
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, August 13, 1994                   TAG: 9408160022
SECTION: SPECTATOR                    PAGE: S-17   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By CHRISTY SLEWINSKI NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Medium

`GRACE UNDER FIRE' CO-STAR IS MORE USED TO THEATER CROWD

Julie White is accustomed to being stopped on the street by strangers who have seen and enjoyed her work.

Ironically, White, co-star of the ABC sitcom "Grace Under Fire" (Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. on WSET-Channel 13), is better known locally for her work on the stage.

"I've been stopped more for doing a show in a 104-seat house than for a show that's seen by about 30 million people a week," says White, who starred this summer in "The Family of Mann" while on hiatus from the TV series. The off-Broadway production closed two weeks ago.

But White, a theater veteran whose credits include Broadway's "The Heidi Chronicles," with Mary McDonnell, and off-Broadway's "Spike Heels," with Kevin Bacon and Tony Goldwyn, wasn't disappointed. The main focus of her work is now on the West Coast, where she relocated last year after landing the role of Grace Kelly's next-door neighbor, Nadine Swoboda.

And her first taste of series television left a lasting impression. "It's goofy," she says with a hint of Texas drawl.

Acting for the cameras and a TV audience is one thing, says White. Taping in front of a live studio audience is something else. "There are all these people watching everything on these great big monitors - not the actors in front of them - but the monitors," she says.

Before joining the cast of "Grace Under Fire," White's only other TV gig was NBC's "Law & Order." "I did `Law & Order,' like every other actor in New York," she says with a giggle. "You just show up at the location, they shoot it, and then they take off. And there you are, just standing there."

A semi-professional actress at age 17, she left Austin, Texas, and came to New York, where she studied history at Fordham University. While there, she kept one foot on the stage, progressing from regional theater to Broadway.

White, a single mother to a 7-year-old daughter, Alexandra, says she relates to the primary plot of "Grace Under Fire," which revolves around a single mother (Grace, played by Brett Butler) struggling to support her family. "I know how tough it can be," she offers.

But she also points out that the show has another major theme: the importance of friendship.

"Grace and Nadine are really close, supportive women friends that aren't caricatures," says White. "We're sort of the '90s Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda, but we're sort of the white-trash version, I guess."

And, in this show, it's friendship that holds things together.

"In my experience, the men disappear, but your girlfriends stick by you."

by CNB