In the spirit of the holidays, More magazine has a gift for us in its December issue.
Jennifer Beals is in Chicago, shooting her new series The Chicago Code (formerly called Ride-Along), which will premiere Feb. 7 on Fox. When More caught up with her, she was wearing black leather boots, pants-and-vest uniform and a maroon shirt with her hair in a bun under a police cap. That’s a picture I’d love to see, but we’ll have to wait until the series. Not that I’m complaining about the pictures More does give us.
Beals talks about acting, photography and the Bible, among other things, in an interview well worth finding a copy of the magazine. Here are some tidbits to whet your appetite.
On letting her face “move freely” as she ages:
Yeah, everything’s moving – frankly, downward. But [Botox is] not what I wish for myself.
On avoiding the Hollywood wild-child route after Flashdance:
To get sucked into that, you have to believe that the glamour is real. If you have your eye on a different prize, you don’t get sucked in. I was so excited to go to college.
On disappointment with the last season of The L Word:
Do you know the lobster theory? When you cook a pot of lobsters and they’re all male, you need to put the top on, because if one male gets out, he’ll try to help the others get out. But if you’re cooking a pot of female lobsters, you don’t have to put the top back on, because if one female starts trying to get out the others will try to drag her back into the pot. Isn’t that awful? My point is, we’re not lobsters [bringing each other down]. It would have been nice to end it differently.
On how her Code character, Teresa, is like Bette Porter:
They’re both incredibly strong; they’re both righteous. Teresa is like Bette on steroids. She’s even more driven, not as tenderhearted.
On the thing she’d like people to know about her:
The impulse to want to know who God is, is still kind of there [from her youth]. Whether it’s that moment in acting when everything is suspended and you’re not yourself, or breaking through the veil of a very long run or swim, or hearing my daughter laugh – they are all pathways to what I think God must be. That original journey has not ended.
We’re happy that her onscreen journey has not ended either. And I can hardly wait to see Jennifer Beals in those black leather boots.
How about you? Will you be watching The Chicago Code when it premiers?
