Starving for Attention

By Susan Spillman --
When Once and Again producers first approached Evan Rachel Wood about having her character, Jessie Sammler, develop an eating disorder, the young actress's heart sank. "All my life I've had people coming up to me and asking if I'm anorexic and saying, `God, you're so skinny,'" she recalls. "`God, look at your arm next to mine.'"

The 5-foot-2, 88-pound 13-year-old is taking a break in her trailer on the set of the ABC drama series, enjoying a turkey sandwich during an interview. "I shock all my friends," she says. "They're like, `You just inhaled a Whopper and you never gain an ounce.' They know I'm not trying to lose weight or anything." In fact, the athletic teen has a black belt in tae kwon do.

But in the end, "I just got excited about [the story line]," Wood says. "I was like, `What am I doing? This is going to be fun, really great episodes and really great work.'"

Jessie, Rick's (Billy Campbell) daughter, starts exhibiting early stages of anorexia nervosa in this week's Thanksgiving episode, though there have been hints of her problem since the season premiere. Both executive producers, Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, who makes his acting debut December 12 as Jessie's therapist, were eager to take on the topic.

"Ed and I have daughters," says Herskovitz (his are 17 and 13). "They haven't had the problem, but it's in their world. They open magazines, and I see the images portrayed to them. I think this is a terrible, terrible issue." Zwick, who has a 7-year-old daughter (and a son, 14), was equally disturbed, having heard stories from his sister, a therapist specializing in adolescents.

The subject matter also hits close to home for Susanna Thompson, who plays Jessie's mom, Karen. Shortly before filming began, she learned that a friend had suffered from an eating disorder. "I was surprised that she had dealt with it for years," Thompson says. "She's thin, but nothing that worried me."

For her part, Wood says she's never known anyone with the illness and is relying on her acting instincts, which she developed early. She and her brothers, Dana, 22, a musician, and Ira, 15, grew up hanging around - and sometimes performing at - the theater company their parents, Sara and David, ran in Raleigh, North Carolina.

At 5, she suffered her first professional disappointment, losing out to Kirsten Dunst in the final round of auditions for the child lead in the 1994 movie "Interview With the Vampire." But it was only a minor setback. Since moving to Los Angeles with her mom and brother Ira four years ago in the wake of her parents' divorce, Wood has built an impressive resume, with parts on Profiler, Touched by an Angel and several TV-movies, as well as the 1998 film "Practical Magic."

Now, Wood is shooting "Simone," a comedy in which she stars as Al Pacino's daughter. But juggling two roles isn't as tough as nailing that Thanksgiving scene on Once and Again. "It was awful," she says. "I couldn't eat the pumpkin pie with whipped cream. And I had to look like I didn't want any."__TV Guide (November 18 - 24, 2000)