Television • Angie Harmon
Law & Order's latest prosecutor is a former Baywatch babe? Don't hate her because she's beautiful.
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She did her share of work for the big magazines: Harper's Bazaar, Elle, the French and Italian editions of Vogue and Glamour. But she didn't become a supermodel; she was never quite as serious about modeling as she would later be about acting. "I think being an only child, acting was easier for me because I had to play by myself so much," says Harmon, whose parents divorced when she was a toddler. "I played both Barbie and Ken. I played all the members of a family."
But she didn't know whether she had any chance at an acting career. Enter David Hasselhoff, the producer and star of Baywatch. In 1995 they were both on a flight to Orlando. He took one look at Harmon, got out of his seat, and told her that he was casting a new series and thought she'd be perfect for one of the roles. Unbelievably, it wasn't a come-on: He cast Harmon as private eye Ryan McBride in Baywatch Nights. She did little except stand there and look concerned while the lead private eye (a former Baywatch lifeguard) did all the work. Still, she says, "I will never ever be ashamed of where I started, just because Baywatch Nights wasn't in the top one hundred television shows. I got to spend fourteen hours a day learning the business. I spent every day learning how to hit my cues and hit my marks—basically learning to walk and talk at the same time."
Perhaps her smartest move was refusing to do bikini and sex scenes in Baywatch Nights, which kept her from being written off entirely by other producers. Although Harmon knows that people were dubious whenever she showed up at auditions for other shows ("It was like, 'What is the Baywatch Nights girl doing here?'"), she was good enough to get a role as an FBI agent on ABC's C-16, which lasted for one season in 1997. Then in 1998 she stunned the industry by beating out more than 84 other actresses for the Law & Order role. Television critics were initially so skeptical about what she could do that, at a press conference, one of them asked if Harmon would be wearing a bikini during sweeps. Executive producer Dick Wolf later defended her: "A: She has raw intelligence. B: She's not bad to look at. And C: She's the first cast member to have an authentic regional accent." He was right. After watching Harmon perform on Law & Order, Entertainment Weekly's television critic conceded that her character had given the NBC drama "a shot of new life."
In truth, Harmon's role is limited: You rarely see her outside her office or the courtroom, where she plays second fiddle to Sam Waterston's character. The show is basically indifferent to her personal life—as it is to all of the characters' personal lives. Yet she is getting lots of attention. Law & Order draws an estimated 18 million viewers on Wednesday nights. She's finding herself on magazine covers again (most recently Glamour), and she has signed a contract to appear in ads for Neutrogena. In March she got another huge dose of publicity when she was a guest on the Tonight Show and Jay Leno began needling her about her love life. Harmon shot him a daggerlike look: This was a subject she never discussed publicly. Then, from the wings, out popped New York Giants cornerback Jason Sehorn, whom she had started dating last fall after his one-year marriage fell apart. He got down on his knees and proposed. "Jason, oh, my God, baby—yes!" she exclaimed, bursting into tears. A few moments later, Harmon's father walked onstage to give the union his blessing. According to People magazine, it was "the most widely televised hook-up since Fox's ill-fated Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?"
Although you'd never know it from her television roles, Harmon is loaded with charm. She's an artless sort of flirt with a wallop of a laugh, and she loves acting like a goofball. During the couple of hours I spend with her, for instance, a gnat keeps trying to fly into her mouth. Finally, Harmon picks up a wedge of lemon from a saucer on the table and tries to squeeze lemon juice at the gnat. "Please," she says to me later, grabbing my arm, "don't write that I'm a violent woman."
Throughout the interview, Harmon keeps looking out the window at a Ford Expedition that's parked across the street. Because its windows are tinted, I can't see who's inside. I assume it's her bodyguard. Then her cell phone rings and she says, "Hi, honey. Are you okay sitting there?" She murmurs a few sweet nothings into the phone and then hangs up.
"Are you kidding me?" I say. "Is that really Jason Sehorn the football star sitting in the car across the street?"
She blushes. "Yes. He brought me over here and is waiting for me. He does this all the time. He takes me to work every morning at five, even though the show has someone to bring me to work."
"Well, doesn't he want to come over here and sit down where it's a little more comfortable? He's been out there for nearly two hours."
"No, he doesn't want to get in the way."
"My God, it's puppy love."
"You know what it is?" she says. "It's like one of those fairy tales you hear about growing up, and you actually open your eyes and you realize you have your own fairy tale standing right there. I am so in awe of him—his personality, the way he handles situations, his physical, mental, and emotional strength."
When you see pictures of the two of them together, they do look like the kind of all-American couple that used to stroll hand-in-hand down the hallways of your high school—the football star and the prettiest girl. And Harmon is dedicated to retaining that feeling of blissful love. She says she and Sehorn have no plans to live the glamorous Hollywood life when they marry (no wedding date has been set). They are already looking for a house in Highland Park, where she grew up. "I want to get pregnant and have my kids there," she says (she wants four). "That's my home, that's where all my best friends still are, and that's where my memories are." And in fact she is often spotted around town, drinking margaritas at Highland Park's trendy Mi Cocina Mexican food restaurant and ordering fried chicken at Bubba's across from Southern Methodist University. When I tell her I doubt that she can really have a life in Dallas, especially if her movie career takes off, she gives me another one of her confident looks and says, "Oh, I will have a life there. You can count on it."
The cell phone rings again. "Hi, honey," she says. "What? Really? Oh, I love you!"
She hangs up. "He misses me," she says, gathering her things, taking one more swipe at the gnat. "Isn't that sweet?"
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