Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 13, 1994 TAG: 9408160023
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BETH SHERMAN NEWSDAY
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
But recently she had a first - The Great Napkin Shot.
Lying on her stomach on a banquet table in Manhattan's Rhiga Royal hotel, Travis is surrounded by a sea of white linen napkins, scrunched up to look like sumptuous draperies. She tosses her straw gold hair, flashes her almond eyes and strikes a pose - the coquette, with a sultry pout.
The camera flashes. New pose.
The imperious cover girl.
Flash.
The lost, tousled goddess.
The table is digging into her hip bones, but Travis gamely shoulders on, showing off gorgeous cheekbones, bee-stung lips, with each new shot.
"Now, you see," Travis says, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "This is such fun!"
Be it irony or karma, despite her disdain for modeling, the world's most superficial profession is exactly what helped Travis land the plum role of bad girl Julie Dante on Aaron Spelling's new hot-bod Fox series, "Models Inc.," which airs Wednesday nights (at 9 on WJPR/WFXR-Channel 21/27).
"I don't think I'm very beautiful, and that's probably why I didn't have a feel for modeling," says Travis, who is 24 and only 5-foot-7. "Just imagine what it's like to rely solely on your looks all the time."
Watching "Models Inc.," we don't have to imagine. The show, featuring Linda Gray as the head of an up-and-coming agency, showcases young lovelies trying to become the next Cindy Crawford or Kate Moss. Travis, and her castmates, many of them former models, scamper, strut and sleep their way to fame, in between vogueing on fashion runways and primping for magazine covers. In the first few episodes alone, Travis' character, Julie, has slept with her roommate's boyfriend, slept with a photographer to advance her career, resorted to blackmail to get a job, attempted to sabotage another model's career and broken up a wedding just as the "I do's" were about to be uttered.
As the show's main vixen, Travis has her work cut out for her. Depending on how successful "Models" is, she can either follow in the high heels of Joan Collins and Heather Locklear, becoming the latest star in Spelling's don't-hate-me-because-I'm-beautiful realm, or return to being one of thousands of gorgeous women trolling Hollywood for film and TV projects.
(Before "Models," Travis' screen credits consisted of small roles on an episode of the syndicated show "Renegade" and a straight-to-video film called "Eyes of the Beholder.")
So far, Travis seems to be handling the pressure fairly well.
"I'm having a blast playing Julie," she says, "although I sometimes look at the show and think, `My God, I'm really mean.' "
Unlike Julie, however, she is fairly reticent about her personal life and her personal thoughts. On her boyfriend: "I'm very much in love with someone, but he's no one anyone but me would care about." On the negative press the show has received (it's been called "Models Stink" and "Models Sink"): "As long as people are writing about you, that's good."
Travis grew up in Kalgoorlie, Australia, a mining town on the edge of the desert, where the one television station went on for a few hours at a time and then shut off. "We had to amuse ourselves," she recalls. ``A big day was going to the slag heaps, these huge mountains of silt, and careening down them on pieces of tin. Afterward, we were so dirty we had to be hosed off."
Her father, a gold prospector and "mad scientist," used to take Travis and her sisters on survival jaunts in the woods. "He would give us compasses, teach us how to locate water, what berries to eat, and let us find our way back to camp," she remembers. "We always did."
Her modeling career started by accident, when she was 14, after the family moved to Perth, in Western Australia. "I was walking down the street and I knocked over this guy's little kid." He turned out to be the owner of Jeans West and he plastered Travis' dungaree-covered fanny all over Australia - Down Under's answer to Brooke and Calvin. That, in turn, led to commercials, and ultimately her contract with Ford.
by CNB