Young star thinks acting in the genes

BYLINE: David Martindale --
Is it possible to have an acting bug encrypted into one's DNA?

That's a notion Evan Rachel Wood of "Once and Again" finds rather appealing. Because, if so, she could simply credit genetics for her early and ongoing success in show business. If so, she doesn't have to acknowledge that, at age 13, there's something special, something unique about her. "I don't think I'm really very different from anybody else," she likes to say. "I'm a person like everybody else and I just happen to have a nice job."

Maybe so, but how many kid actors can work in a drama as acclaimed as "Once and Again" (now at 10 p.m. Wednesdays on ABC, beginning tonight) and practically steal the show? That's what Wood, who plays Jessie Sammler, a child of divorce, has done this season, particularly during a story line involving her character's eating disorder.

As USA Today critic Robert Bianco wrote earlier this season, "You don't expect such conviction and nuance from one so young."

Wood says it's nice to get compliments like that, but she refuses to let them affect her. When she was younger, she says, it honestly never occurred to her that she was different from other kids.

And now, even though she has a long list of film, TV and stage credits to her name, Wood still chooses to dismiss the suggestion that she's more gifted, more driven than others her age. To her way of thinking, she merely found what she was good at while still very young.

"I have been acting since before I learned to walk," Wood explains. "I was born into it. My dad runs a theater in North Carolina. So I grew up around acting and watching my parents in plays and working in the theater. "When I found out that other kids don't act, I was like, 'What? You don't act?' I just assumed it's something everybody does."

Before landing the role of Billy Campbell's daughter in "Once and Again," Wood appeared in such feature films as "Practical Magic" and "Detour" and such TV series as "Profiler," "Touched by an Angel" and "American Gothic." On stage, she did "The Miracle Worker" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and a three-year tour with "A Christmas Carol."

"When I'm having a bad day or something, I just sort of think, 'You know, a lot of people would kill to be doing what I do,'" she says. "And that reminds me to be glad with what I have.

"I mean, like I have this little film clip of me, when I was really little, doing a pretend interview for the camera. I was like, 'Oh, yes, and I have a new movie coming out.' And it was so cute! When I saw myself doing that, I was like, 'Oh, my God, I've always known.' It was very funny."

"Once and Again" is Wood's first TV series as a regular week-in-and-week-out cast member.

Although her character's parents have been divorced for four years, Jessie still hasn't come to terms with the breakup. Wood's parents split up when she was 9, so she can sort of relate to that. But while her character is almost painfully shy, the actress is bubbly and outgoing and loves to give interviews.

When Wood was asked to tackle the demanding anorexia story line, she succeeded by trusting her instincts.

"I never knew anybody who had the disease," she notes. "I never had it. But I had to put myself in that place. I had to say, 'Well, how would I feel if this were happening to me?' If you think about it, that's really all acting is."__San Antonia Express-News (January 9, 2001)