IN THE SALON WITH: Yancy Butler; As Tough As Nails? Well . . .
A MANICURE and a swipe of polish on neatly filed nails are about the only fashion fixes these days for Yancy Butler. But Ms. Butler, the raspy-voiced actress who plays Anne-Marie Kersey, the embattled police officer on the CBS-TV drama ''Brooklyn South,'' finds them harder to get.
She has spent too many long weeks arresting bad guys, becoming emotionally entangled with fellow officers and tossing back shots of whisky at the local police hangout, which of course is nowhere near Brooklyn but rather on a set here.
Like real-life officers, she must follow strict rules before the camera. Her hair must be pulled back most of the time. (''The perp could pull a braid,'' she explained.) Her red toenails must never be exposed. And she may wear nothing on her fingernails but clear polish.
Yet, there she was one day in February, sneaking a very sheer pink polish at the new Steven Alan salon in the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. ''I talked to other female officers about their fashion,'' said Ms. Butler, whose unusual first name is what you get when you grow up in Greenwich Village in the 1970's and your father is Joe Butler, the drummer for the Lovin' Spoonful.
''It's hard,'' she said. ''You don't have a purse, so you really have to use those pockets. And in uniform, you have to wear this really heavy belt. It makes you want to throw your sweats on when you get home.''
Ms. Butler, 27, is new to big-time television but not to action roles. She played opposite Wesley Snipes in the 1994 movie ''Drop Zone'' and Jean-Claude Van Damme in the 1993 film ''Hard Target.'' It would seem that the action pictures would have prepared her for the first show of 'Brooklyn South'' in September, in which she saw her fiance and fellow officer, Mike, fatally shot in the head.
''It was so very hard to deal with,'' she said, as the manicurist worked her nails into an oval shape. ''The idea of seeing brains in the street and having it be someone you love. I looked at Kent State photographs to get the inspiration for the anguish and the terror. But I am so happy to be on a show with writing I wanted to participate in.''
She is becoming an increasingly important member of the ensemble cast of ''Brooklyn South,'' which as of early March was 86th of 156 prime-time shows in the Nielsen ratings. The show keeps adding lines for her character, a Brooklynite with a heart of gold and -- as ever so slyly revealed in a recent bedroom scene -- an abdomen of steel. (Where do you go after your fiance has been murdered in the pilot? To bed with another fellow officer, it seems.)
Viewers watch her stand by her newest beau, whom she defended recently by trying to punch a mouthy male co-worker in the face. Chances are she would stand by her man in real life - Michael Wiseman, another actor -- with similar vigor.
Given her 10-hour days, she looks for little treats, like shopping in the J. Crew catalogue or stopping in to the Beverly Hot Springs on North Oxford Avenue for a massage and the all-important nail maintenance. ''I pretty much make time for that weekly manicure,'' she said, adding that with her schedule, it's getting harder to do that. ''You know, you're wearing that uniform.'' She looked up at the woman quietly applying the blush polish. ''This is lovely, Susan,'' she said. ''Thank you.''
She also favors Geisha Nails, a salon on Melrose Avenue, but passes by Jessica's Nail Clinic, the salon on Sunset Boulevard where the likes of Julia Roberts go for a polish or a fake nail tip. ''I started going there,'' she said. ''But it was like a conference at Paramount. People were screaming deals from across the room. I saw too many people. I wasn't relaxing.''
As her nails dried, she explained the main differences between Manhattan and Los Angeles, where she now lives in the Los Feliz neighborhood but where she has yet to hang any pictures in her new apartment. ''In L.A., you can't just go out and meet people,'' she said. ''You can't get a morsel to eat after 10 P.M., and that's heinous. And there is so much space here. I've never grown up with so much vastness in my life.''
Time was up. Back to collaring perps, writing up summonses and dropping her g's, Brooklyn style. Sample line, spoken in dream sequence about her fiance's killer: ''Don't think I don't hate ya 'cause I'm tryin' to find happiness!''
As she made her way to the door, she called out: ''Thanks so much. You'll never know how much I needed this!''
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