost every Marine I've met says I portray a Marine dead-on, which is really, really flattering. I get letters from kids, teenagers and young girls who just want to be Mac. I've had quite a few people actually say that they're going to become a Marine or a JAG lawyer because of me...the character. I think that's pretty cool! Women in the military thank me for portraying a character who's feminine and attractive and sexual and yet still strong and intelligent and in the military. I think people have this perception that to be strong and a military woman you have to look a certain way or not be feminine. O.C. Unlike Mac's character, who's single, you and Adam have been married five years. How did the two of you meet? CB: We met on a set or, rather, I met him. I went up and introduced myself because I thought he was kinda cute. He was real shy and not to be egotistical about this but he was kinda one of the only guys who didn't hit on me (laughs) and I thought that was great so at the end of the shoot I gave him my phone number to call me and he didn't! I found out later that he thought I was kidding and that some of the grips or the crew put me up to it. With both of you having crazy schedules, do you get much quiet time together? We have a cabin in Lake Arrowhead and we sneak up there a lot. People hear about my action-packed stuff and they think that I only have one mode. They have trouble believing that my other mode is cross-stitching on the recliner in the cabin! I also make (laughs) little model cars. I've been doing them since I was about 8. Ferraris and all my little dream cars. A lot of them are only half done. I move from one to the other and I never quite finish. I also draw and paint. The press has made a lot of all the motorcycles and the kickboxing and the skydiving and the other crazy activities... I've only skydived once, so I need to set the record straight. People think I'm crazy and reckless but I'm absolutely not...I'm soooo safe and soooo careful and I won't do anything that feels like I could break something. I like all the adventure sports but I like to do them in a safe way. Any other wild passions? I'm really passionate about Crim-Anon. Have you heard of Narc-Anon? Well, I'm really interested in the criminal justice system and criminal reform. I don't think we do that I don't think we reform, or even attempt to reform, criminals. We just make them worse. We take a criminal, whether he's a first-time offender or a hardened criminal or whatever and we throw him into a system where...the biggest reason why most criminals become criminals is a lack of self-respect. That's one of the main reasons. So what do we do? We take away their self-respect even more, we give them no respect, we throw them into a system where they're just hanging out with other criminals. If they didn't know how to steal a car before, they're going to learn it in prison. They're not given a chance at all. They come out and most of the time they wind up becoming a repeat offender. I think we need to teach some basic principals of life. O.C. You've talked about being a Scientologist. How do you feel about the media having this love/hate relationship with Scientology and some of the higher-profile practitioners like Kirstie Alley, Tom Cruise and John Travolta? CB: I'm a little tired of it. It's, like, enough already! You know, it's a religion and we've been around for 50 years. You wouldn't say the things about Scientology [that are said] substituting the word "Jewish" or "Catholic." You would never hear those things. It would be soooo un-PC! I had an acting teacher who was a Scientologist and after about eight years, I kinda started looking around and thinking, "OK, wait a minute All the people that are in class who are Scientologists are really cool! They're all really bright, they're positive and have lots of energy. They have great relationships and their careers are going really well, and they're doing well financially and I started adding it all up and going, "Hmmmm, what is that?!" So I took a course called Personal Values and Integrity and it really made me change some things in my life. I did some [exercises] to handle some auditioning problems I was having three years or so ago and I got to the bottom of exactly what the fear was that made me freak out on auditions. When I did, it went away completely. Forever. Two days later, I booked JAG. Two days later I had my final call-back. I know that if I hadn't figured that out and done that auditing I would have gotten a little nervous and I wouldn't have quite I just know I wouldn't have gotten it. But (laughs) I did. Isn't that cool?!