Catherine said that the most memorable thing that she will forever remember was answering the phone call that she had gotten JAG. "This huge life-changing moment of going from zero to ninety in two seconds!"
After she started working fulltime on "JAG," she said, "I don't have much of a personal life anymore. I miss having free time to just relax. Getting recognized is fun, and so far it hasn't gotten overwhelming. Learning to live with less sleep, and less of the fun things I like to do has been part of the change."
Born in London to an Iranian mother and Scottish father, Catherine grew up speaking both English and Farsi, the language of her mid-Eastern grandparents. At age 3 her parents divorced and she moved to southern California with her mother.
As a student she excelled in math and biology and seemed destined for a career in the medical field, but she yearned to act.
"I always thought it would be cool to be an actress," she told the website www.sheknows.com. "I didn't think I could actually do it."
Classic TV Beauties 1990s Countdown
CATHERINE BELL as Sarah "Mac" MacKenzie in "JAG"
No Marine colonel has ever looked so stunningly beautiful. With her mystic brown eyes, perky short hair, and exotic looks -- she's half Iranian, half Scottish --Catherine captured our attention playing "Mac," the tough, straight shooting Naval attorney.
While she wore a military uniform much of the time, Catherine occasionally showed off her bikini body, and after she joined "JAG" in Season 2 and her role expanded, the show's ratings dramatically improved. "Mac" was fluent in Russian and Persian and she strongly resembled another woman from Season 1: Lieutenant Diane Schonke...a character also played by Catherine..
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Catherine recalled watching "The Wizard of Oz" as a child and dreaming about playing Judy Garland's Dorothy.
"I thought it would be incredibly cool to take someone on an adventure like that," she said. "It was an all out effort to better express myself. To express characters that are so different than me and what it means to entertain people and inspire and encourage them."
She attended UCLA intent on becoming a doctor or a bio-medical engineer but she became bored with school and left college for a modeling job in Japan.
While in Japan, the anorexia and bulimia of other models began to rub off on her. Catherine said "People were showing you how to throw up. You're taking diet pills. Everyone's partying, so you start drinking a lot, and drugs. A couple of years messed me up for a while."
“During the height of "JAG" Catherine appeared on the cover of FHM magazine wearing a fatigue-patterned swimsuit, and her popularity spiked. "I became more famous, like, the week after it came out. Walking around the street was like ten times the recognition. It was very interesting."
Two years after "JAG," Catherine landed a plum role in "Army Wives," another military-based TV show, on Lifetime.
"I was looking for something every different from what I had just spent nine years doing with JAG," she said in an interview on www.collider.com in 2011. "It's a military theme, so people think I'm doing something similiar, but actually they couldn't be further from each other."
Catherine plays Denise Sherwood, a shy and devoted housewife and mother whose husband, Major Frank Sherwood, is frequently deployed overseas. During the first season, the Chicago Tribune praised Catherine for using "her typical subtlety and grace to give an intriguing interior life" to her character.
After returning to the USA, Catherine continued modeling and decided not to return to school.
"My heart wasn't really into it," she said. "I had a creative side, as well as a scientific/mathematical side and the arts won out."
She was too shy to act so she took acting classes at The Beverly Hills Playhouse to better express herself.
When movie producers discovered a photo of Catherine's exposed derriere, she was hired as Isabella Rossellini's nude body for the 1992 film "Death Becomes Her."
Before landing on "JAG," Catherine appeared in numerous sitcoms in the 1990s, including "Dream On," "Friends," and "Sin City Spectacular."
"JAG," often described as a cross between "A Few Good Men" and "Top Gun," aired for 10 seasons after it got off to a rocky ratings start. NBC canceled the show after the first season when it finished No. 79. CBS picked up the series and it consistently rated in the Top 30 for more than six seasons.
"JAG," the acronym for Judge Advocate General, concluded when Elliott decided he didn't want to continue the show. The series produced "NCIS," a spinoff that became even more popular than the original.
"She's constantly evolving, always going through stuff," Catherine said of Denise. "She's got a good balance. I think she's doing what we all do, when we're juggling work and family and whatever else.
"Just becoming a woman who has learned her strength, over the years, was definitely appealing to me. I knew she wasn't going to stay meek.... so it was nice to go through that journey with her and watch her mature and grow up."
Catherine has also gained fame starring in the Hallmark Channel's series of TV films "The Good Witch." Catherine plays Cassandra Nightingale, a mystic woman who moves into a haunted house in a small town. Her new neighbors wonder if she is a witch because she brings magical changes to the people she meets.
The original premiered in January 2008 as the second-highest-rated original movie at that time, and so far four "Good Witch" films have aired, and at least two more are in the works.
She also earned praise for playing special FBI Agent Ana Gray in TNT's "Good Morning, Killer."
"I'd never played an FBI agent and I found it fascinating just trying to get into the head of a kidnapper, a rapist, and track this guy," she said on www.mediamikes.com in 2011.
Catherine said Ana is "not the perfect woman by any means. She's very smart, very good at her job, every much in control there. But not very much in control in her personal life, picks very bad relationships. She definitely has some isues, which I found as an actress really fun to play."
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Lt. Schonke was murdered in the first season's finale, but the producers were so impressed with Catherine that they created a new character, "Mac," whom she played for nine seasons (1997-2005).
"It was a very unusual experience. I loved it though!" Catherine said of her playing two roles on JAG. "I couldn't have been more thrilled that I was killed off in one episode and brought back as a series regular in the next."
Catherine said her chemistry with David James Elliott, who played Captain Harmon "Harm" Rabb, the lead character, improved her chances of earning her role.
"We met and we really hit it off and when we worked together we had a blast," she told the website www.about.com. "One of the days when I was working, he announced that the show had been canceled, but CBS picked up the show and decided to recast the female lead.
"I went after the role and wrote Don Bellisario [the creator] a letter... and they brought me in. Six callbacks later, I got the role.".
