DATE: Monday, October 20, 1997              TAG: 9710180071

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: LARRY BONKO

                                            LENGTH:   74 lines

``ALLY MCBEAL'' IS ENCHANTING STAR OF FOX SERIES SAYS, ``I'M REALLY TURNED ON BY THE ROLE''

HAVE YOU FALLEN in love with Ally McBeal yet? I have. So have 8.4 million other viewers, according to Nielsen ratings.

Ally McBeal is the principal character on a Fox show that is half drama, half comedy from the producer of ``Picket Fences,'' ``Chicago Hope'' and ``The Practice.'' It airs Monday nights at 9 after ``Melrose Place,'' and it's a hit.

Now that post-season Major League baseball has passed from Fox to NBC with the World Series, new episodes of ``Ally McBeal'' resume tonight.

Calista Flockhart plays McBeal, a Boston attorney with hemlines a tad too high for some judges, a woman of 32 who is as insecure as she is attractive. Wide mouth. Eyes like saucers.

Ally talking to her mirror: ``I do wish my breasts were bigger. Not huge. But less small.''

She's Audrey Hepburn, only sexier. She's Molly Dodd, only funnier. Ally on The First Time: ``It wasn't magical. I pinched a nerve in my neck.''

Kelley has given his latest project a twist: At times when Ally is sharing her thoughts with viewers, the producer uses special effects for punctuation.

Ally is losing a case. Kelley tosses her into a dumpster. Ker-plunk!

Ally's love from law school tells her that he is married.

``Oh, how wonderful,'' she lies.

We see three arrows headed for her heart. Boing! That's cute. Clever. Ally McBeal is a part that most actresses would die for, and Flockhart admits it.

``I'm really turned on by the role,'' Flockhart said in Los Angeles recently. ``It's rare that somebody writes an interesting, unusual, smart, funny part for a woman.''

With that said, Flockhart confesses that she practically had to be dragged to Los Angeles to star in a TV series that will likely make her rich and a household name. It wasn't so very long ago she was the struggling actress living on two cans of ravioli a day.

When Kelley called, she answered, but not before thinking real hard about moving to Los Angeles with her dog.

``I was busy in New York and preoccupied, doing a play, and not looking to audition for a pilot or do television at all. I honestly don't watch a lot of television,'' she said. A friend talked her into reading for the lead in ``Ally McBeal.''

Her audition wowed Kelley and the Fox brass. ``She came in, swirled through the reading, swirled through her meetings with the network, and all of a sudden she had the role. I found the someone who could be strong and weak at the same time,'' said Kelley.

Who is this Calista Flockhart who charmed Hollywood right out of its Gucci loafers? She's a native of Freeport, Ill., who graduated from Rutgers and then worked in regional theater (Berkshire Theater Festival, Williamstown Theater Festival) before reaching Broadway in ``The Glass Menagerie.''

To TV audiences, Flockhart is totally unknown unless they caught her on HBO five years ago in a familes-in-crisis special.

Although she has worked little in TV, Lockhart quickly mastered the art of acting for the small-screen - the little wave of the hand at precisely the right time, the proper moment to open her eyes REAL WIDE, the well-placed hiccup.

``Ally McBeal'' at 9 is holding the audience of young women which ``Melrose Place'' brings to Fox at 8. Kelley, no fool, realized that casting Courtney Thorne-Smith from the original cast of ``Melrose Place'' would bring more viewers to his new show.

``The character had to be beautiful, and something of a threat to Ally in the beginning,'' said Kelley. Thorne-Smith has done well as Georgia Thomas, a lawyer and the woman who married Ally's former boyfriend.

She eventually grows close to Ally. They try cases together, rising as one to say, ``Objection!''

Thorne-Smith is fine, indeed. But it is Flockhart who dazzles here. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

FOX

Callista Flockhart... KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY TELEVISION

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