• May 14, 1998

Julia Louis-dreyfus

Like a Rose with a Thorn on Two—or Three—she Gave Elaine Beauty and Bite

Fred. Ginger. Elaine. No one will forget their dancing—in the latter's case, no matter how hard they try. Elaine's thumbs-up dance—imagine a rhythm-impaired stork with sciatica—left her coworkers in rapt disbelief. Now that was acting. Or was it? "Well," says Lauren Bowles, one of Louis-Dreyfus's four half sisters, "we do have certain dance moves in the family that might have gone into that episode."

Okay, so Louis-Dreyfus may not be the next Cyd Charisse. But she just may be the next Lucille Ball. After years as Jerry's impressively tressed ex-girlfriend, Louis-Dreyfus, 37, has proved she has the chops for comedy greatness. "Now you'll get to see her in full flower," predicts TV producer Gary David Goldberg, who worked with Louis-Dreyfus on his 1988 sitcom Day by Day and who firmly believes she's shown only a portion of what she can do. "You're looking at a real actress here," says Goldberg. "Just give the [Seinfeld] audience a little chance to get over it, and then they'll be ready to accept her in other roles."

As single, sardonic Elaine, an eclectic serial dater, Louis-Dreyfus had doomed flings with, among others, a close-talker, a mayoral aide, an NBC executive, a maestro, a baseball player and Puddy. "She's a little bit pathetic," Louis-Dreyfus said of her character to the Chicago Tribune. "I like to think I'm not that neurotic." At the very least she isn't that desperate: Louis-Dreyfus has been married to her college sweetheart, television producer Brad Hall (Brooklyn Bridge, The Single Guy), 40, since 1987, and they have two boys, Henry, 5, and Charles, 1. "She's a mom now," says Bowles, who played a waitress at Monk's coffee shop on the series. "And while she enjoys acting, if she had to choose to do just one thing in her life, that's what it would be."

Such domestic tranquillity has long been one of Louis-Dreyfus's goals. Raised in Washington, she was only a year old when her parents—Judith Bowles, an award-winning short-story writer, and William Louis-Dreyfus, a lawyer and businessman—divorced. Both eventually remarried—her mother to L. Thompson Bowles, a doctor, and her father to Phyllis, a teacher—and Louis-Dreyfus divided her time between the two families. "My parents got along with one another, so I wasn't playing referee," she explained to Ladies' Home Journal. "But it was still hard. It's made me desire a very stable family life."

She found a measure of solace in acting, which she embraced at the Holton-Arms girls' school near Washington. "Julia was always funny," says Bowles, nine years younger than her sister. "And she always liked the attention that came with it." While performing with comedy groups at Northwestern University, Louis-Dreyfus caught two big breaks: She was invited to join the cast of Saturday Night Live, and she met her future husband, then head of a local improv troupe, who also wound up on SNL. "It was a very political environment," Louis-Dreyfus told PEOPLE of her three-year stint with a cast that included Eddie Murphy and Billy Crystal. "I learned that it's not worth it unless you're having a good time."

Louis-Dreyfus went on to snag a juicy role as a sarcastic single on the short-lived Day by Day. When the Elaine-less pilot for Seinfeld underwhelmed in 1989, Jerry and co-creator Larry David went looking for a shot of estrogen. After auditioning numerous actresses (including Rosie O'Donnell), they turned to Louis-Dreyfus, familiar to David from SNL. "There are very few beautiful women who can act and be funny," Seinfeld told the Chicago Tribune. "She had almost no competition."

From the beginning the ensemble defined the phrase good chemistry. "Julia was just one of the guys," says comedian Jeff Bye. "She is very down-to-earth. One night she asked me for a ride and we drove home in my little Honda, not some limo. She doesn't care for that sort of stuff."

Now that Seinfeld is over, her priorities have never been clearer. Louis-Dreyfus plans to take time off to hang with her family in their Los Angeles home. She's come to the end of a lucrative run shaking her famous mane in those Clairol Nice 'n Easy ads, and her next role will most likely be in a movie (she has made eight films, including Woody Allen's 1997 opus Deconstructing Harry). Starring in a sitcom produced by her husband is also possible—Julia!, anyone?—though Louis-Dreyfus has no illusions about topping her Seinfeld gig. "It's probably the best job I'll ever have," she said halfway through its run.

And maybe the most fun too. At one particularly raucous Seinfeld party last year, the late-night revelers were led by Jerry and Louis-Dreyfus, who stuck stogies in their mouths, scampered up into the rafters and worked the boom mikes like fishing poles. "It was a great moment," says Wayne Knight, Seinfeld's Newman. "It perfectly illustrates the fun we had." And, a bonus: Louis-Dreyfus didn't do the thumbs-up dance.