JAG actor a trooper on set He's cheerful, running hard up a farmer's field TV film tells the story of CFL star Terry Evanshen

June 30. 2005

JIM BAWDEN
TELEVISION COLUMNIST

David James Elliott is running up and down a sloping farm field near Cambridge pursued by three teenagers.

He does the scene once and director Helen Shaver hesitates. A second go produces more problems and so Elliott runs up and down again, insisting "I'm having a great time with this part."

He is starring in the CTV movie The Man Who Lost Himself, cast as legendary CFL receiver Terry Evanshen, who was injured in a 1988 car crash that wiped out his entire memory. Says Elliott, "The film isn't really about football but the relationship between Terry and his wife, how love pulled them together again. It's an incredible story and it's a true one."

Producer Pierre Sarrazin says the project (based on June Callwood's bestselling book) was turned down last year for federal funding. "We thought it might be dead, but David insisted he still wanted to do it." With Elliott's drawing power, Sarrazin was able to stitch together a co-production between CTV and U.S.-based Lifetime TV, which makes the series Missing in Toronto.

"I see the wife (played by Wendy Crewson) as equally important in telling the story," says co-producer and writer Suzette Couture, an A-list scripter of TV movies. "She stayed with him, wouldn't leave even though he did not recognize her at all. She had this huge stake in him getting better, they had children, a history."

So all morning Elliott kept running up and down the hill with three young actresses cast as his daughters chasing him. The scene has his eldest (played by Katie Boland) trying to reteach him how to play football before a reunion of former teammates.

Watching from the sidelines was Evanshen himself, along with wife Lorraine and several tiny grandchildren more interested in the farm's goats.

Sarrazin figures running the movie on CTV during Grey Cup fever in the fall would be an ideal time slot.

For the past decade Elliott played pilot and lawyer Cmdr. Harmon Rabb on the CBS series JAG. Elliott left the show earlier this season but returned for a much anticipated finale that nicely wrapped things up for fans.

`He did a scene where he took off his shirt and my heart fluttered' Helen Shaver, on directing David James Elliott

Elliott agrees the role made him: it showed off both his physical prowess and also his dramatic skills in long courtroom scenes "that I actually enjoyed doing." Born in Milton, raised in Scarborough, the 45-year-old actor says in high school he thought more about being a rock singer. Then after studying King Lear in his theatre history class, he was advised by a teacher to apply to Ryerson theatre school. At his audition he sang "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" to make the cut.

"I think at that stage I had seen one play. But they liked me at Ryerson because, they said, I had none of the bad habits of an actor."

Prior to graduation he auditioned for Stratford and got accepted. He did two seasons. One memory is of being in a modern-dress Measure For Measure and having Eric McCormack (Will & Grace) step out of the audience and dance with him onstage.

His breakthrough part came in 1985 on CBC's Street Legal, cast as Sonja Smits' young lover. Moving to Hollywood in 1990 wasn't an instant success, but Elliott was seen on Melrose Place before landing JAG.

He says, "Thank goodness NBC dropped JAG after just one season — they never understood it. CBS did and producer Don Bellisario kept the quality high."

And Elliott wound up a huge TV name, voted one year by People magazine as one of the Top 50 sexiest people on the planet. He says he gets big movie offers, but "I prefer TV. I was home on the weekend and my little 2-year-old son was all over me, he didn't understand where I've been. Doing a location movie for months isn't for me right now."

So Elliott signed a $1 million deal with ABC to star in and co-produce a pilot for a new series. "It'll be shot in January and hopefully I'll be back in a new series next fall."

Also returning from L.A. for the Evanshen shoot is director Helen Shaver. The one-time leading lady from St. Thomas, Ont., says she hasn't acted since co-starring in a short-lived Richard Dreyfuss TV series three years ago. Last season she produced the final year of Judging Amy and directed five episodes, including the finale.

Shaver says, "Movies like this are the way for Canadian TV to go: small, personal stories that can touch viewers. The casting is so important."

She says Elliott "is so handsome, one forgets what a sensitive actor he is. He did a scene where he took off his shirt and my heart fluttered. I thought I was old enough to be over such things."

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