AFTER EIGHT STRAIGHT SEASONS ON SERIES TELEVISION—five on Melrose Place and three on Ally McBeal—Courtney Thorne-Smith is currently, and quite intentionally, unemployed. At the end of last season, the actor asked the producers of Ally to release her from her contract. She reprised her role as attorney Georgia Thomas on this season's premiere and may return for one or two more guest spots, but otherwise she has no work lined up.
     In part, Thorne-Smith says, she was exhausted from the demands of a weekly series and wanted to spend more time with her new husband, genetic scientist Andrew Conrad. But Thorne-Smith says she was even more drained from dieting relentlessly to compete with her rail-thin costars, particularly during her last two seasons on Ally. "I started undereating, overexercising, pushing myself too hard and brutalizing my immune system," says Thorne-Smith, 33. "The amount of time I spent thinking about food and being upset about my body was insane."
     In her attempt to stay ultra-skinny, Thorne-Smith says, she ate only small amounts of salad and fruit and ran eight miles each day. She claims no one ever told her to lose weight, but she has felt an increasing need to stay very thin since she landed a part on her second series, the short-lived sitcom Day by Day. Thorne-Smith says that while growing up in northern California, she never worried about calories: "I was a skinny kid. When I was in high school, I was eating Eskimo Pies for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But when I put on some weight, the producers commented on it, and it just triggered me."
     From then on, she says, she found herself lurching from one weight-loss scheme to another—from the Cabbage Soup Diet ("I was bloated and weak") to the Carbohydrate Addict's Diet ("You'd be surprised how many Hot Tamales candies you can eat in 60 minutes"). "It was a cycle of reading the latest diet book, doing that and then jumping to the next diet," she says.
     Thorne-Smith says her obsession really took hold after she landed the role of Alison Parker on Melrose Place, in 1992, and found herself amid exceedingly thin women. "I felt pressure to look a certain way," she admits. "These were extraordinarily beautiful people, and that messes with your reality. Heather [Locklear] can eat junk food all day long. One day she was eating this big frosted doughnut, and I was eating an apple. I was totally full of resentment."
     While she refuses to discuss the eating habits of costar Calista Flockhart, Thorne-Smith will describe the moment on Ally McBeal that pushed her near the breaking point. In the episode that aired on May 18, 1999, creator David E. Kelley had written a nude scene for her character. "I ate fruit all week just to try to be really lean by Friday," she recalls. "I remember Gil [Bellows, who played her character's husband, Billy] said 'You look good,' and I was like, 'I'd better. I haven't had a piece of chicken in five days.' There was something terribly wrong with that."
     Gina Philips, who played Billy's secretary, Sandy, last season, recalls watching Thorne-Smith's weight drop. "I'm really proud of Courtney for coming out and talking about her struggle," says Philips. "She's tremendously brave."
     After she dropped about 15 pounds from her already thin frame (she won't say what her low point was or what she weighs now), Thorne-Smith was told by her nutritionist that she was starving herself. The actor realized then that she needed to regain control of her life by stepping back from work, exercising less and allowing herself the freedom to eat.
     She still works out a lot: about an hour and a half a day of cardiovascular exercise and, occasionally, yoga and weight lifting. As for her diet, Thorne-Smith says she eats five small meals a day of mostly lean protein, vegetables and fruit. She has gained back about 10 or 15 pounds. "I've been getting so many more compliments on my strong, fit, healthy body than I did when I was skinny," she says.
     Still, Thorne-Smith realizes she hasn't totally conquered her body-image problems—she felt compelled to diet for her wedding in Hawaii last June 1, for instance. "All women want to lose weight for their wedding," she says. And she believes with the help of her therapist, nutritionist and friends she'll be able to handle a pregnancy and the weight gain that accompanies it "in a couple of years." As for how she feels about the way she looks now, Thorne-Smith says, "To be totally honest, if I could be thinner without it causing a lot of pain and anxiety in my life, I would be. But today the reality is my life is more important to me than my weight—and thank God for that."

WILLIAM KECK