When Lt. Cmdr. Harmon "Harm" Rabb and Major Sarah
"Mac" MacKenzie do battle on CBS's JAG (Tuesdays, 8 P.M./ET), their
enemies are the usual bad guys brought to justice with a legal one-two punch.
Off-camera, stars David James Elliott and Catherine Bell, who play the adventure
drama's sexy, smart military lawyers, face different adversaries to keep in
fighting trim.
"It's a challenge staying in shape on a series,"
says the 6-foot-4 Elliott during a break in his trailer on the JAG set,
35 miles north of Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Mountains. "We're working
12- to 14-hour days, so there's never enough time for a real workout, and
you've got to watch what you eat, because by hour 14 you're so tired you just
start slamming sugar," says the actor, a former high-school runner and longtime
fitness buff.
These days he's sworn off sugar and eats a diet
of lean protein, rice and vegetables. "Not even pasta or white bread," he
says with a sigh. "And I love bread, but I feel like a million bucks now."
Elliott and his equally lean and lanky costar Bell
could be advertisements for fit and healthy living. Bell, whose first major
role was as a mercenary in Dolph Lundgren's film "Men of War," even nailed
a Marine Corps fitness requirement during a recent visit to a military base:
a 70-second hang from a pull-up bar. "By 40 seconds my arms were shaking so
bad," she recalls with a laugh, "but I finished it. I mean, I was sore for
three days, but I could actually do it, so I think I'm pretty fit."
An understatement, to be sure. Both Elliott and
Bell approach their fitness regimes with a measure of discipline, commitment
and a healthy dose of common sense.
"As an actor I've been working out for years,
but being in Hollywood is a definite motivator," says the Toronto-born Elliott,
who started his career at Canada's prestigious Stratford Festival before relocating
to Los Angeles eight years ago. "It's tough to stay in peak fitness 100 percent
of the time," adds Elliott, who before JAG had guest stints on China
Beach; Doogie Howser, M.D.; Knots Landing; and most memorably
on Seinfeld, playing Carl, Elaine's moving-man boyfriend. "But I never
like to be more than a week and a half away from great shape."
Elliott's JAG shooting schedule is so demanding
that he works out whenever he has even a spare 15 minutes. He starts his day
"blasting off 50 push-ups" at the Brentwood home he shares with his wife,
Nanci Chambers, and their 5-year-old daughter, Stephanie.
Once he's on the set, he spends his downtime in
his trailer "doing some shoulder flies or whatever body part I'm working that
day," he says, nodding at a set of free weights he keeps in his trailer. "I
can even do calf raises on the steps in here." A lunch break or the rare scene
off will find Elliott hitting the weight machines or the treadmill in the
gym the producers recently installed on the JAG set. He ends each day
with 300 to 400 sit-ups to keep his super-flat abs military ready and is devoted
to pounding out an eight-mile run twice a week.
As for his diet, Elliott has tried different approaches.
"I was doing the Zone Diet for a while," he says, referring to Dr. Barry Sears's
controversial bestseller, which advocates a strict ratio of proteins to carbohydrates
and fat. "And that was great because it gave me a road map to eating." He
then hired a nutritionist to fine-tune his intake. "I just needed to keep
my energy going," he says, adding that he now starts the day with a vegetable
protein shake made with soy milk. After a mid-morning snack of fruit or one
of the protein bars he keeps socked away in his trailer's refrigerator, Elliott
has a lunch "of protein and vegetables or starch and vegetables but no pasta
and never protein and starch together," he says with a shake of his head.
Dinner "should be vegetables and some starch but not protein because it's
too hard to digest and also, ideally, you never want to eat after 8 o'clock."
"David is much stricter than I am," says Bell over
a dinner-size lunch of grilled chicken, potatoes, pasta and veggies. "I'm
a believer in moderation in all things," she adds, pointing out that she used
to haunt the gym two hours a day, five days a week. "Now, I actually work
out less," she says. "You don't have to kill yourself. I'll grab half
a donut once in a while, and I keep a bag of licorice in the refrigerator.
I never like to say 'Never.'"
Bell, who was born in London but raised in Los
Angeles, prefers a more relaxed approach to fitness, mixing up her diet/workout
regimen with lots of outdoor sports -- like snowboarding, mountain biking
or hiking -- near the Los Angeles home she shares with her husband, actor
Adam Beason. Although the 5-foot-9 Bell claims to have added a few pounds
to her 128-pound frame last year after her first season on JAG -- "you
couldn't really tell, but the skirts got tighter and they had to let them
out," she jokes -- the only things she tries to avoid are coffee and junk
food. "I find I can get through the day better if I have less of them." And
since she has worked with trainers for several years, she is "already used
to eating a lot of protein," such as the egg-white omelettes she has for breakfast
and the turkey sandwiches she grabs for dinner before heading home. "That's
the trick," she says, "to not eat too late."
Now, instead of hitting the gym five times a week,
she goes only once for an intensive workout with her personal trainer. Sometimes
the trainer will make her run up and down the bleachers at a nearby college
stadium; other times Bell takes a class in tae-bo, which is a combination
of martial arts and aerobics. "Anything that will push me harder," she says.
Unlike Elliott, she avoids the on-set gym: "The one time I ran on the treadmill,
they just had to redo my hair and makeup."
What the two stars do share is a passion for kickboxing.
Bell has trained for eight years, and Elliott recently started working out
with seven-time world karate champion Billy Blanks. "Kickboxing is the best
for legs and glutes," says Bell, dropping to the floor of her trailer to demonstrate
a few kicks. "It's also a great way to get out your aggressions -- just picture
the face of whomever on that bag and go at them! I loved to do it before going
out on auditions."
Kickboxing, in fact, forms the core of Elliott's
weekend workout. He and his wife attend a kickboxing class on Saturday mornings
while their daughter takes a karate class. "It's a demon workout," says Elliott,
who also has a blue belt in jujitsu. "It's aerobic, a great muscle workout
and it really engages your mind. The first time I tried it," he adds, "it
was so brutal I threw up afterward."
Sounds like something even an ex-naval pilot like
Elliott's JAG character Harm might find challenging. "No, Harm's in
better shape than I am because he has more free time," says Elliott with a
laugh. "But I'm paid more than he is."
