Magnetic personalities

BYLINE: Eric Deggans -- Some actors have it; most don't. It's that mysterious charisma that draws us into their world and keeps us coming back for more.

First, understand this: It's not about looks.

It's not about having the perfect body, sculpted by exercise or the surgeon's laser. It's not about an accident of birth that bestows blue eyes or chiseled cheeks, though that can help.

It's about charisma. Magnetism. That unspoken force that reaches through the TV, movie screen or theater house and connects us to our favorite performers, making their triumphs our heaven and their setbacks our hell.

With nominations for the 1999-2000 Emmys to be announced Thursday, I've been thinking a lot about magnetism - who has it and who doesn't.

Audrey Hepburn had it. Jennifer Love Hewitt, who was dumb enough to try re-creating that long-ago mystique in a TV movie, doesn't.

Marlon Brando, svelte and powerful in A Streetcar Named Desire, lumpy and wizened in The Godfather, always had it. Jackie Gleason practically embodied it, even while hosting what was probably the worst game show ever on TV, 1961's You're in the Picture.

James Lipton, dean of the Actors' Studio program at New School University in New York and host of Bravo's Inside the Actors' Studio, has a few ideas about charisma and acting.

"I've realized there's something tangible, something palpable about this kind of impact," he said. "In opera, when a good singer sings, you can literally feel the vibration . . . and that's what it's like. Sometimes, someone like Glenn Close or Meryl Streep will turn and look at you, and you can quite literally feel it. And you are privileged, for moments of a time, to be drawn into it."

Ever the diplomat -- after all, he may wind up interviewing almost any actor for Bravo's show -- Lipton declines to name the names who fit that mold or don't.

Instead, he tries describing an indescribable process: the method by which great actors draw you into their world.

"Glenn Close talked about an actor's aura. How else can you explain that an actor can feel something onstage and 50 feet away, the audience is crying?" he says. "She thinks it's a metaphysical thing. . . . I simply say they possess a kind of power that other people don't."

If you want to understand the power of an actor's magnetism, often the last people to ask are actors themselves.

For these outgoing, charismatic characters, magnetism is often as natural as breathing. It's a trait I saw up close as West Wing actor Martin Sheen held court Saturday at the Television Critics Awards ceremony in Pasadena, Calif.

Asked for the key to his own on-screen magnetism - he's one of my picks for the most engrossing stars on the small screen this year - Sheen could only shrug and politely demur.

"Great energy, great discipline and self-effacement, and a great sense of humor . . . they can't take themselves too seriously," he finally says, listing the qualities of most great actors.

"There were about four guys in my life: Marlon Brando and George C. Scott, Jimmy Cagney and James Dean," Sheen adds. "If you watch a lot of my performances in The West Wing, you see a lot of Cagney. Smart, tough, but with a lot of heart. That's about all you can do."

Though some may struggle to define the undefinable, at Marketing Evaluations/TvQ Inc., workers pin a number on personal magnetism.

Polling about 1,800 people twice each year, they slap a value on performers' demographic appeal, also known as their "Q" rating.

As you might expect, actors with the highest Q's combine a mainstream likability with ubiquity and a significant lack of controversy; think Robin Williams, Bill Cosby, Michael J. Fox, James Earl Jones, Noah Wyle and Whoopi Goldberg.

At this level, talent is a given. But the high-Q crowd seems to enjoy a popularity separate from the fortunes or quality of any particular project.

Cosby saw two TV shows canceled from under him this year, and Fox and Williams have endured recent criticism for slumming in material far below their considerable talents. Still, their Q's remain high.

"They seem to be genuine people. . . . They're wholesome, they're not smart alecks. . . . You see the real people behind the roles they play," says Steven Levitt, president of Marketing Evaluations, which has assembled Q ratings since 1964.

"Their personality sustains, like a Tom Cruise or Dick Van Dyke," Levitt adds. "As opposed to an Angelina Jolie, with the comments about her sex life with (new husband) Billy Bob Thornton, who just turned a lot of people right off."

Still, there's a unique magnetism that transcends mere popularity. It's that peculiar nexus of fame and ability, the right person in the right role at the right time.

With all respect to whomever the Emmy academy chooses to highlight this time around, here's this humble critic's picks of the 10 most magnetic actors on TV:

1. JAMES GANDOLFINI

2. SELA WARD Sure, she's drop-dead, sear-your-eyeballs beautiful. But that's not why Ward's turn as Lily Manning in ABC's divorce drama Once and Again holds our attention (well, not the main reason). It's because Lily -- teetering between a tissue-thin emotional fragility and the steely strength it takes to start over -- embodies the soul of this heartfelt series. Playing a fortysomething divorced mom who has found love with a divorced dad, Ward never uses her beauty as a shortcut. Instead, through the overused gimmick of talking to the camera, we meet a woman who is insecure and fearful, yet open and daring all at once. No wonder Billy Campbell's Rick Sammler can't get enough of her; thanks to Ward's effortless work, we're all in the same boat.

3. STEVE HARRIS
4. FRANKIE MUNIZ
5. MARTIN SHEEN
6. KHANDI ALEXANDER
7. SAM WATERSTON
8. MICHAEL J. FOX
9. JULIANNA MARGUILIES
10. DENNIS FRANZ

(rest of the article "snipped")__St. Petersberg Times (July 19, 2000)