USA TODAY Interview - 14 Avril 2010

Catherine Bell is off like a shot in Lifetime's 'Army Wives' - April 14th

By Nancy Mills, Special for USA TODAY

Last season, Army Wives ended with a gunshot — somebody was firing a weapon inside the home of Catherine Bell's character, Denise Sherwood.
Season 4, which airs Sundays on Lifetime (10 p.m. ET/PT), "is dealing with the aftermath of what happened that night," Bell says. "My character has a lot of difficult, challenging and heart-wrenching decisions to make."

In many ways, it's a complicated time for Bell, 41. Her second child is due in August, just one month after production on the show ends for the season. She is not sure whether her pregnancy will be incorporated into the story or whether she'll have to disguise it.

"It was very hard the first few months because I was so tired," says Bell, who has a 7-year-old daughter, Gemma, with her husband, writer Adam Beason. "But the producers have been great about letting me work half-days."

After being cast in Army Wives, Bell relocated her family to South Carolina, where the series is filmed. "I love living in Charleston," she says. "When the show ends, I don't think we'll move. My daughter is here in school, and my mother just moved out to help us."

She expects that Army Wives will continue for quite a while.

"Our themes are universal," Bell says. "My mom knows nothing about the military, but she relates to the characters."

The actress says her character has changed considerably through the series. "She went from being abused and not really having a voice to standing up for herself and coming out of her shell and finally living life."

Bells says the show provides a "strong support system" for military wives.

"A lot of wives tell us that our show helps them get through the tough times. They're proud that people are telling their stories. We try to stay as close to reality as we can, but it's a very emotional show about people, relationships and life. JAG was exactly the opposite," says Bell, who played Lt. Col. Sarah MacKenzie in the 1995-2005 television drama about military lawyers. "It was more like Top Gun and A Few Good Men. It was more action-packed."

The actress is trying to raise interest in a JAG reunion movie. "I called (JAGproducer) Don Bellisario last year because my husband came up with an idea for a movie," she says, "but I haven't heard back. I like my character. She proved that it was OK to be an intelligent woman who could be strong emotionally and physically."

Bell's husband has written an action movie she hopes to make after the baby is born. "This character was in the military at one point," she says. "Her husband gets kidnapped, and she has to use her skills from the past to rescue him."

Being an action star suits Bell. "I was a tomboy who liked motorcycles," she says. "I was never a girly girl until the end of high school. I didn't know how to do makeup or my hair. I had short hair. I wasn't into jewelry and all that stuff."

Born in London to an Iranian nurse and an English architect, Bell was 3 when her parents split, and she and her mother moved to Los Angeles.

She tried out different things before acting. "In high school, I wanted to be a fine artist or an illustrator," Bell says. "But my mother wasn't all that keen on it. I went to UCLA to study medicine, but my heart wasn't in it. So I began to model and went to Japan. When I came back, I began acting classes."

Bell was methodical in the way she went about launching her career.

"I thought, 'I need some sort of angle. How will I stand out from the crowd? There are so many pretty young girls in Hollywood,' " she says. "So I started kickboxing. There were a lot of action films then. One of my first jobs was playing a female mercenary in a Dolph Lundgren movie," 1994's Men of War.

But for the time being, she has settled into her Army Wives role.

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