"I've always had this thing about being short, so to be perceived as tall is really thrilling." - Sarah Clarke about everybody believing she's taller than she really is
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CARLY: We did the pre-call. This is the post pre-call call? - "House"
Press
"Sarah Clarke finds intrigue, suspense on
'24'" (12/17/2001)
I first met Sarah Clarke in seventh grade when she was a
ponytailed student in St. Louis with a dimpled smile and an
infectious laugh. We went to junior high and high school
together.
by Mike Schneider
The rest of you met Clarke last month on the Fox television show,
"24," one of the most-hyped new shows of the season.
She plays Nina Myers, the sexy, computer-adept colleague of the
CIA counterterrorism agent played by Kiefer Sutherland.
TV Guide has called "24" the year's best new show. (It
airs Tuesday at 9 p.m. EST, with an encore Friday at 9 p.m., and
on cable's FX network Sunday and Monday.)
"I have to say I've had a dream situation," Clarke said
in a telephone interview. "To come out here with a great
show and a great role in it is really ideal and I couldn't feel
luckier."
Just last year she was temping for a lawyer and working at a
furniture store in New York to pay the bills.
Before "24," her biggest acting jobs had been in Kmart
and Volkswagen commercials and appearances on "Ed" and
"Sex in the City."
Clarke's middle name is Lively, and it was an apt description of
her in high school, where her zany sense of humor and unbridled
energy always threatened to spin out of control.
You could always hear her around the corner before you saw her.
She was always theatrical. Once, in a high school musical of
"Godspell," she had to slink off the stage while
singing. She spotted an assistant principal in the audience,
dropped into his lap, engulfed him with her feather boa and
rubbed his balding head in a mockingly seductive way. We all
admired her audacity.
In her "24" role, Clarke has had to tone down the
levity. Nina Myers is the chief of staff and former lover to
Sutherland's character, the married Jack Bauer. Nina never seems
to leave the office or see the light of day. "I think she
has compromised some things to get where she is, like family, and
made it so she could have a career first," Clarke said.
Clarke, the daughter of an engineer and a homemaker, wasn't
interested in acting when she studied Italian and fine arts at
Indiana University.
In her senior year, though, she studied in Bologna, Italy, where
she met an actor who became her best friend. They ended up
putting on a play in Italian.
"I didn't really get the bug until I went to Italy and I had
to acclimate to a new culture and let go of my identity as an
American," Clarke said. "It let me feel what it's like
to be in somebody else's shoes. It felt so liberating to be in a
place where nobody knew me and be in a place where I could
act."
Returning home to St. Louis after college, she worked as an
architectural photographer and took acting lessons for free in
exchange for shooting photos for a community arts center.
Finally, she decided that to get ahead in acting, she would move
to one of the coasts.
With plans to move to California, she traveled to New York to say
goodbye to friends. All it took was a day in the city and she
decided to stay there.
She lived for a while with some high school friends (including
Sara Switzer, who had a stint this summer as co-host of the
short-lived "Sandra Bernhardt Experience") and took
acting classes at Circle in the Square. Acting in two commercials
allowed her to pay the bills so she could do some experimental
theater and student films.
"24" proved to be her big break, and the past year has
been a whirlwind.
"From the writing in the show itself, I could tell it was
going to be great," Clarke said. "It's icing on the
cake when everyone agrees with you."
She made an audition tape for "24" last January and
didn't hear anything until March when she was flown out to Los
Angeles for an interview. She was hired, and filming for the
pilot began that afternoon. Fears of an actors' strike sped
everything up, so much so that the costuming department didn't
even have time to fit her for a shirt for the pilot.
"I ended up wearing my own shirt," Clarke said. "I
don't think anybody realized that if we used that shirt, we're
going to need 12 more of them."
That's because of the show's novel narrative structure. Each
episode represents an hour in Bauer's 24-hour day.
And what a day it is. Not only is Bauer contending with a
potential assassination attempt on a presidential candidate, but
he also faces a missing daughter, possible sabotage by his
colleagues and a bomb explosion on an airplane.
Sutherland "has been great from the beginning and
helpful," says Clarke, but she concedes it was intimidating
at first working with him.
He was, after all, a movie star while she was in high school.
