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Citation :

"CSI: NY" watchers and Sela Ward fans, here's a picture from her days as an Alabama cheerleader
Published: Friday, October 29, 2010, 7:00 AM
Bob Carlton -- The Birmingham News



Sela Ward, in the middle, was a University of Alabama cheerleader in the mid-1970s. This picture is from the 1976 season.


My blog earlier this week about Emmy-winning actress and former Crimson Tide cheerleader Sela Ward wishing for Alabama to win another BCS championship on the Oct. 22 episode of the CBS crime drama "CSI: NY" has generated lots of comments and hundreds of Facebook "likes" from al.com readers.
Red-blooded Bama fan David Wininger, a Birmingham lawyer and "CSI: NY" watcher, says it's not he first time Sela, a 1977 University of Alabama graduate, has referenced her alma mater on the show, in which she stars as crime-scene investigator Josephine "Jo" Danville.




A couple of weeks ago, I watched 'CSI: NY,' and Sela's character was 'online,' I suppose we say, when she encountered a soldier peering into his computer screen so that the two of them were in communication," Wininger writes in an e-mail. "She asked him where he was. He replied Afghanistan. She asked why he was up so late at night. He responded that he had been 'talking' to his wife back in Alabama but it was bedtime for his kids so he had logged off from them. Sela Ward replied, 'ROLL TIDE.' I loved it, and at first thought I had misheard. Upon replaying the scene, that was exactly what she said."
Stay tuned to see what Sela will say next about her favorite team. "CSI: NY" airs Fridays at 8 p.m. on CBS 42 in Birmingham.
In the meantime, for those of you who remember those glorious fall Saturdays in the 1970s when the Tide was almost always high and Sela always seemed to catch the cameraman's eye, the above picture is for you. That's her in the middle, of course. Who else can you identify?

source: http://blog.al.com/bob-carlton/2010/10/csi_ny_watchers_and_sela_ward.html

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Citation :

SMACK DAB IN THE MIDDLE OF IT ALL
by Sela Ward



I WAS A CHEERLEADER at The University of Alabama in the 1970s and my memories are so rich from this chapter of my life. I can still smell the freshly cut grass of the practice field which we shared with the Million Dollar Band and feel the adrenaline rush that shot through my body as the band played and we practiced the double stunts that we were known for. And with coach Paul "Bear" Bryant at the helm, you felt as if you were participating in something larger than life. Tens of thousands of fans in a sea of red and white would weave their way into the stadium. In those days everyone got dressed up - the guys wore a coat and tie and the gals often wore dresses. Barna football was as serious as religion, and to be a cheerleader, down on the field, smack dab in the middle of it all, was a privilege of the highest order!

Memories of my brief encounters with Coach Bryant always make me smile. I once went to his office to get his permission to arrange a pep rally. When I walked in scared to death, he looked up and said,'Well, if I had known you were coming I would have ordered us up some fried chicken!" He had the appearance of being a gruff old bear, but in reality he was warm, charming, and approachable.

He once said to Debbie Purifoy, one of the other cheerleaders, and me, as we said hello to him before a game and reporters snapped photo-ops of the three of us: "The only reason you all ever come talk to me is to get your picture taken." Nothing could have been further from the truth. We were just too intimidated to walk up and start a conversation!

When I think of the cheerleaders, I am left with two big impressions, the first being Patti Rawlinson. When I first arrived at Bama she was already a cheerleading icon, the epitome of the all-American, apple-pie beauty, and the TV cameras loved her! She was the one I so looked up to as a freshman. And joining the team after I got there were the Troxell twins, Harriet and Beth. They were the first young women I knew to be extremely health- and body-conscious, eating apples for snacks and spending long hours working out in the gym. The results were these very petite, beautifully sculpted athletic wonders - way ahead of their time! Chip Cornelius was my partner and together with Brian Morgan, whose enthusiasm made him the leader of the cheers, there was never a dull moment. Always lots of fun and laughter.

I have to admit that most of my sideline focus was not on the fans in the stands but on #91, defensive tackle Bob Baumhower, my college sweetheart and later a great all-pro player for the Miami Dolphins! It was an enchanted, storybook time. My best friend and sorority sister dated quarterback Richard Todd; the four of us were inseparable for several of our college years. We were often found practicing "the hustle" (the "line dance" of our day) in the living room of the Chi 0mega house or cruising around in Richard's red Cadillac convertible listening to Lou Rawls sing "Groovy People."

I am often asked how a southern gal from Mississippi ended up an actress in Hollywood. The truth is that it is a direct result of having been a cheerleader for Alabama.

Because our games were so often on national television, cheerleaders actually got fan mail, and one letter never left my impressionable young head. A guy wrote, "You are the next Mary Tyler Moore!" I had no idea what that meant-did I project comedy on the field? However, to me, of course, it meant that I could be in movies: the hubris of youth! And so when the cheerleaders were taken to New York City for the National Invitation Basketball Tournament, I was ready. I fell immediately in love with New York and moved there shortly after I left college. Through a series of connect-the-dots I landed a TV commercial and went off into the land of entertainment. But I'll never forget where a lot of it came from: those green football fields all over the South and the grand enthusiastic crowds on magical Saturday afternoons with the Crimson Tide.

Sela Ward is an Emmy-Award-winning film and TV actress best known for the TV drama series Sisters and Once and Again.

This article is found in the book- The Crimson Tide : An Illustrated History of Football at the University of Alabama by Winston Groom. You may purchase it on online at Amazon.com.

source: http://www.selawardtv.com/bama.html via DLchem

Thanks Perl'

Citation :

Sela Ward's Prime Time
The new star of CSI: NY gets real about second acts, raising teenagers, saying yes to Botox, and why, at 54, she's having the time of her life.
By Judith Newman

Work and Life


Sela Ward is bending over a dead body, looking for an exit wound. As the new star of CSI: NY, Ward is doing a lot of that these days. I watch her on the set while she does several takes of the scene: As former FBI agent Jo Danville, she is sleek, savvy, and authoritative. Which is interesting, considering that at this very moment the actress Sela Ward is probably doing everything she can not to throw up.
"I love it...but this is the hardest job I've ever had," Ward told me a day earlier. "The show is all about our fascination with the different ways people can die. The other day I was in the autopsy lab doing a scene over this fake dead body and we were trying to determine what tool was used to bash his head in. One of the characters peeled the scalp back and all this goosh came out. It was done so well I couldn't even look at it. I thought I was going to be sick."
Ironically, it was the morbid CSI: NY that lured the squeamish Ward out of her self-imposed retirement. A few years back she had quit acting altogether to work on her art (she's an accomplished painter) and stay home with her kids, Austin, now 16, and Anabella, 12. "The kind of roles that were available to me were the 'uninteresting mother' parts," says Ward over lunch on the terrace of her Los Angeles home. "It was so ungratifying. So I decided, Fine, I'm not into this. I want to sail away and feel great about what I've accomplished and really focus on my family."
And that was fine -- for a while. Then she noticed that her kids didn't need her around the way they once did. A few years ago they were writing sweet things about her, Ward says, as she shows me one of her son's poems, dedicated to "The World's Greatest Mom," which includes lines like "I'm so glad I popped out of your body!" "And now they're at that age where it's like, 'Who are you and why are you giving me your opinions?'
"I was going out of my mind not working," she continues. "It was like wandering in a desert. I kept thinking, Who am I? What happened to my career? I hadn't realized how much of my identity was wrapped up in what I do." When she got the call from CBS about joining the cast of CSI: NY, to take over for actress Melina Kanakaredes, who was leaving the show, she was more than ready for a change.
So was the cast of CSI: NY, sad as they were to see Kanakaredes go. "When Melina left there wasn't a list of 15 people being considered for the job," says Gary Sinise, Ward's costar. "Sela was the choice right from the start. She has such a cool approach to acting. The writers started crafting the character to what Sela was bringing to it."
Even as a girl growing up in small-town Meridian, Mississippi, Sela Ann Ward seemed destined for showbiz. She was the prom queen at her local high school and a cheerleader for the University of Alabama before she moved to New York City to model in the late '70s. Stardom came with her Emmy-winning part as the alcoholic Teddy in the '90s TV series Sisters, followed by another hit drama, Once and Again, in which she played a divorcee looking for love.
While her career took off, Ward's romantic life fizzled. There was a broken engagement (reportedly to actor Peter Weller) and a string of dead-end relationships. It wasn't until she was set up on a blind date in 1991 with a handsome shaggy-haired finance guy named Howard Sherman that Ward met her match. There was just one problem: Sherman is Jewish, and although Ward says she "didn't have a fire-and-brimstone upbringing," her parents did have some concern about her marrying outside her Christian faith. When she became serious about Sherman she went back to Meridian to visit her pastor.
"I went to my pastor to talk about this issue and he said, 'Sela, I think you can find God just as easily in a temple on Friday night as you can in church on Sunday morning.' And I said, 'Thank you, I love you, that's what I needed to hear.'" Today she describes her faith as "very spiritually connected to God, whatever God may be...a higher power."

What Sela Truly Wants


I ask Ward the secret to her and Sherman's 18-year union. "Therapy," she says without hesitation. "I tell my husband, 'If we are going to stay married, you and I will both be in therapy.' We mostly go separately, but if we're bumping up against an issue, we'll go together. We dump all our stuff there so we don't dump it on each other.
"I think everybody has to be in therapy to be truly conscious," Ward says. "It's only when you're conscious about your behavior and your expectations and your reaction to another person that you can really have a healthy relationship."
Clearly, awareness and honesty are deeply important to Ward -- even when the issue is something as dicey as aging. "There isn't one person out there that's over 50 -- or 47, for that matter -- who looks fabulous that hasn't had some help, whatever it is," says Ward, who's 54.
Has she?
"Love Botox, love all that stuff -- it's the best!" she says. "I love all those little things you don't have to cut yourself open for." Not that she's saying no to cosmetic surgery sometime in the future -- we have an animated talk about which doctors are the best -- but she just happens to be lucky enough not to have needed a facelift yet.
Ward is naturally thin but she eats carefully and works out for at least 30 minutes a day. She's discovered gyratronics, a cousin of Pilates, which she is convinced will help her shed the extra 10 pounds she has gained since breaking her foot last summer (she cracked a bone when she fell while wearing platform shoes). "On camera it looks like 50 pounds...I'm like waddling down the hallway," she says. "No wide-angle lenses for me!"
With a lunch of chicken salad, pesto bread, and oatmeal cookies dispatched, Ward gives me a tour of her property. It's a soul-soothing place: Tommy Dorsey (a favorite musician of her mother, who died eight years ago) is playing over the sound system. There is the murmur of water from a man-made stream and Buddhas are everywhere. Across the lawn is her artist's studio, where the work is sometimes figurative, sometimes abstract, but always pulsing with color and life. Perched on a steep canyon hill is an amphitheater she had built for family and friends' performances. (Ward's son, Austin, a talented musician, recently jammed with her CSI: NY costar, Sinise.)
When I note that everything is so beautiful, so right, that even the violet bougainvillea seem color-coordinated with the dragonflies, she beams. "My home feeds my soul," she says simply. "If I were going to have another job other than acting it would probably be fixing up homes, making them beautiful and selling them." (In fact, she did just that with her last house, in 2003, selling it for $12 million to Madonna.)
Yet Ward admits she has never quite found her true home in California. Her heart is in Meridian, where she and her family return every summer, living on her 500-acre farm, visiting her extended family (Ward's father died in 2009) and friends. Living in Los Angeles, where the show shoots, she admits, can be isolating. "I've never had the experience of actresses wanting to be friends," she says. "It's such a competitive business, built on illusion. There's little to ground people. I think that's why there's so much loneliness among people here."
Ward has talked about eventually moving away from Los Angeles. I ask her what else remains on her bucket list. "I'll tell you what it is. It's not a thing I have to do...it's a state I'd like to reach. I just want to be in an emotional space without fear."
For all the self-assuredness and calm she projects on-screen (and in life), Ward is actually quite the worrier -- and working on CSI: NY has fed some of her anxiety. "I've started having dreams where people are hunting me down -- or my family. And my son just started driving so I'll think, Is he going to have a wreck? Is he going to drink and drive? Is he going to be okay? Am I going to crash in an airplane? The list goes on forever. And it'll only get worse with my daughter. So that's what I want. Just some time. To live without fear."

Sela Gives Back
Years ago Ward had a holiday tradition of dropping off presents for kids at a local Mississippi shelter. One time she met two young brothers who'd been removed from their home because of an abusive father. "Those boys had been through hell," she has said, "but they still had such promise in their faces." The encounter inspired her to open Hope Village for Children in Mississippi in 2000, where neglected kids aren't just housed and given the medical treatment they need but are also taught life skills. The center is funded half by the state and half by private funds. "We've had some great success stories -- some of our kids have become honor roll students," says Ward. "We help them get back on their feet." To learn more about Hope Village for Children, go to hopevillagems.org.
Originally published in Ladies' Home Journal, December 2010/January 2011.

source: http://www.lhj.com/style/covers/sela-ward/?page=3

Merci Perl'

Citation :

Learning a whole new language


Sela Ward has joined the cast of ‘CSI: New York.’ The show airs Fridays at 9 p.m. on CBS.



After years of emotional dramas like “Once and Again,” actress Sela Ward is learning a whole new language as the latest addition to the cast of “CSI: New York.” Taking on a role filled with shoot-outs and technical jargon has proved more daunting than she expected, she admits, but she isn’t taking the challenge lying down.

Before joining “CSI: New York,” you were ready to retire?

I’d swore I’d never go back to another TV show because my kids were at the age where if I did, I was never going to see them and they were going to be in college and gone. But then when I played that mother in “The Stepfather,” I watched that and I went, “I cannot play another one of these unintelligent women again. How could she possibly not read those signs that something is really off about this guy — as in, like, he’s a murderer?” So I really had, all kidding aside, decided that I was retiring. But I really, really missed acting. And when I got this call this summer, I thought, “Well, you know my kids are 16 and 12 now, and they’re really not interested in their mother, so maybe this might be a good time.”

Was it difficult going from dramas like “Once and Again” to a procedural?

I thought it was going to be a walk in the park. I really did. Because clearly I don’t watch television, and I hadn’t watched enough of these shows — until they called me, and then I watched maybe two. I should’ve watched a few more. Because, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s mostly exposition, where you’re explaining to the audience over and over everything. And I just am not used to that. It was very, very difficult for me for the first five shows.

Do you ever think maybe there’s too much exposition in the show?

I guess it’s just the nature of these kinds of shows. They’re moving so fast, and they’re so technical when they start to get into the science of what’s going on, that they want to make sure the audience remembers. I keep going, “Are they really that stupid? They just can’t be that stupid. I mean, we’ve told them that already now four times. I have to say that again?” It’s just so foreign to me to have to do that.

source: http://www.metro.us/newyork/entertainment/article/722234--learning-a-whole-new-language

Merci Perl'

Citation :

In the January 23 issue of PARADE magazine, Sela Ward talks about the Mississippi town she still calls home.



The star of CBS's CSI: NY has traveled the world, but the "sweetness of life" in her hometown of Meridian, Mississippi, keeps drawing her back.

"When I was a child, I felt I was living in a small room and there was this big world out there just waiting for me," she says. "I had such a thirst for life. I wanted that big world. She pauses thoughtfully. "Sometimes you don't know what you have until you leave it."

The star recalls fond childhood memories, like enjoying the outdoors, saying, "nature nurtured me," and other memories that weren't always so peaceful. "My father was a wonderful man - until he drank," she confides. "I didn't understand that he was an alcoholic. In the South you just don't talk about those things."

Read the interview with Sela Ward in this weekend's issue of PARADE magazine. And go to Parade.com on Monday, Jan. 24 for the full story.

See photos of Sela Ward through the years, from Southern belle to award-winning actress



[Photo by Art Streiber For PARADE]

source: http://www.parade.com/celebrity/2011/01/sela-ward-mississippi-queen.html

Merci pour l'article Perl'
Sela est magnifique sur cette photo

Citation :

Sela Ward: 'My Journey Has Been a Journey Home'


"When I was a child, I felt I was living in a small room and there was this big world out there just waiting for me," Sela Ward says. "I had such a thirst for life. I wanted that big world." She pauses thoughtfully. "Sometimes you don't know what you have until you leave it."

Sitting inside a Manhattan hotel suite, the picture of cosmopolitan chic in a black cashmere mock-turtleneck sweater and black wool slacks, Ward, 54, is reminiscing about the dreams that took her away from Mississippi at 18--and the qualities of life there that lured her back. "I used to be very attached to my career in terms of my identity," says the Emmy-winning actress, who gained fame on the series Sisters and Once and Again and now co-stars on CBS' CSI: NY. "But it was meaningless. The sweetness of life is elsewhere. That's the lesson I've learned in Meridian."

Ward's hometown (population just under 40,000) is in the hill country, some 90 miles east of Jackson. "Meridian was once the rail crossroads of the South," she says. "You had to go through there to get just about anywhere else. It was so strategically important that during the Civil War, Sherman tore up the tracks there and wrapped the [hot metal] rails around trees." The Ward family's roots in the area are deep, stretching back six generations. Sela, her three younger siblings, and their parents--Granberry, an electrical engineer, and Annie, a home-maker--lived in a neighborhood called Lakemont, and Sela loved the long days spent outdoors. "Nature nurtured me," she says. "We were outside until dark every day, cane-pole fishing in the lake, playing flag football in the field. The lake had a dam and spillway, like a waterfall, and I'd sit underneath it, water cascading over me. Or I'd walk among the trees, the sun dappling through the leaves. I felt a sense of connection, peace. It was beautiful."

At home, however, things weren't always so peaceful. "My father was a wonderful man--until he drank," she confides. "I knew the moment that ice went in his glass he would become a different person, an angry drunk. It was confusing to me, because sober he was very lovable. The atmosphere was tense, heavy. I didn't understand that he was an alcoholic. In the South you just don't talk about those things."

See photos of Sela Ward through the years, from Southern belle to award-winning actress

Ward, who took voice lessons to expunge her Southern accent after she set her sights on acting, lapses into a Mississippi drawl when she talks about her family. "Mama said to me on her hospital deathbed, 'I think maybe I married the wrong man,'" she recalls. "I looked at her and said, 'Mama, are you just now figuring that out?' She was a strong woman, but she wasn't strong enough to leave Daddy. Probably because she feared the unknown. Divorce was still shameful. She had four kids--she was overwhelmed. And, you know, she just really loved him." Ward's mother succumbed to ovarian cancer in 2002. "After Mama died," Ward adds, "Daddy stopped drinking. He beat the disease, and during the last chapter of his life, he was really there." Her father passed away in 2009.

The Meridian Little Theatre loomed large in Ward's childhood--but not for the reason one might think. At 12, she was cast in a production of The King and I, and the experience almost turned her off forever from performing. "I can't sing a note," Ward recalls, laughing, "but the director thought I was cute enough to be a lady-in-waiting, and I got the part. In rehearsals the woman standing next to me said, 'Someone is singing dreadfully off-key!' and so I just mouthed the words. At that point, any idea of acting went out the window."

Her teenage years were spent at a private school, Lamar, and she joined a junior sorority. She also had her first kiss, at a spin-the-bottle party, and her first big crush. "In high school, girls would drive by boys' houses," Ward recalls. "One day, Eric Gunn was out in front washing his car. We drove by at a snail's pace, and I was totally caught looking. He and I went out a couple of times. Then a church bus he was on was in a wreck, and he was killed. It was my first terrible loss. He was only 17. I think about him and wonder: How was it possible for Eric to die coming home from a church event? There really is no answer."

Ward had no intention of staying in Meridian as a young woman. "I wanted a bigger universe. I was ready to fly," she says of transferring to the University of Alabama after a year of junior college in her hometown. As much as she loved Meridian, "the irony was that I couldn't wait to get out of there." Nor was she looking to settle down with her college boyfriend, Alabama football star Bob Baumhower, who went on to play for the Miami Dolphins. "I'd go down to Miami to see him, and I continued to see him for about 10 years," she says. "I was a serial monogamist. I always thought I was going to marry all my boyfriends, maybe because Mama would say, 'Hurry up, Sela, get married before you lose your beauty.'" She laughs. "What a thing to say! Well, I wasn't ready to marry Bob or anyone else. I needed to experience a lot of life first."

Upon graduation in 1977, Ward went to New York ("It spoke to me--life on steroids," she says), where she worked in advertising, modeled, and took acting classes. In 1983 she headed on to Los Angeles and was immediately cast in Blake Edwards' The Man Who Loved Women. She discovered that what she loved was performing.

The personal side of her life fell into place years later, when, after relationships with actors Richard Dean Anderson and Peter Weller, she met entrepreneur Howard Sherman on a blind date in 1991. "You know what Howard has that the others didn't?" she asks. "He listened. He wanted to know me. I felt cherished. I was used to anger and chaos with men, but Howard is very gentle--kind, funny, even-keeled. Even before we kissed, and he's a great kisser, he had me."

Finding the right partner made Ward realize how deeply she yearned to go home, and within a month of marrying in 1992, the couple began looking for property in Meridian. "I wanted my children to have a life that is authentic, not one that's about striving for material things," she says. Today she and Sherman have a son, 16-year-old Austin, and a daughter, 12-year-old Anabella, and though they live mainly in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, the family spends summers and holidays at Honeysuckle Farms, their 500-acre Mississippi retreat just outside the Meridian city limits. The first structure they built there is called the Rose Cottage, and Ward's parents and an uncle are buried on the hill behind it.

The farm is clearly where her heart lies, and Ward wants to connect the next generation to the place as well. "I'm trying to teach my children the lessons I learned in Meridian--genuineness, belonging, caring about others," she says. "Treat people as valuable in themselves, not for what they can do for you."

For her part, Ward found that there was much she could do to give back to her hometown. She has helped raise money to restore Meridian's 19th-century Grand Opera House, a building long boarded up that had "obsessed" her as a child. "In third grade I saw a picture of it in its heyday," she says. "All these amazing people, like Gershwin, signed the dressing-room wall there. Now it's used as a concert hall." She has also been instrumental in helping to preserve Weidmann's restaurant, which dates from 1870. The inside was changed, sadly, but the building remains. "I wanted to save Weidmann's more than anything," she says. "It was the heart and soul of that town, the place you'd go for Sunday lunch and see everybody."

Most important, she has helped found and support Meridian's Hope Village for Children, which provides shelter and care for neglected, abused, and abandoned children (go to hopevillagems.org for more information). "These kids have bounced from one foster home to another," she says. "Some have never had a birthday party, never slept in a bed. It's outrageous! At Hope Village, they have a sense of belonging. They feel safe, valued."

And that's exactly how Meridian makes Ward feel. "I've gone back to the place I once wanted to leave behind," she says. "I understand it now. My journey has been a journey home."

source: http://www.parade.com/celebrity/2011/01/se...ippi-queen.html

Merci Perl' pour l'article

Citation :

This ‘woman of a certain age’ rocks NY


By Bayani San Diego Jr.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 15:39:00 03/13/2011



JUST in time for Women’s Month, award-winning Hollywood actress Sela Ward shares candid views on aging, acting and plastic surgery during a conference call with Southeast Asian media outfits, including the Inquirer.

Ward, who won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the ABC drama series “Once and Again” (1999-2002), decries America’s obsession with youth.

“There are certain cultures in the world that respect age, wisdom and experience,” Ward says. “Unfortunately, America is not one of them.”

The touchy topic crops up because Ward ended an almost 10-year hiatus from show biz with a stint in the medical drama “House” and, now, a role in the popular forensics show “CSI: NY (Crime Scene Investigation: New York),” aired by AXN in the region.

The TV landscape has definitely changed in the last decade—Hannah Montana and the Gossip Girls, not to mention the singing and dancing Gleeks, rule the current scene.

Ward says she has come to terms with the sad reality that the industry targets the 17 to 30 demographic. However, she remains stubbornly optimistic, in spite of the dearth of challenging roles for women of a certain age. “I refuse to give up. Someone has to play the mothers and grandmothers.”

Although she wouldn’t give “a little nip and tuck” the thumbs-down, she’s leery of women who “don’t know when to stop.” In the end, she says, it’s about being “happy with your reflection in the mirror … [if it] matches how you feel inside.”

All in all, Ward has maintained a healthy balance between the personal and the professional. She says she has emerged from semi-retirement because her kids are grown up. “My 16-year-old son can probably watch ‘CSI: NY.’ My 12-year-old daughter caught an episode and switched channels as soon as she saw a dead body.”

Perfect timing
She accepted the “CSI” gig because it came at the right time: “I missed working.” She admits that it can be daunting joining a show that has run for six seasons. Luckily, blending in was a breeze; cast and crew welcomed her with open arms. She reserves the highest praise for Gary Sinise. “I was always seated next to him during awards shows, at the Emmys and the CableAce, years ago.” After each passing encounter, she would tell herself, “I hope I can get to work with him someday.” She got her wish.

Gary’s always helpful on the set, Ward says, “giving tips like how to put on and take off gloves.” Also supportive are the real cops who serve as consultants. “Whenever I have a question, I can always turn to the NYPD (New York Police Department) officer and CSI forensic expert on the set.”

She also loves shooting in the Big Apple. “I love New York. I wish we could stay there longer.” Actually, it was sort of a homecoming for Ward, who began her career as a model for the Wilhelmina Modeling Agency in New York.

Another incentive that pulled her out of quiet domesticity is her role on the show: Josephine “Jo” Danville, “a strong, complex investigator”—a rarity for mature actresses, she notes. “Jo is confident and adept at her job. She has a great sense of humor. At the same time she’s complicated. Her life is not picture-perfect. She’s divorced, estranged from her son, and she adopted the child of a woman she had put in jail.”

Jo’s backstory, Ward says, is “interesting … it’s fascinating to learn more about her. Is she lonely? Who is she, really?”

Source: http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/entertainment/entertainment/view/20110313-325182/This-woman-of-a-certain-age-rocks-NY

Merci Perl' pour ce bel article!!!

Elle a tellement raison sur le jeunisme! et sur le reste d'ailleurs aussi!!!! Comme Gary, elle a juste l'air d'être quelqu'un de bien!

Citation :

TIME OUT :: Entertainment

Sela in Stella’s shoes
> Sela Ward is settling in comfortably as the new investigator Jo Danville replacing Melinda Kanakaredes as Stella Bonasera in CSI: New York
BY S. INDRA SATHIABALAN


(left) Ward with Sinise … the two team up in season
7 of CSI: NY.

SELA WARD, 51, has one of those rare combinations of beauty, talent and elegance and she radiates this quality in whatever role she undertakes – whether as the free-spirited Teddy Reed in TV series The Sisters or playing Hugh Laurie’s exasperated ex-girlfriend in Stacy in House.
A former model, Ward landed her first starring role in The Man Who Loved Women (opposite Burt Reynolds) and had numerous guest spots on television and minor roles in films.

Things turned around when she landed the part in The Sisters and won an Emmy for outstanding actress in a drama series in 1994 and later took a CableACE award for her portrayal of a real-life TV reporter in Almost Golden: The Jessica Savitch Story.

She later won her second Emmy for playing the role of Lily Brooks Manning, a widow who’s unaware that her dead husband’s brain has been transplanted into a younger man’s body in Once and Again.

Last year, Ward was signed on for the role of the new assistant supervisor, Jo Danville, in CSI: New York, replacing Stella Bonasera (Melinda Kanakaredes) who has left to head the New Orleans crime lab.

Danville had worked for the FBI and has a background in criminal psychology. While working in a crime lab in Washington, she discovers that a respected lab technician has covered up evidence of a mistake he made during a case.

When she brought this to light, she lost support of her co-workers, forcing her to move to New York.

She also has an ex-husband who is a FBI agent, a young son and an adopted child. Danville will be a regular character from Season 7’s premiere onwards.

During a tele-conference interview, Ward revealed that she was never a fan of the CSI franchise or really followed any of the episodes.

"No, I don’t like all the blood and gore," she explained.

So what made her come on board CSI: New York? "I met Gary Sinise during one of the award seasons and I have seen so much of his work. I love him and wanted to work with him very badly. I said to myself that someday I will work with him. So when I received the phone call …

"Of course, I watched a couple of episodes but I fast-forward all the dead body parts. It is very different from what I have done before and that’s why I decided to give it a shot. For me, that’s the way you keep growing, when you challenge yourself and do things you have never done before."

Ward confessed that it took her a couple of episodes to get used to the dead bodies. She just kept telling herself that it is TV and that it is all pretend.

"They do a good job with all the body parts, making them look so real, it’s just extraordinary. I kept telling myself it’s all pretend and I try not to look. I am real happy when that part of the scene is over, " Ward explained.

Her character actually stumbles across a dead body in the first episode itself!

Danville is a complicated character because of her past and more about that will be revealed as the season progresses.

"She has a great sense of humour and is artistic. But you don’t really find out everything about the characters because that is the nature of the show, so you don’t really get to the underbelly of who they are," Ward said.

"I really love who Jo is. She is a strong, smart woman and I love her sense of humour."

Considering that the cast of CSI: New York have been together for six seasons, Ward said they gave her a warm welcome, making her feel at home almost immediately.

"I have to say that this is the nicest, sweetest group of people. I think that’s because a guest star is an integral part of each episode and they are so used to having guests, it made it easier and more seamless for me to fit in."


CSI: NY season 7 will premiere on April 5 at 10pm on AXN Asia (Astro Channel 701).

source: http://www.thesundaily.com/article.cfm?id=59348 via Adoring Sela

Merci pour l'article Perl'

perlnoir a écrit:

Citation :

She later won her second Emmy for playing the role of Lily Brooks Manning, a widow who’s unaware that her dead husband’s brain has been transplanted into a younger man’s body in Once and Again.

Ils ont fumé la moquette ?????

Merci beaucoup pour l'article Perl'

Citation :

You’ve turned down roles in ‘Desperate Housewives’ and ‘CSI: Miami’ before. Why accept the role on ‘CSI: NY’ now?

It’s just one of those things in life where it’s the right time and right place to have received that phone call. I purposely took a hiatus from working on a TV show so that I could be with my kids. They were at that stage where younger and I wanted to be around them in a hands-on day…

When was it that you took your break?

It was in 2002 when I finished ‘Once & Again’, and I did a couple of movies, and did a year on ‘House’, but I wasn’t ready to sign a contract for multiple years for any TV show during that time period. Cause when you accept those offers, it’s not for a year, it’s a 6-year contract.

Were you a big fan of ‘CSI: NY’ before you joined the show?


Actually, no *laughs*. Even now I have to sit out all the gory stuff, it’s too realistic- they do an amazing job. So I was always afraid to watch these things… All the blood, gore and autopsies, it’s just not my favourite thing.

Did you find replacing such an important series mainstay like Stella Bonasera daunting? How have the fans reacted to it?

Wasn’t difficult for me. It think it’s really hard for fans of the show, you know, when you’re in somebody’s living, every week for years, those characters become part of your life. And when that character leaves the show and somebody else comes on, it’s an adjustment for people, and a hard one. There’s been a lot of positive comments though! And a lot of people who love and miss Stella as well.

Buts there’s been a lot of positive reaction to Jo (Danville, whom Sella), she comes from the FBI and a totally different background, and a different kind of interaction between the characters. She has a great sense of humour and tends to loosen everyone up a bit, especially Mac’s character.

Can you tell us more about her though?

Well, she has a great sense of humour, as I said. She really comes from the FBI world, so the focus for her was more on the psychology of the criminal. She’s very astute when it comes to the profile of the person, and understanding that criminal. And I love all of that personally, so it makes it very interesting for me.

How did you feel when you knew you were going to join ‘CSI: NY’?

I was excited because I had always wanted to work with Gary (Sinise, who plays Mac Taylor) but I was a little concerned about how different this show was from anything I’ve ever done before. Doing something new, unexplored territory for yourself can always be a little nerve wracking and dubious. But after the fourth or fifth show I got my bearings and felt a little stronger, I understood where I was going a little better.

I didn’t get the script until three days before shooting, so I just had to jump in the pool and keep on swimming.

Anything fun and interesting happen on the set of ‘CSI: NY’ so far?

Um, not really. *laughs* You know, it’s funny. I’m always asked that question. It’s work, you know, and you get tickled a lot and can’t stop laughing, especially Lindsey (Anna Belknap, who plays Lindsey Monroe) and I. It was more of during the first week or so I was lost and didn’t know what was happening.

Do you think Jo would end up as a love interest for Mac?

Um, you know, I don’t know that. I may tease that for a long time, I just don’t know that they’d go there right away. It’s more interesting for it to be a question mark, more interesting for people to want them to get together than it is for them to actually get together.

You were almost a Bond girl, but got turned down cause they wanted someone younger. Did that experience shape how you pick characters? Or do you tend to go for strong, independent characters?

I’ve just always been attracted to roles where I’m playing very smart women, and it insults my intelligence not to. I just can’t play unintelligent characters, but really has nothing to do with the Bond role. I was 39 when I was turned down for the Bond role, and the producers told me is “What we want is Sela 10 years ago,” and that smarted. I had just finished that show I was on for six years, and thought I was still pretty hot, so that was a rude awakening. But it really nothing to do with the characters I play. It’s more if the role is more fun to do, and fun to work with the people I’ll work with.

source: http://entertainment.malaysia.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4761945

Merci pour l'article Perl'

Citation :

CSI: Sela
The TV drama veteran dissects her first season on the crime series

By ROBERT RORKE



With her dramatic background, Ward seemed, at first, a surprising choice to play Assistant Supervisor Jo Danville, replacing Melina Kanakaredes, but she had been approached years ago to take the female lead, the role eventually played by Kim Delaney, on “CSI: Miami.” She turned it down.

“I didn’t want to take the lead on another TV show with my kids at the ages they were. I still don’t want to do that,” Ward says. “But Gary [Sinise] is the lead and I thought it would be a walk in the park, but it’s so not. The dialogue is not in my comfort zone.”

On her second day of shooting they did an autopsy scene where they were peeling the prosthetic scalp back. “You could see the skull, and it was so visual. Being a painter, these things haunt me,” she says.

In person, Ward is on the tall side and strikingly pretty, but in an approachable way. After all those episodes of “Sisters” and “Once & Again,” “House” and now “CSI: NY,” viewers feel like they know her. What most viewers don’t know is that she turned down Teri Hatcher’s part on “Desperate Housewives.” Again, the timing was off, largely because Ward’s mother had just died and she had just finished “O & A.”

“I was just burned out. I didn’t care what it was — name the best TV show on the planet — I couldn’t have done it. I was just physically exhausted. But I did watch it and it’s really fun. At another time and place, I would have done it,” she says.

After all the tears Ward has shed in those TV dramas, it’s good that she has a sense of humor. But how could she not when, at the end of the “Sisters” run, she decided to audition for the James Bond film “Tomorrow Never Dies” and was told that they were interested in Sela Ward, but the Sela Ward from 10 years ago.

“That was devastating. I was 38 or so and thought I was just so fine. I thought I was vibrant and relevant and all those yummy things,” she says. “You feel you’re at a point in life where you feel that you finally have something interesting to offer. Or that you could have given an interesting performance.”

Swallowing her disappointment, she addressed her concerns about ageism in Hollywood in a documentary for Lifetime called “The Changing Face of Beauty.” She also wrote a best-selling memoir, “Homesick,” about growing up in Meridian, Miss., where she keeps a second home and operates a charity called the Hope Village for Children.

In her honor, the city of Meridian named a stretch of 22nd Avenue after the actress. Not everyone on the City Council favored the special designation.

“Some people said, ‘We’re going to name a street after her? Well, what if she gets into drugs out there in Hollywood? Then what do we do?’ “ Ward says.

Ward lives in Los Angeles with Howard Sherman, her husband of nearly 19 years. She credits her long marriage to “getting married late,” she says. “I got married when I was turning 34, 35. You’re just smarter about who you pick.”

They have two children, Austin, 17, and Annabella, 13. They are all going to Italy this summer on her hiatus from “CSI: NY.” She wishes the show could film in New York City, where she moved right out of the University of Alabama in the 1980s.

“I loved it. Remember when they were ripping gold chains off girls’ necks?” she asks, sounding almost nostalgic. “It was intense.”

With her roots in the South and her strong family ties, Ward remains a private person. Even though she has devoted her life to acting, she doesn’t socialize much with actors.

“Actors don’t like to be friends with other actors. I’ve tried many times,” she says wearily. “They’re too competitive.

"I even made contact with a big movie star — I can’t tell you who she was — and I said, ‘Let’s have lunch.” After discussing the challenges facing older actresses, and thinking that she could "glean" some wisdom from, Ward found that the star looked at her like “I don’t know what planet you’re on.’ Just in total denial. As we were leaving, she said, ‘You’re very interesting.’ Like she was studying an animal. But not her kind of animal. What I realized is that whole adage about swimming with sharks — just make sure you don’t bleed. I bled. I bled.”

* CSI: NY

source: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/csi_sela_juCROhLFbUv3MlblsBMk7H#ixzz1LnixVV8q

Merci pour l'article Perl'

Merci Perl' !!!!!

J'ai trouvé ça sur le net et c 'est assez sympa d'apprendre cela!!

Citation :

Les Experts Manhattan, diffusés ce soir sur TF1, accueillent une nouvelle collègue, Jo Danville, ancienne du FBI au caractère bien trempé, incarnée par Sela Ward, vue dans Dr House. Une remplaçante recrutée à la dernière minute après le départ inattendu de Melina Kanakaredes, alias Stella Bonasera.

Juillet 2010. Un mois avant le tournage de la septième saison, les producteurs des Experts : Manhattan perdent leur actrice principale, Melina Kanakaredes, alias Stella Bonasera. Six épisodes ont déjà été écrits pour elle, il faut tout recommencer ! Et lui trouver une remplaçante… Le nom de Sela Ward, habituée du petit écran, est rapidement évoqué. La comédienne est recrutée sans passer de casting, sans même avoir le temps de travailler son rôle. « J’ai reçu le script trois jours avant le tournage« , précise-elle. Et de débarquer comme son personnage, le détective Joséphine « Jo » Danville, valise à la main, dans les laboratoires de l’équipe de Mac Taylor. Fort heureusement, elle n’y trouve pas, comme Jo, le cadavre d’une jeune inconnue. « Le timing était parfait, se souvient-elle. Ça faisait un moment que je n’avais pas travaillé, et je commençais à me sentir pantouflarde…«

En France, on connaît mieux Sela, 55 ans, pour son rôle dans les deux premières saisons de Dr House. Elle y incarnait Stacy Warner, l’ancienne avocate de l’hôpital de Princeton-Plainsboro et ex-compagne de l’irascible diagnosticien. On l’a aussi aperçue au cinéma, en épouse assassinée d’Harrison Ford dans Le Fugitif (1993), puis dans Le Jour d’Après (2004). Outre-Atlantique, elle est plus célèbre pour ses performances dans Les Sœurs Reed (Emmy Award de la meilleure actrice dramatique en 1994) et Deuxième chance (Emmy Award et Golden Globe en 2000).

Originaire du sud des Etats-Unis, comme son personnage, elle cultive une personnalité bien trempée : fine psychologue, humaniste et volontiers joueuse. En revanche, reconnaît-elle, « J’étais nulle en bio à l’école. Du coup, j’ai un peu de mal à comprendre ce que dit et ce que fait Jo !«

Divorcée, Jo Danville, ancienne du FBI, a rejoint New York pour suivre son fils, étudiant à Manhattan. Désordonnée, inquiétante quand elle s’amuse à lire dans les pensées de ses collègues, elle fait preuve dès l’épisode de ce soir d’un savoir-faire unique, résultat de sa double spécialisation en ADN et en psychologie criminelle. Un rôle de femme forte, mûre et sûre de son charme, qui offre un nouveau départ à Sela Ward. Elle avait pourtant juré de ne plus accepter de rôle récurrent à la télé pour avoir le temps de s’occuper de ses enfants. Elle a même refusé d’incarner Susan Mayer dans Desperate Housewives ! L’esprit de famille qui règne sur le plateau des Experts : Manhattan aura sans doute fait la différence. L’actrice a ouvert en 2002 une maison pour orphelins dans sa ville natale du Mississippi, Meridian, où une rue porte son nom !

Citation :

Before the Scene with Sela Ward
by AJ BUCKLEY on OCTOBER 5, 2011
Before the Scene is where we all start. In a small town with our families. In front of a mirror with our friends. The days spent sleeping on a couch. The nights working at a bar. Living the unknown and surrounded by uncertainty. It’s about the times that define us. It’s about the just darkness before the limelight.

Sela Ward is a veteran actress who has twice received the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, first for her role as Teddy Reed on Sisters and then as Lily Brooks Manning on Once and Again. She now stars as Jo Danville on CSI: NY.

What made you become an actor?
I really hadn’t found my passion yet and I had moved to New York City. I was drawing up storyboards at an audio/visual production company. Somebody said, “You should model.” And the very first things I started doing were TV commercials. And to really try to hold my own when there were other actors in the spot, I started taking acting lessons to help me get confidence for that. One-on-one I was fine but the moment you had another actor come in, it would just disappear. So I took this class and it was just like I had dropped into this magical world. Like a little club. And we all did each other’s sets for showcases and worked on everything from costumes to props and did plays as showcases to get agents and we would go out after for a beer and a burger. It was just like nothing I’d ever quite imagined.

What was your biggest fear?
Then? I didn’t really have a fear then (laughs). I was fear-less! So much so that, after being offered a daytime spot on one of the daytime soaps, I said, ‘This is not what acting is about for me. I want to go to L.A.’ So I hopped on a plane, checked into a hotel and said, ‘Okay I’m here.’ And had the name of an agent. Had to go there. Had to jump through hoops and do monologues for the agent, and monologues for the other agents in the office and they finally decided to give me a shot.

What was your lowest point?
When it was pouring down rain – there were phone booths then, there were no cell phones – I went in for an audition for a show called Emerald Point N.A.S. and I had the sides I had studied the night before and when I got there the casting person said, “Here are the new sides.” And it was ten pages of something I hadn’t seen. And I was too green to say, you know, “Sorry, let me go work on this. I’ll come back tomorrow or another time or call my agent.” I thought, ‘Okay well I can do this. I did co-reading class in New York, I know how to do this.’ So I sat and looked at it for about ten minutes and I go in, I deliver the first line. The casting person is sitting in front of me and all the producers are behind her – they can’t see her face – I asked to start over because I’d just sort of gotten frazzled. She looks at me, rolls her eyes, glances over at her assistant like, ‘Who is this neophyte sitting in front of me.’ You might as well have just said, “You know what, honey? Go home.” It was so devastating because it was just so incredibly cruel and humiliating. It’s pouring down rain, I walk out, I go to a phone booth, I’m just sobbing hysterically, called this friend and said, “I’m going back to New York, it’s just horrible here.” But the greatest revenge was that they cast it and they didn’t like who they cast. So they had a totally different casting director and I go back in for the same role and I get the part. Isn’t that incredible?

What was it that kept you from walking away?
There’s always been this inner piece of me at my core that said, ‘I can do this. I’m gonna prove to myself and the world that I can do this.’ I can’t even tell you how many times people of power would say things to me that were extraordinarily discouraging. And I’d pick myself back up and I’d just keep charging back out there. So much so, that I was working on Nothing in Common with Tom Hanks. That was like my second big part. I was very green. I’ll never forget, Peggy Fury – she’s passed away since then – well known acting coach here in Los Angeles. Had a huge following. And so I’m paying her to coach me, I go to meet her one day right before we’re about to go to work and she looks at me and she goes, “I’m just not quite sure how you got this part. My daughter would have been so much better for this role.” And this is the kind of stuff that would happen to me over and over again. And in that Southern way, I would just look at her and kind of laugh, and disconnect it from the fact that this was the most atrocious thing she could possibly say to me and I’m paying her! Talk about undermining my self-confidence. I just fiercely had this belief in myself and kept going back out there.

What did you walk away from?
I walked away from just being in a space of trying to figure out and find who I was and what I wanted to be. I knew I wanted to be in New York. I’d figured out how to get there. But I hadn’t really found where I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing in that city in a way that was fulfilling.

Who was your closest ally?
Myself. Because I didn’t really have any connections. It really was just my inner strength and shear will and determination.

What were you doing before the morning of the audition that changed your life?
I had been here, checked into that hotel, for two weeks and somebody says, “I know a part that hasn’t been cast in this Blake Edwards film.” And she picked up the phone and called him. It was The Man Who Loved Women. I go over there and I meet with Blake. He reads with me and puts the script down and says, “Okay, you got the part.” He put the script down halfway through the scene and for that one beat, I was devastated, thinking, ‘Oh I must have just really sucked.’ And when he looked at me and said, “Okay you got the part,” I just…it was just one of those moments frozen in time where everything flies through your head at once like, ‘Oh my God, this is with Burt Reynolds, who was huge at the time, I just got here and this is Blake Edwards,’ and I think I took a breath for a minute, maybe.

What words kept you going?
Well the first thing that popped into my head is, when I was younger, I was talking to Dr. Apperson, the pastor of our church, and I remember I had asked him a question about achieving things in life and he said to me, “Yes, I think anyone can accomplish anything. It’s just a matter of what you’re willing to compromise.”

How have you changed?
Well, I’m not afraid anymore. I certainly have much stronger boundaries and a much stronger sense of self preservation. Not to put myself in positions that would compromise me.

What words to do you to inspire others?
Don’t wait for someone to give you permission in life. Don’t wait for someone to give you permission in life to do anything.

Can you tell us about Hope Village for Children?
It’s a home for abused and neglected children that I founded in the year 2000. We serve about 300+ kids a year that go through there. Wards of the state. It’s an emergency abuse shelter and a permanent shelter that kids that don’t make it in the foster care system can stay there and thrive and have continuity. Which is actually a wonderful thing! Anyone interested in learning more can visit the website at www.hopevillagems.org.

source: http://scenelouisiana.com/before-the-scene-with-sela-ward/2011/10/

Merci pour les articles Perl'

Un reportage sur Sela sera diffusé dans l'émission, allumer vite votre TV sur cette chaine, l'émission est commencée mais pas le reportage !!

C'était bien trop court !!


Pourquoi le sujet a-t-il été fusionné ?