Non-MX Interviews: Lauren Lee Smith (12/08 CBS Photoshoot)
Excerpts from CBS Watch Magazine 12/08: Lauren Lee Smith

Glam Squad

CBS’ Most stunning crime fighters—Lauren Lee Smith of CSI, Cote De Pablo of NCIS and Eva La Rue of CSI: Miami—Trade their badges for a day in the California sun.

They hunt down stray hairs and other crime scene clues. They dissect dead bodies. Sometimes, they even rough up rogue gunmen. And all the while, they look darn good.
These are the lady crime fighters of CBS.

With beauty as their special weapon, Cote de Pablo, Lauren Lee Smith and Eva La Rue can stun any adversary into submission—and us viewers as well. At our photo shoot in Laguna Beach, Calif., Watch! asked these stars from NCIS, CSI and CSI: Miami, respectively, to trade in their firearms for mascara wands. Effectively disarmed, the three sirens of the small screen revealed the secrets behind their pulchritudinous power.

LAUREN LEE SMITH

For Lauren Lee Smith, the fresh-faced actress behind CSI’s newest investigator Riley Adams, a high-style photo shoot can be a welcome change. “All of us every day go to work and we’re tough chicks,” she says of the characters she, La Rue and de Pablo inhabit from week to week. “So it was such a treat to get to wear these beautiful dresses, these phenomenal shoes, and get made up. It was really fun to get to let the inner girliness come out.”

Of course, for a jeans-and-T-shirts gal like Smith, the wired false eyelashes she wore here for Watch! were foreign, exotic—and more than a little scary. “I really don’t wear a lot of makeup; I like to be comfy,” Smith admits. “And these lashes were like 3 inches long. It was a little bit intimidating because they took about 25 minutes to get onto my eyes. And then I was afraid,” she adds, laughing, “that I wasn’t going to be able to open them.”

It’s unusual for the 28-year-old Canadian actress, who credits her laid-back outlook to her wandering, international upbringing by self-described “hippie” parents, to spend time thinking about such small, cosmetic details. “I’m pretty comfortable in my skin,” she avows. “We all have our flaws. That’s what hair and makeup and wardrobe are for, to create this sort of illusion of perfection. But in reality, we all get pimples. We all have fat days. I think you have to embrace that stuff.”

The tall, slim blonde maintains her confidence (and her good looks) quite casually. She doesn’t plan an exercise regimen, but just naturally loves to run. And she doesn’t stress out about diet either, indulging in hamburgers and pizza about as often as she opts for brown rice and veggies, a meal she grew up with thanks to her vegetarian mom. “Like everything in life, it’s all about balance,” she says.

After her high school years spent performing Shakespeare at a local theater in Los Angeles, Smith curiously left Hollywood and moved back to her native Vancouver to start an acting career. The strategy worked; she was soon appearing in a wide range of Canadian-produced TV series and films. And with each role, the chameleon-like actress has sported a different look. “For every major project, I try to change as much as possible. I’m surprised that I actually have hair on my head right now, because it’s been every color of the rainbow,” the actress says. “For me, the one thing that always bothers me when I watch actors is if they always look the same, then I identify them as that one character. So I think I’ve been quite lucky in that a lot of times, people will say, ‘That was you?!’ I love it when I hear that. Because I think it’s part of the character to look as different from Lauren as possible.”

But when it came to creating CSI’s Riley Adams, who debuted last fall in this season’s third episode, Smith decided to imbue the character with many of her own real, casual traits. Like Smith, Riley is “a confident girl, and a tomboy. She’s a wash-and-go kind of gal, who wants to be accepted as one of the guys.” In fact, the actress has no problem even playing down her own natural, glowing good looks in service of her role as a junior investigator often called upon to sift through the muck and mire of a crime scene. “I love to play it the grungiest, the dirtiest, and the most minimal,” she stresses. “Putting aside my vanity helps me feel like the character.”

In researching her role, Smith says, she met with a Las Vegas CSI Level 2 who showed up in camo cargoes and a T-shirt, sans makeup, “and she looked amazing.” After all, for the real team, there’s no time to reapply one’s lipstick. “They get a call in the middle of the night, and they have to go.”

Of course, this being network television, home of the pretty people, the actress does understand that Riley may sometimes have to end up smudging a bit of unlikely eyeliner as she peers into a lab tech’s microscope. “It’s a bit of a compromise,” she admits. Both on screen as Riley and in her own personal life, chasing after her two black Lab puppies in the park with her fiancé, “I would love always to wear a messy ponytail.” But it’s the high-glam days like this one, at the Watch! photo shoot, where Smith says she realizes, “after all, sometimes it’s kind of pretty to let your hair down.”

LAUREN LEE SMITH Rouge silk taffeta dress ($1,750) by Kevan Hall (kevanhalldesigns.com). Pink “Carnaval” pump ($1,665) by Christian Louboutin (christianlouboutin.com); 18k white gold diamond starburst earrings by Black, Starr & Frost (blackstarrandfrost.com).
SMITH Green silk keyhole dress ($840) by Terexov (terexov.com). Snakeskin peep-toe platform sandal (price on request) by Giuseppe Zanotti Design, Giuseppe Zanotti Design Boutiques (www.giuseppe-zanotti-design.com). 18k white gold turquoise and diamond necklace and drop earrings by Black, Starr & Frost (blackstarrandfrost.com).
SMITH Pleated halter swim dress ($186) by Juicy Couture (bloomingdales.com). Nude “Vidar” platform sandal ($335) by Theory (piperlime.com). Earrings, vintage Larry Vrba for Miriam Haskell (miriamhaskell.com).

©CBS Watch Magazine