Biography | Filmography | Portraits | InThePress | RedCarpet | PersonalApperances | DJEfansCare | DJEEncounters

A Quantum Leap

David James Elliott hopes to follow in the footsteps of Tom Selleck, 
and JAG may be just the series to help him do it

By Glenn Esterly, TV Guide (Canada), Sept. 30, 1995

Hey, there's not too much pressure on David James Elliott. Consider this:

All NBC is asking the star of JAG to do is steal a Saturday night audience from Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman.

All JAG creator Don Bellisario is predicting is that Elliott will become a household name like his previous television superstars, Tom Selleck (Magnum, P.I.) and Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap).

And all that North America's TV writers are predicting is that Elliott will be "the season's new hunk."

In an example of what Bellisario calls "that Canadian polite reserve that Americans frequently mistake as standoffishness," Elliott is downplaying all the buzz. "Thank God all of the people saying those things don't see me first thing in the morning when I get out of bed," he says. "It's not pretty."

But speaking three weeks before the series debut, even this modest 35-year-old from Milton, Ont., had to acknowledge that his role as a dashing navy lawyer has people talking. "I'm already getting recognized more in public for NBC's promos for JAG than for a couple seasons of [syndicated series] The Untouchables or for four episodes of Melrose Place," he admits.

"How do you respond? There's no celebrity start-up school. I don't know how to get ready for it, if it does come. I don't think about being as big as Magnum. I couldn't function if I did. I'd cave in. I'd like to have half the success of Magnum."

But he has already seen a tide rolling in. "I was in New York to do promos for the launch of the season, and somehow all these people are waiting outside for autographs. How did they know? It was very weird because they were in my face. They were pushy.

"You know," adds Elliott, who was a regular on CBC's Street Legal from '85 to '89, "people in Canada would never do that kind of thing. They might approach you for an autograph, but it would be much more subtle."

Of course, Street Legal was a bit more subtle than JAG. Now Elliott's portraying a navy Judge Advocate General lawyer in a series that plays more like "Top Gun" than a courtroom drama. There are lots of big ships, roaring jet fighters and cameos from high profile political types like Oliver North. And it's exactly why Elliott came to Hollywood five years ago. "When I was just getting started in acting, just beginning to learn, I'd watch Magnum and see Tom Selleck doing his Magnumisms, and I'd watch the credits: Don Bellisario, executive producer.'

"At the time, I thought - and I couldn't make this up - 'Oh, it must be great to work for a producer like that.' There was always some funny business going on within the drama. There was always humor written into the show. Now, here I am, all this time later, and I've got this guy in my corner. It's a dream."

Bellisario is equally complimentary. "I believe that JAG will be just as big as those two shows," says the former U.S. Marine behind Magnum and Quantum Leap, "and I'll wager that David, who is in the same nice guy mold, will be just as big a star."

The star-making role is Lt. Harmon Rabb Jr., a navy officer who became a lawyer when a night vision problem ended his career as a pilot. Despite the legal background, Elliott insists that "the show isn't L.A. Law in the navy. There aren't many courtroom scenes. The navy forbids interference with an official JAG case, but not everybody plays by the rules, so that opens up Harm and his partner [Tracey Needham of Life Goes On] to investigate all sorts of sensitive navy business, from murder to manslaughter to kidnapping and criminal negligence."

Rabb also grapples with a lot more than military investigation and Elliott has the bruises to prove it. "We were out in the desert last week doing chase scenes and I almost broke my hand. It was 110 degrees out there and we're running around, sweating like crazy. No one should underestimate the action quotient that goes into the series."

That Elliott has turned up in a high profile American series was no shock to the executive producer who gave him the breakthrough role as cop Nick Delgado on Street Legal. "I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner," says Brenda Greenberg, who had a Street Legal spinoff in mind for Elliott before he headed south. "He has star quality - the looks and he can act."

Growing up, Elliott says he had no idea what he wanted to do for a living until his final year of high school. "One day we were reading "King Lear" out loud and the teacher said, 'You should be an actor.' I figured I'd audition for the best, and if I got in, I'd go for it; if not, I'd go on to something else."

Elliott's idea of "the best" was Ryerson Polytechnic Institute in Toronto. "It was like out of 800 people, they picked 30 and I got in despite the fact I'd never even seen a play. I didn't have a clue. To audition, we had to do a three-minute modern piece, a three-minute period piece and sing a song. I forgot my classical piece, so I sang "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" and kind of faked my way through a scene from Sam Shepard. Then I started inventing dialogue, and they saw some raw talent in that. A lot of people who came in with experience doing plays in high school had a lot of bad habits, and in me they saw some talent they could nurture. It was a miracle."

After he graduated in 1983, Elliott was accepted at Ontario's Stratford Shakespearean Festival, where he received the Jean Chalmers Award for most promising actor. Two years later, Greenberg recalls, "We were looking for a hunk, quite honestly, to play a young cop for our lead actress [Sonja Smits] to get involved with. I'd seen David in a play called "B Movie", a wacky play and thought, 'He looks terrific, he seems to be able to handle lines, let's audition him.' He was untried talent, which was a little scary, but it was very interesting to watch him grow into the part and we kept giving him more to do."

"He wasn't developed at all when he arrived on Street Legal," says Smits. "but he was very tall [6-foot-4] and very charming. I remember polling the crew I worked with regularly then about which screen test they thought was best, and they all went, 'The tall one.' They were right. Who needed casting people?" Smits believes Elliott's natural charm involves "guilelesssness. He's not a down home, 'Hi, golly, gee' guy, but he's accessible as an actor. He's not a jaded young man who's kind of seen it, done it, been there."

Smits urged Elliott to take his shot in Hollywood, and he went through the usual ups and downs. "Disney signed me to a development deal and had a TV show pilot written for me, but then told me I was too young for the part," says Elliott. "It struck me as bizarre."

After moving to California in '90, he did guest appearances on such shows as China Beach and Doogie Howser, M.D. During the last season of Knots Landing, he did four episodes opposite Nicollette Sheridan. "Then I hit a dry spell. I didn't work for a while, and I needed to get my focus back. So my wife [actress Nanci Chambers] and I went to the Bahamas for six weeks and just relaxed. I kept thinking about what I might be doing wrong, and I decided it was worrying about getting the job as opposed to loving acting. When I came back, I looked at auditions as an opportunity to do the work instead of pleasing some strangers. Things started happening for me right at that point."

One was playing Terry Parsons, Courtney Thorne-Smith's drug-addict boyfriend on Melrose Place. "Fans of the show used to ask me if I was on my way to an AA meeting," recalls Elliott, laughing.

When he landed a role on The Untouchables as Paul Robbins, people in the industry told him he was set for life, "but not many people saw that show. We did 42 shows and had a lot of fun, but people just didn't watch." Still, it made Elliott and his wife feel secure enough to have a two-year-old daughter.

Last season, he was astonished at how much attention he got for one episode of Seinfeld as Elaine's blue-collar, moving guy boyfriend. "My agent said, 'My phone hasn't stopped ringing since that show.' People were saying, 'I didn't know he could do comedy.' It opened doors."

Now he hopes to inject more "Magnumisms" - what he calls "niggly-piggly things," physical bits of comedic business - into JAG. "Selleck did little things that made the difference between a hep TV show and a routine drama, and I'm talking to Don [Bellisario] about getting more of that into the show."

In the meantime, "the season's new hunk" is learning what every star of every hourlong series has found out.

"What's frustrating is you'll have some moments of brilliance, but sometimes you see a scene with such great potential and you don't have time for it to get it just right and you have to let it go. You move on."