Maria Bello
“Someone said to me that TV is the new independent film for women,” says the 44-year-old actress (A History of Violence). In the NBC police procedural Prime Suspect, a remake of the acclaimed British series, Bello—who was on ER for one season before her movie career took off—returns to the network to reprise the hardened detective that Helen Mirren fashioned into a feminist icon. “For me, it wasn’t about going back to TV so much as that I really took to this character,” explains Bello. “I like to say I’m walking in Helen Mirren’s shoes.”
Chanel stretch crepe dress.
Christina Ricci
The first time the 31-year-old film veteran (she starred in Mermaids at age nine) appeared on TV, it was for a seven-episode arc on Ally McBeal in 2002. “After that I thought I would really love to do another TV show,” Ricci recalls. “I’ve just been waiting for the right thing to come along.” This fall she returns to the small screen as an airline stewardess during the glamorous dawn of jet travel in Pan Am, an ABC prime-time soap that has been described as Mad Men at 30,000 feet. “What’s interesting about TV is that I don’t know where the series is going,” explains Ricci, who is an avid consumer of the medium. “It’s fun to open a script and wonder what’s going to happen that week. It’s almost like being a viewer.”
Ruffian silk charmeuse blouse.
The Ray actress, who has two films out this year, was reluctant to even look at network TV scripts before she read the pilot for Scandal, an ABC drama premiering next year. “The network schedule takes away from your ability to do movies,” Washington explains. But by page 12 of the script by Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy), she was hooked: “I was thinking, What do I need to do to get this?” Washington stars as a powerful D.C. crisis management consultant, a role inspired by Judy Smith, who handled publicity for Monica Lewinsky during the Clinton scandal. The character’s keen intelligence and political entanglements are well suited to the 34-year-old, who campaigned for Barack Obama and serves on the president’s committee for the arts—and who’s looking forward to a long run. Says Washington: “On a film, by the time you’ve figured out the character, it’s over.”
Equipment silk top. Vhernier necklace,
Claire Goldsmith Legacy glasses, Movado watch,
vintage Gucci bracelet.
Earlier in her career, the actress (Joan of Arc) had no qualms about taking off for a remote locale to shoot low-budget, high-risk independent films. Now, as a recently married 29-year-old mother, Sobieski is in a different place. “Doing a TV show seems more like a stable job,” she explains. This fall she plays a grounded rookie cop on the CBS police procedural The 2-2, which is produced by Robert De Niro, written by Richard Price, and directed by James Mangold. “I’ve played crazy people before and it’s exciting, but it can also be unhealthy over time,” Sobieski says. “If this show is on the air a long time, I wouldn’t mind staying in my character’s head.”
Jason Wu silk dress. Yves Saint Laurent shoes.
“A few years ago, a TV show might have been unthinkable to me,” admits the Oscar winner, whose husband, sculptor Robert Graham, passed away in 2008. “But now, as a single person, I don’t want to just sit in our house regretting what’s passed. This feels like I’m embarking on a new chapter.” Huston’s full-time TV debut will be as a theater producer on NBC’s buzzed-about drama Smash, a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a Broadway musical. “Television is where the great parts are for women my age,” she says emphatically. “But I begged the writer to make my journey a pleasant one—since my life generally reflects my art.”
Tommy Hilfiger wool coat. Stetson hat; Bulgari bracelet
The 42-year-old actor (The Passion of the Christ) caught the TV bug last year from friend Kiefer Sutherland, who turned Jack Bauer into a household name. “I told my agent, ‘If you ever find a 24, let me know,’” Caviezel says. His starring role as an ex–CIA agent with a murky past on the new CBS crime drama Person of Interest has the big-name talent—it’s created by J.J. Abrams and written by The Dark Knight’s Jonathan Nolan—to make it a long-term success. “I feel like a baseball player looking for the right pitch to hit it out of the park,” says Caviezel of his career. “And it’s somewhere in this show.”
Louis Vuitton cotton shirt and tie.
Courtesy of W Magazine
