Julianna Margulies has been up since 4am, having just got off a flight from New York. So I'm expecting her to be a little unglued when we meet in an LA bistro, buzzing with cocktail-sipping, Prada-wearing hipsters. But as I enter the restaurant, I spot the 28-year-old actress standing at the bar, laughing. She's dressed in black, her trademark curls tucked inside a black beret. Holding a drink with one hand and gesturing with the other, she not only looks comfortable and relaxed, she's already made friends.

Julianna - who won an Emmy in 1995 for her role as ER's head nurse Carol Hathaway, and was nominated again last year - essentially created the role she's now so famous for. The original pilot for the show hardly featured Hathaway at all. In fact, the script had her trying to kill herself at the end of the first hour. 'She's in the pilot for maybe five minutes, floating through the hallways,' explains Julianna. 'But I had to get an idea of why someone like that would try to commit suicide.'

The answer came from Julianna's cousin who was a nurse and the head of a trauma centre in New York City. Under the intense strain of the job, she turned to prescription drugs, and when she couldn't face the addiction, she scribbled a devastating note to her husband before taking her own life. Julianna insisted on the scene in the pilot where Hathaway sneaks some drugs out of the hospital cabinet. 'All of a sudden Hathaway has left and she returns to the ER on a trolley. I wanted there to be some sort of connection between the last time you see her and the next time your see her,' Julianna explains.

While the phenomenal success of the show has brought fame to the exotic- looking actress (if you guessed her heritage is Eastern European, you're spot on), it's clear the series is just one part of a larger plan. She's soon to appear in the film Paradise Road with an A-list cast that includes Glenn Close and Frances McDormand. Next up is Traveller, in which she plays a native Texan opposite Bill Paxton. She'll follow that with the portrayal of a Hasidic Jew in the independent film A Price Below Rubies. She also recently won a coveted lead opposite hot and happening Matthew McConaughey in The Newton Boys. 'My plan is that when ER is done,' says Julianna, 'I have a resumé that speaks for itself - that I'm not typecast. I have a great day job. I can be picky about my feature film roles.'

By all accounts she's pulled this off already, having turned down silly parts like 'the girl' in the movie Liar Liar and focusing on roles that show off her range as an actress. Paradise Road, which tells the story of a group of women in a Singapore prison camp in WW2, is a case in point. 'There are always young actors who everyone predicts great success for, who then fade out,' says the film's director Bruce Beresford. 'The actors who are on firm ground are those who are sure of their own taste. Julianna's like that.'

If Julianna seems at ease travelling from set to set around the world, it's probably because that's how she spent most of her youth. Her father, an ad executive turned writer, and her mother, a ballerina, divorced when Julianna was one. She spent her childhood shuttling between New York, Paris and England. 'I never knew what country we were going to live in or who my friends would be that year,' she says. 'My sister was more like a mother figure. She would get my labels ironed on for camp, because my mom is the sweetest person in the world, but she's a free spirit. Organising a linen closet just wasn't first on her list of priorities.'

Her parents were devotees of the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, a nineteenth-century thinker who believed we come to know the soul through our own cognition and reflection. Steiner founded a revolutionary kind of education that concentrates on individual growth and places great emphasis on the arts. 'No matter what country I lived in, I was always in a Steiner school,' says Julianna. 'I was studying Faust when I was 14 years old, and always reading Shakespeare. There's a groundedness and sense of being that my Steiner friends all have. It's a very communal feeling.'

In 1985, Julianna enrolled in Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied art history and theatre. She moved to New York for her senior year to complete her studies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She worked in a diner at night and went to auditions during the day until she landed a recurring role on the critically acclaimed drama Homicide. In 1994, while visiting a friend in LA, Julianna auditioned and got the job on ER. Again, she relocated, this time to LA.

'When I came to LA, I felt very misplaced,' says Julianna. 'I didn't feel accepted by the cast at all, really, except George [Clooney]....

'I'd go back to my trailer and I'd feel like no-one liked me and I had to prove something. Finally, I said to myself: "You know what? The people who love and know you, they're all you have to worry about. Nurture those friendships. Nurture yourself, and the rest will come." And it did.'

No matter what else happens, we can be sure Julianna will continue to fight for roles she believes in. Like the evolution of Carol Hathaway. 'My first year was great. The second year, I just reacted to everyone else. So I said: "I won't keep doing this show unless you write for me. I have something to say and you're not using me."'

As most good girls know, standing up for yourself can be difficult. 'You know what's tough?' asks Julianna, 'To go in determined to be this sort of "businesswoman" and then stand up in tears. That's what's tough. And it sucks. Because a guy walks in there and states his case and they listen. And I get all emotional. And then I just walk out saying: "Oh, I just made my case weaker." But you know what? That's how I felt. And they listened.'

These days, it seems that Julianna's modus operandi is simple: to have compassion for herself and to nurture the relationships that matter, including many close girlfriends - "I feel sorry for women who don't love women," she says - and her long-term boyfriend, actor Ron Eldard, who for one season played Hathaway's boyfriend Shep on ER and now stars in the US version of Men Behaving Badly.

Whether she becomes an A-list movie star remains to be seen, but it's clear that Julianna will always be something more substantial: an actress. 'I had an interesting meeting with a big actor-director the other day,' says Julianna. 'It was going fine until he said: "Look, there's going to be full frontal nudity in this movie. How do you feel about it?" And I said: "I have no problem showing my body. If you show me a scene where it's absolutely imperative that this character be naked, I'll do it. But if you're looking for some tits and ass because your movie has too much guns, and you know, fightin' in it, you got the wrong girl." She laughs, 'And, of course, I walked out going: "I'll never get that part."'

With her talent and that attitude, she'll never need it.

Holly Sorensen : NEW WOMAN magazine
July 1997