Every lesbian’s favourite “CSI” star, Jorja Fox, isn’t your average sexpot. The attractive but geeky tomboy hasn’t graced the pages of Vogue, she doesn’t spend each episode in impossibly high heels, and you’re more likely to find her at a PETA rally protesting animal cruelty than pitching Revlon products to you from a talk show on the Oxygen Network. That’s why we love her and her strong, sexy brand of androgyny and even her slightly intoxicating don’t-care-to-talk-about-my-personal-life attitude. But, just once, wouldn’t it be nice if she didn’t have to take herself so seriously? We turned the tables on the earnest star with an exclusive, old-fashioned girlie-girl interview that dares to ask the questions on everyone’s mind (except, of course, that one) about work, fashion and why you should never wear lavender perfume on a date.

What’s the best part of doing “CSI”?

It’s a multifold question. I think first and foremost, I love the character I get to play [element analyst Sara Sidle]. I think she’s totally fascinating and much braver than me and smarter than me. She studied physics at Harvard and Berkeley, so I get really excited to go to work and get to be her. I think the writers, who I think are geniuses, have done a really good job of trying to give us, or at least me, different things to do every season. I get to solve the crimes and get to sort of wear the superhero cape, but at the same time I have something in my personal life going on. I’m really lucky that way.

It sounds like you can balance work with your own life.

I think it takes like a couple of years. We’re in our fifth season now, and it’s so much better in terms of the amount of hours we work, and they try to split it up so nobody gets burned out. You’ll be heavy for a couple of shows, and then you’ll be light for a couple of shows. I think the whole idea for our show in the last couple of years is like, well, how can we maintain this and not burn everybody out? And they’ve done a great job at that, so it makes it, in many ways, a very easy job to go to. It’s nothing like doing a series like the first two seasons, you know, when you have no idea what you’re doing, where you’re going, what you’re shooting.

A lot of people with families like working on TV. Is that a draw for you?

I think it’s probably really good for me, but it’s not normally who I am at all. I’m a real nomad, so it has been weird to sort of set roots down in Los Angeles and be here for the most part, for most of the year. And if I get to travel, I travel on a normal schedule, sort of when everyone else in America is travelling, so that was actually something that I had to adapt to because I didn’t consider that a plus at the time.

Do you see yourself settling down, married with kids?

I don’t know if I’ll ever completely settle down, but I certainly believe in love, and I love love, and I hope that I’m lucky enough that I’m able to sort of be with somebody in a way that I can see is for a long time. That would be nice. I’ve definitely had commitment issues all my life about everything, whether it’s a job or a love interest or a place to live. Like I said, I’m really a nomad. I come from a long line of nomads, so I think I’m part of that L.A. syndrome.

Plus, you meet other actors who are total nomads.

I am terrible at the long-distance relationship thing.

And you don’t want to fall in love with co-stars because if it doesn’t work you have to see them every day.

I think I have been in love with every one of my co-stars at a different time or another.

I think I have been in love with your co-stars, too.

[Laughs] I’m lucky at that. And that would be a second thing, like, what do I love about my job? I really love the people I work with.

You surf?

A little bit. I’m not great, but I love it, and I go out a lot. I grew up in a small beach town in Florida, so my whole life I was swimming and boogie boarding, and then I moved to New York City when I was 16, which is the exact same age that my mother actually let me get a surfboard. So I never got good, but I had one, and I started. But I’d say like two years ago in L.A., I got serious about it.

You can’t surf in N.Y., can you? You’d have to take your board on the train!

And that’s what I used to do with my boogie board. I’d get on the Long Island Expressway with my boogie board. Isn’t that funny? It was weird because I was there this summer, and I actually saw a guy walking down the street with a surfboard, and it’s the first time I’d ever seen that in New York, and I lived there for like 12 years. I was like, where’s the breaks, you know? Where are you going?

How often do you go surfing? A couple of times a week?

Yeah, usually. It gets harder in the winter with the rain because I like to wait like five or six days after it rains before I’m in the water. So between working and the rain pattern, that’s when I get a little rusty.

Do you have to work out at all, or can you just surf to stay in shape?

If I can go out, that can be my workout. I do work out, and I mostly work out for stress because again, I find in L.A., if you don’t actively go out and get exercise, you don’t get any at all. Yeah, you sort of have to make a point of it, so here, usually I hike and I run, and I love to run because I can do that anywhere. No matter where I’m going, I can just throw my sneakers in my suitcase, and I can go run.

How long do you run for?

I’m pretty lazy about that too. Probably like two miles. I have a big dog. The most loyal workout partner in the world! She’s a boxer [8 years old]. Her name is Ali, like Muhammad the boxer, and she never says no. Like, she never cancels on me. She always wants to go, so we’ll hike part, we’ll run. I try to work out every other day, and then sometimes I have a couple of days off in a row, and then I’ll work out every day. And then of course there’s days that I’m shooting, because if I’m shooting like 14 hours, it’s the first thing to fall off my schedule book. It just doesn’t work out for me because I mostly like to work out outside. I’ll go running up until about 10 o’clock at night, but if I’m getting off after that, it just doesn’t happen.

So it sounds like you don’t do anything too extreme.

I’m lucky because I’m really tall and I have really long limbs. I’m actually not in great shape. I always think I can be in better shape, and I kind of wish I was one of those people that was more disciplined about being in better shape. That’s the thing, I could never spend like four hours a day in a gym. I just couldn’t do it. It’s sort of a trade-off. I never think of myself as somebody that’s in great shape. I don’t have a scale in my house. I was a chubby kid. I was chubby from like 8 to 16, and so that was like one of those things, it’s just better for me not to obsess over that. My mom was a Depression mom, and God bless her, there wasn’t enough food in the house [so] she just fed my brother and I. She just overfed us. She was so happy to have money to have food on the table. I was eating like five meals a day until I was about 16, and then I realised, you know, maybe I could cut down to three. I’d probably be OK.

How do you unwind?

I like to go for hikes and, obviously stuff we already talked about, surfing I love to do. I love massage. That’s my big thing, even if I’m going to the spa, I’ll almost always go for the massage over any other treatment, but I do love a pedicure, especially if it’s the kind that comes with the little leg massage. That’s the best part.

How is your style different from your character’s style?

Wow, this has been very lucky for me. Like obviously if I had to pick something that I was going to wear pretty much every day for five years, it would definitely be jeans and boots, and that’s mostly what the character wears. For a feature film, I’d go off the cuff, like whatever, corsets, you name it. But it’s really great to go and get to be comfortable most of the time.

So jeans and a T-shirt and you’re good.

For the most part, yeah. It goes with the guitar and surfboard. The attention to beauty in Los Angeles, I think, is a really cool thing. It extends in everything: home décor, the cars people drive … everything, and certain neighbourhoods, down to the medians and how well they’re manicured, and I think that’s so rare. There’s so many visual artists here, and they pay a lot of attention to making life more beautiful and pleasing. In restaurants, the design is really cool, so I love all that, but I also love being in Beverly Hills in my jeans and boots because it feels actually kind of scandalous. Oops, forgot my Prada today! I get a certain joy and satisfaction out of that.

Do you like vintage looks?

I’m a lot more likely to do that if I’m dressing up. You know what I also love? I love wearing business suits. That’s something that just happened to me in the past year. I have never even owned a tailored shirt in my life, and I guess I figured I have my whole life to move into business suits. This year I’ve been lucky enough, especially sort of like charity events and stuff that are often business attire, so it’s the first year that I’ve actually bought a couple of suits and some shirts. Off the rack, again I would go Theory at Fred Segal. They have really great stuff. And J. Crew makes great suits for ready-to-wear suits. …[T]here’s a store called Clover in Silverlake and Pull My Daisy, and they don’t have a huge selection of suits, but what they do have is really interesting and it’s cut nicely and it sort of has a little flair to it, like something different, but still really nice stuff and well made. I go there a lot.

Do you wish you could change your hairstyle?

I’ve been acting since I was like 20, so there were years that I wanted to have more punk rock or more rock ’n’ roll style. Every time I would dye my hair, I’d get a job, and three days later I’d be back in the place dyeing it back to my natural colour. For a while, it was almost like that thing, like actors have little tricks, like when they need a job, they plan a vacation, so [I would say to myself] if I colour my hair purple, I’ll get work, and I kind of like that. There is still a part of me, [though] I think I’m getting a little too old for it. But a lot of those really rebellious hairstyles, I would love to do some of those. Like tiger stripes.

You wore a vintage Chanel to the Emmys. Do you have a favourite red-carpet look?

Oh my gosh, just barely presentable, really. Fashion is not my specialty, and especially like, black tie. It’s really not my specialty. Like, I know what I like. There’s weird things because it’s specific, too. It’s not like just kind of going to a regular party, as you know, so it’s gotta be comfortable. It’s gotta be like, nine-hour comfortable because, as you know, from the time you hit the red carpet until the time you get home, it’s usually about nine or 10 hours.

And the shoes can be killers…

That’s the key. You learn these funny little things, you know, I’ve had to leave those kinds of events because I just couldn’t walk anymore in my shoes. And I don’t want that to happen anymore. I kind of feel like, I want to be able to stay to the end and not leave because I can’t feel my legs - and have fun and be able to dance and eat and breathe. I’m a real stickler for that. I don’t wear just any trains. I’m a clod, anyway. That’s a bad combination for me.

How do you describe your personal style?

Wow. I think I’d probably say for me, and it has a lot to do right now with just working so much and so long, I always just kind of want to look healthy and sort of well rested, and a little like that just-got-out-of-bed look. And usually I’m tired, I haven’t slept, I’m drinking six cups of coffee a day.

Do you wear makeup off-set?

Absolutely not, usually. And that’s another thing, too. I would probably wear more if I wasn’t working so much. I’m lucky enough to be working so much that if I’m not, I really like my skin to have a chance to breathe. And the makeup’s actually quite heavy because it’s full foundation, concealer and powder, and then we get a little bit of extreme temperatures, so it can either be like up to 110 degrees, or it can be down to 40. We shoot like 40 minutes north of L.A., so it’s not the L.A. basin. The temperatures are sort of like the high desert. It’s not like shooting in New York or Chicago, but it’s really cold in the winter, and it’s really, really hot in the summer. Depending on that, they keep caking stuff on, you know what I mean? Powder can get very thick. By 4 o’clock in the afternoon in July, you can like put a pin through your face. I just like to have a chance to give my skin a little break. And I’m at the beach a lot when I’m not working, and that’s an excuse not to wear too much makeup. I’m literally in the water and out of the water, and it never goes well, the mascara and the surfing.

You sound low maintenance.

Yeah, I would probably put me in the extreme low maintenance category.

What skin care products do you like?

I’m a natural products kind of person because I’m a freak, so I’m a big Aveda person. I like their stuff. I’ll go sometimes for the oxygen facials.

At Aveda?

No, not so much Aveda. There’s a couple places in town. I usually go to Burke Williams all the time. Ona Spa, I go there. Usually I do something really non-invasive because there’s the other thing, too, I don’t go that much … I’d like to go more, but again with my schedule, it’s hard to commit, you know how sometimes facials can mess up your skin for a few days. Because we’re shooting nine months out of the year, I don’t really like to risk it, so I go for the very like, they have an Ayurvedic facial, I think it’s at the Four Seasons, like all this Ayurvedic stuff, and it’s really gentle stuff … no peels or anything like that. I’m not big on that stuff.

Do you wear perfumes on the set?

Again, because I’m kind of sensitive to chemicals, so I don’t ever wear perfume, but I wear oils. I love oils. I get them at the health food store.

Like Lavender?

You know what? I love lavender, it’s one of my favourite scents, but I think I read in some … big magazine that lavender is a really great scent, but when people were tested on it, it sort of was a nurturing, mothering scent to most people, so I don’t wear it all the time. I would never wear it on a date. I would never wear it if I was trying to, you know, sort of work my sensual side. Obviously if I’m hanging out with my grandmother or I’m going to the beach, I’ll douse myself with the lavender because I love it.

Then what is a sexy scent? Musk?

Yeah, the musks I think are really sexy, and the Body Shop has some really nice ones actually, and they do oils and they do perfumes. And I still like the muskier scents like patchouli and amber and … even like citrus, sort of like an orange spice something.

A lot of perfumes smell a little too frou-frou.

They will give me a headache, and I’ll give myself a headache. The other place I like a lot, there’s a place called Andy’s Garden on Melrose, and they do a lot of sprays and mints and like aura sprays, and their stuff is all natural; there’s no chemicals in it. I wear a lot of those, and they’re of course very ethereal, so their scents are like Joy or Love or Creativity. I love those.