ER may be losing its best nurse, but Julianna Margulies is gaining some personal prime time- to enjoy the house she shares with Ron Eldard and to plot her next surgical strike.

TV's most famous nurse needs a little pick-me-up. It has been a long week at the hospital, and Julianna Margulies is grateful to be home in her spacious Santa Monica kitchen, where a large pot of soothing soup- a sweet potato-carrot-ginger concoction her mother taught her to make- is simmering on the stove.

But hold the ladle. While soup may be good for the soul, it's still morning, and what this patient really requires is a caffeine drip.

Call it an occupational hazard, but being on the set of ER for 15 hours a day has made Margulies-"Jules" to cast and crew- a certifiable brew-hound. As she pours herself a large cup, the aromas of coffee and soup fill the Spanish-style home she shares with actor Ron Eldard. His two Abyssinian cats scamper across the kitchen counter, excited by the smells. And Carol Hathaway, the feisty, sometimes dour character Margulies plays on ER, is nowhere in sight. Dressed in a black sweater and old jeans, this Julianna Margulies has the poised, unflappable mien of a yoga adept- which she is. "Not to be all L.A.- actressy." she says, "but yoga helps me find the balance between my home life and my professional life."

Today the scales are tipped heavily in favor of the casual. The trademark raven ringlets are tied back, the alabaster skin glowing without makeup. Coffee fix aside, Margulies is at the top of her game. Last Thanksgiving, when her ER alter ego gave birth to twins fathered by George Clooney's character, Dr. Doug Ross, some 30 million viewers made it one of the most watched stork-drops since Lucy brought Little Ricky into the world. Around the time she was filming that episode, Margulies dropped something else- a bombshell- by forgoing a reported $27 million offer to stay on the show until summer of 2002. "Through all this ridiculous hoopla about money, my hope is that people might look at me and say, 'You know what, it's not necessarily the American dream to be the richest person in the world. Maybe the dream is to be the most fulfilled.'"

So does the Emmy-winning Margulies expect postpartum depression to set in this spring, when she leaves ER after six years to pursue other opportunities? just a bit. "It was the greatest experience in my life." she says. "Now I'm ready for the next greatest experience." First up, there's her role as Kyra Sedgwick's lover in What's Cooking?, an indie movie that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January. ("We kiss," Margulies says. "But it's just a chaste kiss, really.") There's a play she'd like to do in New York this fall. And she also wants to reunite with Bruce Beresford, who directed her in the 1977 World War 2 drama Paradise Road. "I've been financially stable for a long time." she reasons, "so I can take a few months off. I can spend time with my parents and actually finish decorating my house."

Nearly three years ago Margulies and Eldard, an acclaimed stage actor (On the Waterfront, Bash) who also starred in the sitcom Men Behaving Badly, put down roots in this unpretentious 1926 three-bedroom hacienda. they also have a one-bedroom art deco apartment on N.Y.C.'s Upper West Side. Together they hunt for antiques amd restore their homes' lost glories with careful renovations. "I am so lucky," Margulies says. "I have a great boyfriend with a great eye, and we agree on most everything." That goes double for their relationship, which they keep scrupulously out of the spotlight. "If you want a love story," the 32 year old actress has said, "go rent one." Theirs began nearly a decade ago in a New York acting class. "I saw him in a play and he blew me away. I was mesmerized. I went home and wrote, 'He's the Brando of our generation' in my journal. The next day, I asked him out for lunch." Although the tabs recently announced their engagement, Margulies laughs off the story; the heirloom diamond band on her right, not left, hand was a birthday present from Eldard; the forties men's watch she sports is another present from Ron, who collects vintage timepieces. Throughout the house are ither testaments to his tatse. In the den sits a leather chair and ottoman where margulies likes "to curl up in a ball in front of a fire." In the kitchen, Eldard converted a steel-and-glass medical cart into a portable bar. Margulies is also unfazed by bolder design statements, mixing for example, walls the color of Granny Smith apples with bright tartan curtains in her study. "It's about texture." says Julianna, whose Fortuny chandelier, Asian tables, Jacobean chairs, Guatemalan water jugs and Persian rugs all happily cohabit.

This cosmopolitian mix may in part be a legacy of Margulies's unorthodox upbringing. The third daughter of Paul Margulies, the ad executive who wrote the "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz" jingle for Alka-Seltzer, and his wife, Francesca, a free spirited dance teacher, Margulies was born in Spring Valley, N.Y. After her parents amicably divorced when she was 1, Julianna shuttled between her father's executive-style apartmenst in New York and her mother's old-world bohemian places in England and France. "In Paris my mother was a chic hippie," she says, smiling. "I remember her picking me up at school wearing purple Birkenstocks. I was absolutely mortified." At 14 Margulies returned to the states for boarding school, then went on to Sarah Lawrence College. After graduation, she waitressed before landing her break in the Steven Seagal flick Out For Justice. Parts on Law and Order and Homicide: Life on the Streets led to ER. Though Hathaway OD'd on pills in the pilot, she was revived; her part grew-- and so did the list of guys she went on to woo, including Eldard (he played a paramedic the second and third seasons), Clooney (who, rumor has it, might return for one episode this year), and maybe (she's not telling) ER's new hunk Goran Visnjic.

It's clear to a visitor on the set that the cast and crew are like family to Margulies. Hopping into a canvas-backed chair with her name on it, she thanks her make-up man, "Gandhi" Bob, for filling her makeup bag with gum. Chewing on a wad, she trades wisecracks all around. "They always expect a joke from me." she says. As Margulies and co-star Eriq LaSalle rehearse a scene for the 126th episode, he bends over a gurney in front of her and wags his behind. Feeling the rhythm, the actress shakes hers too. "Working with Julianna is torture. I'm laughing the whole time." says LaSalle. Later, when Margulies finds out an intern is leaving the show, she dotes on him as if he were a son going off to college.

But offscreen she wrestles with her own maternal instincts: "Some days I feel too selfish to have a kid. I like knowing I can stay in bed all day Sunday if I want. And I am petrified I'll do it all wrong. Still, I'd so love to share a child with someone and watch this being grow." But for now, she and Eldard enjoy quiet evenings alone, or small gatherings where friends like Kristen Johnston, former TV exec Jamie Tarses, and Sports Night's Felicity Huffman and husband William H. Macy play charades. on New Years Eve, Margulies, Eldard and another couple grilled shrimp, drank champagne, wore paper crowns, and read fortunes from English christmas crackers. "It was very intimate, dahling." she says.

Which is precisely how she likes it. Margulies leads the way outside to a teak table facing the pool and colorful garden. Working with landscape architect Steven Vandora, she created a series a seating areas with interconnected lawns and beds planted with wild english roses, irises, lavender and jasmine. "He entered it into a small landscapes competition, and it won. So I have a blue ribbon garden." she says proudly. "Only, he yells at me for not pruning enough."

Not to worry. For Margulies, a low maintenance person with a high profile, this homestead, with its 75 year old ficus trees, is "the place you close the doors and leave all the stress behind. It doesn't matter whether you laugh or cry- what goes on between these walls is just for you. You can throw on your PJs and sloppy slippers." And savor a bowl of soup- or rev up another pot of coffee.

IN STYLE March 2000