Vanessa Ferlito: her Brooklyn-born stoop dreams brought her to Hollywood. Now her big TV break is bringing her back to the Big Apple

Interview, Sept, 2004 by Henry Cabot Beck

What's a nice girl from Brooklyn doing in the middle of a crime scene? If she's Vanessa Ferlito, she's putting tiny clues in plastic bags as a star of this month's new cop series CSI: NY, a homecoming of sorts for this native of Carroll Gardens.

An only child whose father died before she was 3, Ferlito didn't skip rope much as a kid. "I stooped," she explains. "I'd sit outside the building with my cousins, listen to the radio, talk shit on the phone. I stooped, you know?"

Ferlito was among the first actors cast in CSI: NY, and after guest spots on 24 as the mistress of a drug lord and on The Sopranos as a Jersey girl, she's ready to settle into a steady gig. "They're going to get personal with my character, which they've never done before with CSI. I might even have a boyfriend on the show," she says. "I could use one. Right now I'm single."

Ferlito, 26, will also be seen in the upcoming Tommy Lee Jones comedy, Cheer Up, and opposite Helen Mirren in the dark thriller Shadow-boxer. "Directors look at me and think, Brooklyn, tough and rough," she laughs, "but I can also hang out with Helen Mirren."

Henry Cabot Beck is a frequent Interview contributor.