Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 16, 1994 TAG: 9404160083
SECTION: TV/RADIO PAGE: SPECTATOR 14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SUSAN KING LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD LENGTH: Medium
"Every once in a while, I need to have my fix," says the 25-year-old former model. "I think it's mainly when I need inspiration I look at the old pictures. I don't find it as much in the new stuff. I love Carole Lombard. I think she's wonderful. Gloria Grahame was really great. Garbo. Dietrich. People knew how to create an illusion. Now everything is very realistic and straightforward. Everyone's grunge."
But not the blond Rutherford. In fact, there's something very retro about the actress. And Hollywood has picked up on that style. For two seasons, she was all Lauren Bacall allure as bartender Judy Owen on ABC's "Homefront." This season, she's a sassy combination of Marlene Dietrich and Mae West as saloon singer Dixie Cousins on Fox's western-comedy "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr."
"She's definitely a cross between Marlene Dietrich and Lauren Bacall," offers Bruce Campbell, who plays Dixie's flame, Brisco County. "I saw a head shot of her that was done in the 1940s' style and she easily could have been a studio starlet under contract for Warner Bros. And she kind of is."
The series' co-executive producer and creator Carlton Cuse agrees with Campbell. " `Homefront,' in a way, was an ideal showcase for that, because she really does seem like a movie star out of another era," he says. "She has that grace and old-fashioned kind of dignity about herself that very much reminds me of Bette Davis, with a certain kind of spiciness of Mae West."
When she landed the recurring role of Dixie, Rutherford watched numerous Dietrich and West flicks. "You know who I really loved was Madeline Kahn in `Blazing Saddles,' " says Rutherford over breakfast recently.
"She was a huge inspiration. She really helped me get this off-the-cuff thing which I think is part of Dixie. I think there are so few characters like that written now, who you can just play up. `Homefront' was the same thing for me. It was set in the '40s and you can get away with being Lauren Bacall."
Rutherford made seven episodes of "Brisco" this season - her last one airs April 22 - while simultaneously filming the Touchstone Pictures summer release "I Love Trouble." This time around, Rutherford plays a contemporary woman - a lab technician whom Chicago newspaper reporters Nick Nolte and Julia Roberts befriend to obtain information.
"One week I'm a modern woman seducing Nick Nolte and the next moment, I'm in the late 1800s seducing Bruce Campbell," sighs Rutherford, who will also appear in "Cyclops, Baby . . . ," a short film for Buena Vista Pictures.
Rutherford says she wasn't nervous reading for her part with Nolte. "I always look at those things as fun," Rutherford says. "Here's an actor whom I admire, who is obviously one of the sexiest men alive, and the history you have going in reading with someone like that. My audition wasn't difficult. I was just reacting to him." She erupts into laughter. "It's a tough job."
Rutherford, who grew up in New York and Los Angeles, left home at 17 to study acting in New York. "I don't know what quite got me into acting," she says. "I always loved movies. My mom brought me to movies as a kid."
To make ends meet in New York, she did commercials and modeled. "I preferred doing commercials," Rutherford says. "I loved modeling, but it wasn't my personality."
She got her big break doing a small scene on the ABC daytime drama "Loving," opposite a pre-"Beverly Hills 90210" Luke Perry. Eventually, Rutherford left New York and moved back to Los Angeles.
by CNB