Time Out 10/14/1999 A onetime body double, Catherine Bell is making a mark with her own body-- of work

JAG is one of TV's highest rated shows, and Catherine Bell stars in it. But both actress and show have a relatively low profile. A quick straw poll around here to find out who'd ever heard of the series yielded varied responses. "Huh?" was one. "JAG, is that a first name?" was another. And finally: "Yeah, that show, Judge Advocate somthing?" I admit my sample set was small, but the 16th most-watched program this season just doesn't get the press of, say, Buffy, the Vampire Slayer (which wasn't even near the top 50 last year). The drama, however, has a dedicated following, and I'm sure my (male) officemates would join in the charge after seeing the work of JAG's doe-eyed costar. The 30-year-old, London-born actress plays Sarah "Mac" MacKenzie, a feisty by-the-book Marine Corp attorney (for the record, JAG stands for Judge Advocate General), in the A Few Good Men-like program. And now this week, the uninitiated can check her out in the TBS-original sci-fi thriller The TimeShifters (Sunday 17), with Casper Van Dien (Starship Troopers) and Martin Sheen. IN the high-energy TV movie, Bell portrays a magazine researcher who helps reporter Van Dien unravel the mystery of an unknown man who appears in photographs of disasters throughout history, like the Titanic and Hurricane Hugo. Recently, TONY rang Bell to take about her new telefilm and devoted Web following. TONY: Are you really into science fiction? CB: You know, I am. I'm just into action, whether it's sci-fi or whatever. And this definitely fits that bill. I read [The TimeShifters] script at the end of last season [of JAG], and I knew right away that I was definitely going to do this part. TONY: You like running around in this movie and doing all the physical stuff? CB: Yeah, all that stuff. Plust, the character's a lot different from Mac in that she's more wide-eyed and thrown into a situation that she's never been in before, and she kind of steps up to the plate. It was definitely all new to her, so that was fun to play. TONY: If you could travel through time, where would you go? CB: I'd probably go to the future--I'm so high-tech. I'm so into computers and my Palm Pilot and cell phones. It's all going in such a cool direction. TONY: Are you into the Web thing too? Do you surf? CB: Yeah, there are some JAG sites and my websites, which I check out every once in a while to make sure everything's cool. TONY: You have a nice-size Web prescence. How do you feel about that? CB: I think it's great. It's very flattering that people are devoting that much time to maintaining these sites and putting new pictures on. TONY: Even if there are categories like Catherine with a Sheer Shirt? [clears voice] Sorry, I was doing a little research for the story. CB: [laughs] You did? Wow. You know that was a cheat. That was Playboy; and they took a shirt that I wore that was barely sheer--I know, because I still have the shirt, and I wear it--and they somehow made it look like pantyhose. TONY: They computer-manipulated the image? CB: They definitely [pauses] spiced it up a little. TONY: The first thing you ever did in film was play Isabella Rossellini's body double in Death Becomes Her How did you get a gig like that? CB: I got that through a modeling agent, I was modeling at the time, and [my agent] was starting to do a lot of body-double stuff, which I wasn't really into. They wanted someone who was five eight and had my hip measurement and my leg measurement. My legs are the same length as Isabella's. TONY: So, it's purely by the numbers? CB: Pretty much. It was just a back-and-butt shot. They took a Polaroid to show the director. TONY: So you go in and they say "Drop 'em"? CB: [laughs] Uh-huh. But they were really cool about it. It was a woman who took the picture and [the director] was Robert Zemeckis, and there were all these really great actors. TONY: What do you think makes JAG such a successful show? CB: Well, I don't think there's anything on TV like it. It's definitely a combination of a lot of things. Which is interesting [to] a viewer, to have courtroom drama one week and Top Gun flying the next. But how do you really know what works? It's just a combination of all the actors clicking, and the writing coming together. TONY: Since you enjoy action so much, is there another big action feature in your future? CB: Yeah, action with interesting women. Some biopics, maybe. I've got a couple of things that I'm looking at--interesting stories that I hope people will like to see. TONY: Maybe something where you can kick some butt à la Linda Hamilton? CB: [laughs] Exactly.