vegetarian girl next door catapults to stardom

As a star on the top-rated CBS police drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Jorja (pronounced Georgia) Fox as to watch what she eats. Not or health reasons- although nutrition certainly is important to the devoted vegetarian- but because of the show’s sometimes gory realism. “I’ve learned not to eat before certain scenes,” she says.

That’s hardly surprising give the fact that Fox’s character, Sara Sidle- a name that, she says, “sounds a little too much like ‘suicidal’”- works as a member of the CSI autopsy team. Her job? Examining the lifeless bodies discovered in the dark hours of the night in Las Vegas and uncovering clues about the who, what, where, when and why of their demise.

Sidle is just the latest in a string of serious, determined characters that fox has portrayed on the big and small screens. She joined the cast of ER in its third season as the gun-toting, vegetarian, gay resident, Dr. Maggie Doyle- “No meat. No men. I’m your woman.” She appeared in The West Wing as special agent Gina Toscano, the dedicated secret service protector of the president’s daughter. And in her most recent film, the critically acclaimed Memento, she played the murder victim, a role that entailed lying for hours on a bathroom floor, wet, covered by a shower curtain.

By following Fox’s career, you might assume you know a thing or two about her from the characters she’s played. You know the look: the tall, lithe brunette with the slight space between her front teeth. You recognize the voice: a hint of the tomboy all grown up. You feel the persona: girl always up for a wind-in-her-hair kind of adventure, followed maybe by a pizza and beed. And, yes, she is both an animal lover and a vegetarian, a detail that has been written into some of the characters she protrays.

That’s Jorja Fox, it’s true. But the person behind the role is someone else again- a distinct character with a storyline all her own.

model citizen

A New Your City native, Fox spent most of her childhood in Melbourne Beach, Florida, on a barrier island with the ocean on one side and a river on the other. “My life was all about water- sailing, water-skiing, swimming, surfing. It’s where I developed my passion for being outside. It was simply a wonderful place to be a kid. I grew up barefoot.”

The family- which includes an older brother- had moved south to fulfull Fox’s mother’s dream of living in a beach town. But they were a restless group, changing residences often and taking frequent trips to New York City and Canada, where Fox’s parents hail from.

As it turns out, it was in Flordia that Fox met her destiny, winning by a fluke, she says, a modeling contest she entered as a joke. “I was very, very, very shocked to win,” she says. “I was a fish out of water because I wasn’t a classic beauty. In Florida, beauty was all about being blond and tan. I’m a tall, gangly, dark-haired Irish girl. I just didn’t fit the bill.” But her beauty was recognized nevertheless, and at 15 she won the oppertunity to live in New York City and give modeling a try.

After a summer spent living with another teenage model and a chaperone, Fox decided there was no going back. She opted to stay in New York, finish high school and pursue modeling. Her career focused primarily on print media- magazines in particular. “I’m too short for runway work,” she says. “I only worked the runway when someone else called in sick.” Another impediment to success on the catwalk? The once-barefoot girl “could barely walk in heels.”

From New York she went to Europe, where, she says, she felt “fearless.” Those years of modeling and traveling throughout Europe with peers were “fantastic, a wilder dream than I ever could have imagined,” she says. After a time, however, Fox decided that modeling had its limitations.

Returning to New York at 18, she turned her attention to acting, focusing on studying and auditioning. She adopted an eclectic approach to supporting herself: working at a kennel, as a temp and even as a coat checker in a downtown nightclub.

But her fast-paced city lifestyle never diminished her love of the outdoors, and she continued to run for exercise and bike just to get places she needed to go. “I rode everwhere. It just seemed like a normal thing to do. Besides, I was broke.”

Along the way, Fox began to examine the way she’d been eating. A lifelong meat-and-potatoes lover, she constantly peppered her vegetarian friends with questions about their dietary habits. Then one day in Brooklyn- in the midst of consuming a meatball sub- she had an epiphany. “I just got it. I made a connection. I started reading voraciously about vegetarianism, and got ready for the questions from others, like the ones I’d asked my friends.” Fifteen years later, Fox says eating a meat-free diet is just something she does without questioning.

sweet success

At age 19, Fox got her first movie role in The Kill-Off, a dark and disturbing independant film that was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. And soon after, other roles started coming her way. “By age 25, I knew I could make a living as an actor,” she says.

At 34, she has ample proof that she was right. Her resume includes stints on the best and brightest of what’s on the small screen. in addition to her roles on ER and The West Wing, Fox has also appeared on Law & Order, the “coming out” episode of Ellen, and in such films as The Jerky Boys, Dead Funny and The Hungry Bachelor’s Club.

Now, Fox throws herself into the role as the work-obsessed, relationship-impaired Sidle, a hard-nosed scientist raised by two ex-hippies in rural Northern California. According to her character sketch, Fox’s current alter ego “can solve any problem except how she’s supposed to relate to others.” Her character plunges into her work because she’s afraid of what she’d have to face if she slowed down. She pursues the mysteries of death because those of life are more discomforting.

Fox’s own character sketch would read quite differently. She’s devoted to work and life in equal measure, and has no trouble connecting with myriad living, breathing creatures. She exudes energy, enthusiasm and, in contrast to her serious television demeanor, a light-hearted, let’s-have-some-fun approach to life. Her passions are many- being outdoors, getting in her car and heading out on the open road, surfing, live music, spending time with friends and the company on her animals- two cats rescued from shelters, and one dog, a boxer aptly named Ali.

To keep up with all of her interests, coupled with CSI’s grueling schedule- few weeks and often unpredictable hours- Fox needs endurance. When she’s filming, she may put in five long weekdays plus Saturday, either on the set north of Los Angeles or on location in Las Vegas. Each workday can last anywhere from six to fifteen hours; her starting and quitting times vary greatly. “Sometimes filming starts at 7 a.m., other days it starts at 6 p.m. One day I may be done at 5:30 p.m., other days 5:30 a.m. A lot of times I don’t know in advance,” she says.

health matters

Given the demands of starring in a weekly television series, Fox has to be prepared for anything- and she is: “I’m adaptable. I like the flexability.” Not one to adhere to a rigid routine, she has learned that she needs to respect her internal rhythms to keep up her stamina. “I’ve learned to sleep when I’m tired and eat when I’m hungry.”

One thing she isn’t flexible about, however, is her healthy diet. Although Fox was a vegan for six months when she lived in Chicago, that lifestyle is more difficult to adhere to lately. “I work so much that I depend on others to cook for me,” she says. “I still don’t eat much dairy, just a little cream in my tea, but I eat tons of eggs, now that they have cage-free organic ones.”

As for the benefits of a vegetarian diet: “I noticed that during the first five years of being a vegetarian, I felt much lighter, although I only dropped three or four pounds. I liked that lightness,” she says.

But Fox’s healthy habits go far beyond diet. She is, she says, a faithful reader of Better Nutrition, and she takes her own health very seriously. She’s always careful to boost her immune system, particularly during the filming season. “I take a decent amnount of supplements- a B complex, a mineral complex, digestive enzymes, astragalus and vitamin C. I don’t want to get run-down,” which is bound to happen with the schedule she keeps and the close quarters in which she works. “The cramped stages don’t have a tremendous amount of ventilation,” she says. “It’s like being at school and one kid shows up with a cold, and you just know everyone is going to get it. Same thing on the set. I hear someone sneeze and I say, ‘Oh, here we go.’”

She also exercises when she can. “I’m not a gym person,” she says. So when she works out- every other weekday and twice on weekends- she does it either in the fresh air of the privacy of her home. “I put on a CD and dance for 45 minutes,” she says.

Her favorite workout partner is Ali, the boxer, who’s always up for a run whenever she is, which more than likely is late in the evening. While the two of them often go for a run at 10 p.m., after working, you’ll never see them out before the sun rises. “I’m not a morning person,” says Fox, “I wake up slowly.”

on the go

Despite the struggle to get out of bed each morning, Fox unfailingly shows up to breathe life into Sidle, a key player on the CSI autopsy team and a role that Fox embodies with pleasure. “I love my character,” she says. “She’s so smart. She’s at the top of her game. Every day is a learning experience.”

Fox is self-deprecating when comparing herself to the character she plays, denying that she’s as smart as Sidle, who has a B.S. in physics from Harvard and did graduate work in theoretical physics. “I just love being able to say that,” she says. Unlike her alter ego, Fox claims that she has finite space in her short-term memory. “As an actor,” she says, “I don’t retain a tremendous amount. I do six scenes a day, and there’s not that much room in my memory for more. I learn the lines, then I clear them out and learn others.”

But, in fact, she has learned more that she lets on. After all, it takes skill to appear believable when conducting a dramatic rendition of an autopsy.

Having lived on both coasts, Fox is pleased with the peripateic life she leads. “I’m a bit gypsy-ish.” As long as she can be outside- at the beach, hiking- she’s happy. “That’s why I love running; you can do it anywhere. It travels well.” She’s also a dedicated surper, riding the ways several times a month, more during hiatus from her show.

During her infrequent breaks from fliming CSI, Fox devotes hersel to Honeypot Productions, a small acting troupe that she co-founded. This is where she truly expresses herself, she says, by writing for and acting in live threater. So far Honeypot has staged five different shows, two of them written by Fox and all of them performed outdoors. “We put on plays that no one would pay us to do. We stage them in friends’ backyards.” She stops to laugh. “No one has volunteered a yard for next season, but I think there’s one person who just might be willing.”

If Fox’s skyrocketing career is any indication, those backyard plays are sure to launch into Broadway productions. Stay tuned.