'Legally Blond' by Mark Schwed TV Guide Magazine December 29, 2001 Any young actress would may a plea for the role, the new assistant distric attorney who plays opposite two-time Oscar winnter Dianne Wiest and the Emmy-winning Sam Waterston on NBC's Law & Order, one of the most successful dramas in the history of television. So, how did Elisabeth Rohm pull it off and get the part? "This sounds weird," says executive producer and creator Dick Wolf, who chose Rohm. "But it was time to include a blond." Don't hate Wolf for sounding superficial. It's just that over 12 seasons, change has been very good for Law & Order (Wednesdays, 10 pm/et), and the last three assistant D.A.s-- Jill Hennessy, Carey Lowell and Angie Harmon-- have been brunettes. "It was time for a visual change," Wolf says. "And the first blond I thought of, frankly, was Lis Rohm." He had given the actress her big break in 1998, hiring her as the lead in a pilot called The Invisible Man, which never got off the ground. (Her other credits include playing a Wall Street capitalist on TNT's Bull and a role as a detective on WB's Angel.) "I think I hit the jackpot, darling," says Rohm, 28, beaming over a sushi lunch at an L.A. hangout during a break from L&O, which shoots in New York City. "It's great to be on a hit show." As if on cue, a man at the next table stands up, tells her how much he loves her, proposes marriage, and asks for an autograph. She grants one wish-- the autograph-- and signs the napkin. "I wish you all the things I wish for myself--Lis Rohm." "That's what Jack Dempsey used to sign," she says. As assistant D.A. Serena Southerly, Rohm has brought innocence and a youthful idealism back to L&O, the gritty show that has cops investigating crime in the first half hour and lawyers prosecuting it in the second. "I think my character is a lot like a young Jack McCoy," says Rohm, referring to Waterston's now-cynical executive assistant D.A. "Extremely passionate. Not afraid to speak her mind. She's so different from the other characters." Waterston agrees: "Every time a new person comes, they bring a new angle and a new kind of life to the thing." He says that Rohm came to the show with "a lot of fire and determination." Rohm gets passionate about many things, especially her work. She ahs great respect for criminal lawyers, she says, the only kind to be "if you want to sleep at night and feel good." Rohm has given much thought to her career; she even briefly flirted with the idea of becoming a criminal lawyer before she discovered acting. She knows what she wants to doand where she wants to be in two years, five years. She has a 'very long list' of things she hopes to accomplish. Her big goal: to be the next Steven Spielberg, writing and producing (plus acting in) her own projects. During this trip to L.A., she says, she has had a series of meetings with entertainment executives, including some at Imagine Entertainment, where she pitched a friend's movie script. In fact, she says, "I told NBC [Entertainment} president Jeff Xucker and he said, 'What do you mean you're taking meetings? On what?' I sayd, 'Don't worry. It's not for TV. [Zucker and Wolf] are so direct. They're such New Yorkers, like me." Actually, she was born in Dusseldorf, Germany, but her family moved back to New York City before she turned 1. She attended boarding school, then hit Miami at 17 to try modeling. "I got into a world of trouble, a world of nothing," she says. "I became a wild thing. I knew in my heart it was superficial." After six months, she was out of there, off to Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, initially to study writing before settling on a major in European history. (Her first novel, which is unpublished, is about a 21-year-old woman in 1911 Scotland whose husband commits suicide). It was there that she performed in a play and found her calling. Rohm's parents were wealthy but busy. Her German father, Eberhard, a corporate attorney, and her American mother, Lisa, who once wrote for the saop The Guiding Light, divorced when she was "8 or 9." "I didn't feel like my parents were really there for me," she says. Her father "wasn't around," and her mother "was very spiritual, so she was in her own world." As an only child, she has always found ways to amuse herself- such as riding horses, since the age of 5. She now owns a horse named Illustrious, and plans to start jumping. "If this gets published, I'll probably be told [by the network and producers] I can't do that," she says. "But Arnold Schwarzenegger still skis even though his contract says he can't. They don't have to be worried. If I fall, I'm not going to fall that far." There is one spill she wouldn't mind taking. "I do want to fall in love," says Rohm, adding that she has experienced unconditional love only once, just recently in fact, but it didn't work out. She says she's in no rush, but during an hour-long interview, the topic comes up half a dozen times. "It is my greatest fasicnation," she says. "I think, ultimately, why else are we here but to love? And I do want it to be perfect." Until then, she'll settle for prime time. This article is the intellectual property of TV Guide Magazine and its author. It is transcribed simply for fan purposes. No copyright infringement is intended. :: Back up ::       2008 Rohm with a View. Rohm with a View (lis-rohm.net) is an independent publication and is not endorsed by Elisabeth Rohm, her management or any related companies. Opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of Elisabeth Rohm or her management.