Is Shemar Moore the finest thing on TV?

Ebony, Nov, 1998 by Aldore Collier

Sure, Shemar Moore has a chiseled face and almost perfectly sculpted abs. And it is not unusual for women to chase him through shopping malls, begging him to take his shirt off.

But for the last four years, Moore, 28, has fought valiantly to show fans of the CBS daytime drama The Young and the Restless that there's tremendous substance under all those muscles. It's been hard, however, to get his legion of female fans to make the leap and to focus on his acting skills.

Don't get him wrong, though. He does appreciate the screams and intimate offers. "The applause I get from the female is very flattering," he admits. "It's very flattering that women scream and yell when you walk on stage. To me, it's a pat on the back for hard work well done."

But he has put in some serious hours working with an acting coach, honing his craft to be seen as one who takes performing seriously. "The attention is flattering," he says, "but there's more. My looks may or may not have helped me get in the door of Hollywood. But my looks have not kept me in Hollywood. I couldn't do it with just looks. I work hard. I know that I'm a talented individual."

And undeniably a very good-looking individual. Moore's father is Black and his mother is Irish-French Canadian. His parents split when he was very young. He and his mother, a teacher, lived in a number of European nations and Bahrain before returning to the United States when he was 6. His father's name is Sherrod and his mother's name is Marilyn. His name is the result of using the first three letters of each parent's name.

Neither Hollywood nor lusty, screaming fans were at the forefront of his mind when he was growing up in Oakland, Calif. Baseball was his early love. It was baseball that helped him get a partial scholarship to nearby Santa Clara University.

To help cover additional expenses, Moore exploited his looks and earned extra money by modeling. He'd been approached to do it for years, but blew it off as ridiculous. "At 16, I thought it was for sissies," he recalls. "But at 19, when tuition was a reality, I was, like, okay, well maybe it's not for sissies. So, I tried it and ended up doing it for five years."

It was exciting and glamorous to be in New York City posing for major ads and getting to travel around the world. But modeling had a significant downside for Moore. It was far more competitive than he had ever expected. "I was too big or I wasn't Black enough," he says with a slight sigh of exasperation. "They didn't know what I was. I was uni-race. I didn't fit the clothes or I wasn't pretty enough, wasn't tough enough or Black enough. The other models were skinnier than I was. I used to say, `I'm Black. Don't they make clothes for big butts or big thighs?' It was a hustle and I lived from month to month."

Still, he quickly concedes that it was the modeling experience that put him in the lofty perch where he now sits. Some of his work ended up in the pages of GQ magazine and caught the eye of officials from The Young and the Restless.

He spent $1100 the weekend before his audition working with an acting coach. Once he got the role of "Malcolm Winters," he kept working to improve his craft. Actually, he had secretly enjoyed acting even when he was a macho high school jock. "When you're a jock, it's not cool to hang around with theater people," he says. "So, in high school, I had to sneak around and when my jock friends weren't looking, I'd sneak down to the theater and just sit and watch. I was too shy to get out there." He minored in theater arts in college.

His character of Malcolm became an instant audience favorite. And the attention he drew from women all over the country has been unrelenting. The only downside to any of it, he says, is the incessant invasion of his privacy. Newspaper and magazine articles have linked him romantically with Toni Braxton, Lela Rochon and, more recently, Halle Berry. He is completely mum on the subject. "Yes, I've been seen with women who are public figures in this town. And they (reporters) are going to take it to where they're going to take it. Dirt is what sells. I don't have the struggles of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston and those type of celebrities. I don't have it at that level yet. But, I'm prepared for that if it happens to me. I think the president just got through telling us to mind our own business. It's just nobody's business."

He has another year left on his contract at The Young and the Restless and hasn't decided his plans beyond that. However, he recently performed in the HBO movie Butter and acknowledges that he definitely wants more exposure on the big screen like Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson and Will Smith. "They bring magic to the screen!" His dream is to be one of the next leading men.

Whatever direction his career takes him, Moore says he is prepared to just deal with it and have fun. "I stay true to who I am and that will get me through. That will bring me happiness. I've learned a lot lately. Life, I've learned, is about living moments. You only have one life and you have to enjoy the moments as they happen rather than work, work, struggle, struggle."