THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 5, 1996 TAG: 9610040057
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: 96 lines
SUPERMAN'S girlfriend finally makes it to the altar Sunday when the long-awaited marriage takes place on ``Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.'' On the BIG screen, however, the Supergirl is doing her own punching these days.
Teri Hatcher, who plays Lois on the hit ABC series, held up a thin arm to display her newly acquired bicep. It was not anything to threaten Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it was her own.
``Hey, there's a little muscle there. See it?'' she patted it and desperately flexed.
``I earned that,'' she said, proudly.
In ``2 Days in the Valley,'' the quirky and offbeat movie currently in theaters, she has one of the most violent, and comedic, female fight scenes in movie history. As a conniving and vindictive wife who has planned to murder her ex-husband (Peter Horton), she goes fist to fist, and screech to screech, with Helga, a statuesque blonde bombshell played by new screen sensation Charlize Theron.
``Yes, she is very blonde, isn't she?'' the pert Teri cooed in mock disdain.
As a knockdown free-for-all tizzy fit, the Hatcher vs. Theron bout compares favorably with the Alexis vs. Crystal fights in ``Dynasty'' or even the classic Marlene Dietrich vs. Una Merkel saloon brawl in ``Destry Rides Again.''
``Actually, Charlize and I got to be good friends,'' Hatcher said. ``That scene was carefully rehearsed. It had to be. But we really got into it. Both of us are in good shape.''
Hatcher is entering her fourth season as the savvy Daily Planet journalist Lois Lane in ABC's Sunday night romance-action series ``Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.''
She marries Superman in the episode airing Sunday.
Lois Lane experienced a botched wedding attempt last TV season but ABC promises the two will actually make it to the altar this time.
``The wedding,'' she said, ``was a bit of a nightmare, kinda. Everything was set to be so lovely. I have this dress patterned after the dress Audrey Hepburn wore in `Funny Face' and the wedding is to take place atop a mountain.
``But, with the budget, they didn't want to film on a real mountain. They built a mountaintop in Studio 23 and hauled real soil and sod in. Somebody thought that would be a great idea but the temperature was something like 110 degrees in the studio and the mountain was soggy and melting. Since the scene took us much longer than we thought, it ended up that I was getting married on rotting sod. Not so romantic.''
And she claims that there will be some ambiguity about the veracity of the wedding, just as former Lois and Clark wedding teases turned out to be plot devices. (In one, Lois turned out to be a clone).
``It's sorta left up to the audience. I've been told they are married. They insist they're married. What do I know? I get the scripts every week, just like everyone else,'' she said.
But are there little superkids on the way?
``I have no idea, but we have had supersex. I mean, of course, in the plot,'' she added sheepishly.
Superman-Clark Kent is played by Dean Cain. Hatcher, in real life, is married to actor Jon Tenney and they divide their time between Los Angeles and New York. She maintains they will survive the pitfalls usually associated with two actors in one marriage ``because we're on an even level. I met him when he was doing a play called `Substance of Fire.' His main attraction was that he told a good joke.''
Born and raised in the San Francisco area, Teri Hatcher never planned to become an actress. When she won a nationwide contest to appear on ``Love Boat,'' she was whisked overnight to Hollywood.
``I really thought I'd be in that show for about six months, make a little money, and then I'd go back to college,'' she said. ``I thought that would be the end of the acting thing. But it went on.''
She had been pursuing a degree in mathematics and engineering and planned to attend California Polytechnic Institute.
``I was at my very lowest about a year into the `Love Boat' thing,'' she remembered. ``I was very lonely. I'd been torn away from college and everyone I knew. I got over it, and I got into acting. It became my challenge.''
Although her fame is primarily as a TV performer, she's been flirting with a big-screen career for years, beginning with her debut in ``The Big Picture'' with Kevin Bacon, and ``Tango and Cash'' and ``Soapdish.''
She was elevated to star billing in the recent erotic thriller ``Heaven's Prisoners'' with Alec Baldwin. Next, she'll be seen in David Schwimmer's (``Friends'') directorial debut ``Dogwater.'' It is set during a 10-year high school reunion.
She vows, though, she will not walk off her show, or whine, like so many TV actors who suddenly break through and get movie chances. ``I'm committed for five seasons and I'll honor my contract. Besides, I'm having a great time.''
A major difference in the work, she said, is the time taken for filming.
``In the series, we rush. You get it the first time and you keep going. In a TV movie, for example, we take about 18 days. For this movie, we had 45 days. Rehearsal was particularly valuable for the fight scene.''
Any bruises?
``Nothing that I didn't get over,'' Hatcher boasted.
Superman would be proud of her. ILLUSTRATION: ABC photo
Teri Hatcher as Lois Lane is set to wed Superman (Dean Cain) in the
episode airing Sunday night. by CNB