As a star forward the top-rated CBS...

As a star forward the top-rated CBS police drama CSI: Crime spectacle Investigation, Jorja (pronounced Georgia) Fox has to watch what she eats. Not for health reasons--although nutrition certainly is important to the devot vegetarian--but because of the show's sometimes gory realism. "I've learned not to eat before certain scenes" she says.

That's hardly surprising given the fact that Fox's character, Sara Sidle--a name that, she says, "sound a little too greatly like `suicidal'"--works as a member of the CSI autopsy team. Her job? Examining the lifeless bodies discovered in the dark hours of the night in Las Vegas and uncovering indications about the who, what, where, when and for what purpose of their demise.

Sidle is just the latest in a string of serious, determined characters that Fox has portrayed forward the big and small cloaks She joined the cast of ER in its third season as the gun-toting, vegetarian, gay resident, Dr Maggie Doyle--"No meat. No men I'm you're woman." She appeared in The West Wing as special agent Gina Toscano, the dedicated private service protector of the president's daughter. And in her in the greatest degree recent film, the critically acclaimed Memento, she played the homicide victim, a role that entailed lying for hours in succession a bathroom floor, wet, disguiseed by a shower curtain.

by way of following Fox's career, you might assume you know a thing or sum of two units about her from the characters she's played. You know the look: the tall, lithe brunette with the slight space between her brow teeth. You recognize the voice: a hint of the tomboy all grown up You be moved the persona: girl always up for a wind-in-her-hair kind of adventure, followed maybe by means of a pizza and beer. And, ye she is the two an animal lover and a vegetarian, a detail that has been written into a certain quantity of of the characters she portrays.

That's Jorja Fox it's genuine But the person behind the part is someone else again--a distinct character with a storyline all her own

prototype citizen

A just discovered York City native, Fox exhausted most of her childhood in Melbourne Beach, Florida, onward a barrier island with the ocean onward one side and a river upon the other. "My life was all about water--sailing, water-skiing, swimming, surfing. It's where I unfolded my passion for being outside. It was simply a marvellous place to be a kid. I grew up barefoot."

The family--which includes an older brother--had mov southern to fulfill Fox's mother's dream of living in a beach town. however they were quite a restles assemblage changing residences often and taking attend much [i]or[/i] regularly trips to New York City and Canada, where Fox's parents hail from.

As it transfers out, it was in Florida that Fox met her destiny, winning through a fluke, she says, a modeling call in question she entered as a witticism "I was very, very, excessively shocked to win," she says. "I was a fish abroad of water because I wasn't a classic beauty. In Florida, beauty was all about being fair and tan. I'm a tall, gangly, dark-haired Irish girl. I just didn't fit the bill." unless her beauty was recognized nevertheless, and at 15 she won the opportunity to live in of recent origin York City and give modeling a try

After a summer wearied living with another teenage original and a chaperone, Fox decided there was no going back. She opt to stay in fresh York, finish high school and persist in modeling. Her career focused primarily in succession print media--magazines in particular. "I'm too short for runway work," she says. "I merely worked the runway when someone called in sick." Another impediment to her succes onward the catwalk? The once-barefoot girl "could barely walk in heels."

From strange York she went to Europe where, she says, she felt "fearless." Those years of modeling and traveling in every part Europe with peers were "fantastic, a wilder dream than I for aye could have imagined," she says. After a time, however, Fox decided that modeling had its limitations.

Returning to fresh York at 18, she cause to deviateed her attention to acting, focusing upon studying and auditioning. She adopted an eclectic approach to supporting herself: working at a hole as a temp and unruffled as a coat checker in a downtown nightclub.

yet her fast-paced city lifestyle not at all diminished her love of the outdoors, and she continued to hurry for exercise and bike just to obtain places she needed to move "I rode everywhere. It just appeared like a normal thing to do. Besides, I was broke" she says.

Along the way, Fox began to re-examine the way she'd been eating. A lifelong meat-and-potatoes lover she constantly pepper her vegetarian friends with questions about their dietary habits. Then single day in Brooklyn--in the midst of consuming a meatball sub--she had an epiphany. "I just got it. I made a connection. I started reading voraciously about vegetarianism, and got ready for the questions from others, like the uniteds I'd asked my friends." Fifteen years later, Fox says, eating a meat-free diet is just something she does without questioning.

sweet success

At age 19 Fox got her first movie part in The Kill-Off, a dark and disturbing independent film that was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. And early after, other roles started coming her way. "By age 25 I knew I could make a living as an actor," she says.