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Hollywood is a weird place indeed, according to David James Elliott, the tall, dark and clean-cut Canadian star of JAG who journeyed to southern California seeking international fame and fortune in 1989. Elliott was enticed to make the move from Toronto on the strength of an invitation from Disney to audition for a television role.
"I didn't get the project, but they liked my screen test and signed me to a three-month development deal," he said. "The Disney people said they were writing a show specifically for me. Then, when the script was finished, they told me I was too young to play the part. My first taste of Hollywood was very bizarre."
Although he had already established himself as an actor in Toronto under his birth name of David Elliott on the CBC series Street Legal (1985-88), he was forced to make a minor name alteration since the moniker was already taken by another Screen Actors Guild member. With the Mickey Mouse people out of the way, the lean and mean 6-foot-4-inch actor landed a guest shot on China Beach, immediately followed by a movie-of-the-week with Heather Locklear.
After the hot start, everything dried up for nine months. "I realized I had lost the whole reason I'd become an actor in the first place, started taking acting classes again and changed my perspective," Elliott, 35, said. Things fell into place at a fast clip for the chastened, dry and witty Elliott, with multiple guest-starring roles, a two-season co-starring stint on the syndicated series version of The Untouchables, occasional featured roles in telefilms and recurring parts on Knots Landing and Melrose Place.
In JAG, NBC's one-hour, action-adventure series, Elliott portrays Lt. Harmon Rabb Jr., a disgraced fighter pilot-turned-U.S. Navy lawyer assigned to the office of the Judge Advocate General (JAG in Navy parlance). Elliott is not tremendously interested in the future, having reached a dead end after careful planning once before. "I've learned to take one day at a time," he said, yawning, "and just hope that my first big break in the form of a network series leads to great success. If not, so be it.
