| Brady's Bits |
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| The day Kelly Rutherford and I spoke by long distance, the sun was shining in Los Angeles. At my house in East Hampton, N.Y., however, a coastal storm had the phones cutting in and out, and I could hardly hear her. Being a good sport, Kelly kept shouting and repeating herself. "You know," she said, "El Nino had its good side out here. Everything is as green as I can ever remember. And the sky is clear - no smog." I wondered with that rare fine weather, if she ever intended to escape from L.A. "I'm actually going to Florida," said Kelly. "My grandparents live there like all good grandparents should." Unlike her Melrose neighbors, Kelly seems to have few vices. But does she subscribe to the whole West Coast fitness mentality? "I work out, " she told me, "doing yoga and stuff. but I'd rather be sitting in a cafe in Paris, drinking coffee." Kelly has never acted in Europe but has visited a number of times and is working on her French. Now we need to put her agent to work and get Madamoiselle Rutherford to that sidewalk cafe by the time next year's Melrose goes on vacation. The French will love her. |
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IN STEP WITH |
Melrose Place returns for a seventh season, with Kelly Rutherford playing the bad girl/good girl who could go bad again. Even Kelly isn't sure.
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Personal:
Born Nov. 6, 1968, in Elizabethown, Ky. Single. Television: Includes Loving, 1987; Generations, 1989; Homefront, 1991-93; Breaking the Silence, 1992; Davis Rules, 1992; The Adventures of Briscoe County, Jr., 1993-94; The Great Defender, 1995; Kindred: The Embraced, 1996; No Greater Love, 1996; Melrose Place, 1996- . Films: Include Shakedown, 1988; Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge, 1989; I Love Trouble, 1994. |
THE NIGHTTIME soap opera Melrose Place has been around for six overheated and convoluted years on Fox-TV, and it may just keep going on forever at that busy L.A. garden apartment complex, 4616 Melrose. If you're a fan, you know what I'm talking about, with
characters jumping in and out of bed, being committed to sanitariums and getting run over.
No wonder they all need a two-month vacation every summer - longtime Melrose resident Kelly Rutherford included. Next season, Kelly will begin her third year on the block as Megan Mancini, the ex-prostitute who married Dr. Michael Mancini (Thomas Calabro), although she informed me: "Oh, that's over now." Since Dr. Mancini has wed several times before, it's not entirely a shock that his marriage to Megan also has gone bust. Nor did Kelly seem perturbed.
How does she like Megan? "She's gone in a direction I never would have thought," Kelly said. "More moral, a kind of equilibrium for Melrose Place. Sometimes it's much more fun to play the bad girl. But she's still not perfect. And on Melrose Place you never know what's going to happen. There could be a relapse." Uh oh.
When do we find out where Megan's heading? "We go back to work in July," Kelly said, "and do 34 episodes." Is she in most of them? "I'm in all of them," she replied, quite proudly.
Kelly began her career in New York as a model (her mother also had modeled). Already 5 feet 8 at age 14, Kelly was quickly snapped up by the Eileen Ford modeling agency.
"But after a while I was bored," Kelly said. "I told Eileen I was going home, and she said, 'Okay, but call me when you come back.' Modeling had its place, but by then I knew I wanted to act." Kelly left to join her family in California. When a more mature Kelly later
returned to New York, she didn't call Ford. Instead, she got her big break on the soap Loving.
The odd thing - People magazine reported that back in 1989 Kelly was considered so much of a "tomboy" that her acting coach told her to work on her sexuality. Good advice? Melrose Place thinks so.
