Sweet Jorja Fox: vegetarian girl-next-door catapults to stardom

Better Nutrition, Feb, 2003 by Barbara Hey

As a star on the top-rated CBS police drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Jorja (pronounced Georgia) Fox has to watch what she eats. Not for health reasons--although nutrition certainly is important to the devoted vegetarian--but because of the show's sometimes gory realism. "I've learned not to eat before certain scenes," she says.

That's hardly surprising given the fact that Fox's character, Sara Sidle--a name that, she says, "sounds a little too much like `suicidal'"--works as a member of the CSI autopsy team. Her job? Examining the lifeless bodies discovered in the dark hours of the night in Las Vegas and uncovering clues about the who, what, where, when and why of their demise.

Sidle is just the latest in a string of serious, determined characters that Fox has portrayed on the big and small screens. She joined the cast of ER in its third season as the gun-toting, vegetarian, gay resident, Dr. Maggie Doyle--"No meat. No men. I'm you're woman." She appeared in The West Wing as special agent Gina Toscano, the dedicated secret service protector of the president's daughter. And in her most recent film, the critically acclaimed Memento, she played the murder victim, a role that entailed lying for hours on a bathroom floor, wet, covered by a shower curtain.

By following Fox's career, you might assume you know a thing or two about her from the characters she's played. You know the look: the tall, lithe brunette with the slight space between her front teeth. You recognize the voice: a hint of the tomboy all grown up. You feel the persona: girl always up for a wind-in-her-hair kind of adventure, followed maybe by a pizza and beer. And, yes, she is both an animal lover and a vegetarian, a detail that has been written into some of the characters she portrays.

That's Jorja Fox, it's true. But the person behind the role is someone else again--a distinct character with a storyline all her own.

model citizen

A New York City native, Fox spent most of her childhood in Melbourne Beach, Florida, on a barrier island with the ocean on one side and a river on the other. "My life was all about water--sailing, water-skiing, swimming, surfing. It's where I developed my passion for being outside. It was simply a wonderful place to be a kid. I grew up barefoot."

The family--which includes an older brother--had moved south to fulfill Fox's mother's dream of living in a beach town. But they were quite a restless group, changing residences often and taking frequent trips to New York City and Canada, where Fox's parents hail from.

As it turns out, it was in Florida that Fox met her destiny, winning by a fluke, she says, a modeling contest she entered as a joke. "I was very, very, very shocked to win," she says. "I was a fish out of water because I wasn't a classic beauty. In Florida, beauty was all about being blond and tan. I'm a tall, gangly, dark-haired Irish girl. I just didn't fit the bill." But her beauty was recognized nevertheless, and at 15 she won the opportunity to live in New York City and give modeling a try.

After a summer spent living with another teenage model and a chaperone, Fox decided there was no going back. She opted to stay in New York, finish high school and pursue modeling. Her career focused primarily on print media--magazines in particular. "I'm too short for runway work," she says. "I only worked the runway when someone called in sick." Another impediment to her success on the catwalk? The once-barefoot girl "could barely walk in heels."

From New York she went to Europe where, she says, she felt "fearless." Those years of modeling and traveling throughout Europe with peers were "fantastic, a wilder dream than I ever could have imagined," she says. After a time, however, Fox decided that modeling had its limitations.

Returning to New York at 18, she turned her attention to acting, focusing on studying and auditioning. She adopted an eclectic approach to supporting herself: working at a kennel, as a temp and even as a coat checker in a downtown nightclub.

But her fast-paced city lifestyle never diminished her love of the outdoors, and she continued to run for exercise and bike just to get places she needed to go. "I rode everywhere. It just seemed like a normal thing to do. Besides, I was broke," she says.

Along the way, Fox began to re-examine the way she'd been eating. A lifelong meat-and-potatoes lover, she constantly peppered her vegetarian friends with questions about their dietary habits. Then one day in Brooklyn--in the midst of consuming a meatball sub--she had an epiphany. "I just got it. I made a connection. I started reading voraciously about vegetarianism, and got ready for the questions from others, like the ones I'd asked my friends." Fifteen years later, Fox says, eating a meat-free diet is just something she does without questioning.

sweet success

At age 19, Fox got her first movie role in The Kill-Off, a dark and disturbing independent film that was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. And soon after, other roles started coming her way. "By age 25, I knew I could make a living as an actor," she says.