cover profile

Josie
Bissett's

Back in "PLACE"

The TV actress tells why she's moving back to Melrose - and why she left in the first place.

BY BERNADETTE DUNCAN

"I left the show mainly because I was exhausted from the story lines," says Josie Bissett, who's returning to her role as Jane Mancini, joining her real-life husband, Rob Estes (who plays Kyle McBride) on the set of Fox-TV's Melrose Place.
     Why the return? "I have an opportunity to do another year of the series. It's a great job and I'm ready to do it again," says the 27-year-old actress, whose character will rekindle her romance with ex-husband, Michael (Thomas Calabro). "But now Jane knows all his games, all his tricks. She knows when he's lying," says Josie.
     Jane suffered a nervous breakdown midway through the 1996-97 season and was written off the show. "She comes back stronger, very hip on what people are doing," says Josie, who herself is feeling stronger, after suffering a miscarriage right before leaving Melrose. "I needed to stop and it was fortunate that it worked out so I could... What I learned was to listen to my body, follow my instincts... My dream is to have kids. Hit doesn't happen before I turn 30, I'll be in a fertility clinic getting in vitro."
     During her "retreat" from Melrose, says Josie, "we rented a house on the beach... I took classes in photography and art." She also concentrated on her new business, The Paint Bar, a ceramics studio in Bellevue, Washington, a Seattle suburb. Her partners include her sister Jenny and brother-in-law, Grant. For $6 an hour, customers paint teapots, dinner plates, pitchers, teacups, and saucers. Josie's friends, such as Cindy Crawford, Alicia Silverstone, Lisa Kudrow, and castmate Heather Locklear, have had their own pieces showcase there.
     Business trips to Bellevue always include a stop for a home cooked meal - Josie's parents live nearby in the farmhouse where she grew up with six brothers and sisters (three of whom are adopted). Growing up, says Josie, "my career was all I ever thought about, all I'd sleep, eat and drink." At 16, Josie left home and headed to Japan to follow a modelling career, which began when she was 12. Two-and-a-half months later, she was back in the states and three weeks after that she was headed to Los Angeles. The plan, she told her parents, "was to drive from Seattle with a friend and see what the business was like. I wasn't planning on moving there." But she kept nabbing jobs, mostly commercials. Her first was for Ford Aerostar. One of her most well-known commercials was for Calvin Klein's Obsession perfume.
     Josie met Rob, now 34, in January 1991 at a casting call for a television movie. "He was doing a film in Arizona so for two weeks we just talked on the phone. When he got home, we had lunch for the first time." Two months later, they moved in together. By October, he proposed. "We went up to Big Bear [a California ski resort] ...I had no idea - it was awesome," says Josie. Rob set the scene: a burning fire, an aisle of candles, their favorite song "True Companion" (by Mark Cohen) on the stereo, and a poem he had written just for her. They married in May of 1992, right before Josie joined Melrose.