ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 13, 1996 TAG: 9602130072
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: Associated Press
Kim Delaney, who plays Detective Diane Russell (and Jimmy Smits' snookums) on ``NYPD Blue,'' almost chose a different role in life.
Court reporter.
But, here, let's read back the record...
Ms. Delaney: ``During high school, I was modeling a little bit. Then I came up to New York to model. But I was also taking a course in court reporting.''
Mr. Moore: ``Uh...why?''
``Back in Philadelphia,'' she explains, ``most of the people I knew were either secretaries or got married and had five babies. That was the kind of neighborhood I came from. Court reporting was something a little more exciting and challenging than what everybody else was doing.''
But then Delaney took an acting course. Plans changed.
Now turn the page to last spring, when she gained admittance to the gritty and grand world of ``NYPD Blue.''
She was signed to play an undercover cop for the season's concluding four-episode arc. But as has happened with a number of other characters who just dropped in, Detective Russell was asked to stay.
No wonder. This character was by turns strong and fragile, dishy and demure, abrasive and endearing. With her brown curls and delicate features, she looked like an angel - yet she had a problem with booze and a family that was ready to explode.
On last week's episode, it finally did: Russell's abusive father was shot dead by her mother in a domestic dispute for which her brother was ready to take the rap. Tonight at 10 on ABC (WSET, Channel 13), Russell has to pick up the pieces.
But there was another reason she clicked with viewers (and the show's fast-on-their-feet creative team): the sparks Delaney struck with Smits as the hunky detective, Bobby Simone.
Theirs is a complex and at times raw connection, often warm and caring but never a Be-My-Valentine romance.
``We're not a perfect couple,'' Delaney happily acknowledged during a quick trip to Manhattan last week. ``Sometimes our relationship takes two steps backwards to get one step forward. We all hope to keep finding ways to keep Diane and Bobby on the edge, so that things don't get predictable.''
There's a pause.
``I know what's coming now,'' she laughs, and, yes, here comes that what-is-it-like-to-play-Smits'-love-interest? inquiry.
``He's talented, first off,'' she replies. ``And he's charming. And he's sexy, and he's sweet, and he's a good guy.''
And what of those occasional bedroom scenes, perhaps the raciest on series TV? Are they uncomfortable for her? A little odd? Fun?
``All of that,'' she says with a smile. ``I just always tell our D.P. (director of photography) he's dead if he gets the wrong angle.''
Clearly, Delaney has come some distance since her first role - resulting from her very first audition - on the daytime soap ``All My Children.'' It was back in 1981 that she became Jenny Gardner, whom Delaney describes as ``a high school ingenue, a straight little thing.''
Three years later, Jenny went out with a bang. She died on an exploding jet ski.
``I was ready to leave the show, but they must have figured I was holding out for more money,'' Delaney recalls. ``When my contract was up and I really did leave, they had to write me out fast.''
A few years later, she joined the prime-time drama ``Tour of Duty'' as a war correspondent for a wire service.
Numerous TV films followed, the most recent of which premieres Sunday at 8 p.m. on the Lifetime cable channel. In ``Closer and Closer,'' Delaney plays a disabled writer whose literary creation, a serial killer, seemingly comes to life and stalks her.
Meanwhile, Delaney, divorced with a 5-year-old son, looks forward to being part of ``NYPD Blue'' ``for the duration. This is the perfect television series for me to be doing.''
``And I have NO complaints with what they're doing with my character,'' she adds. ``Like Diane, the characters that I like to play usually have a darkness.''
Darkness? With looks like Kim Delaney's, why not roles where she can play the glamour-babe?
The question seems to throw her.
``I...I...never...I, uh, don't know how to do that,'' she says.
Or at least doesn't need to.
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Delaneyby CNB