Strolling past a New York City construction site several years ago, Melina Kanakaredes pretended not to notice as one of the workers watched her pass by, his mouth slowly pursing into wolf-whistle position. But she could hardly ignore what happened next. "I don't know if it was really because of me," says the 32-year-old star of NBC's
Providence with a hint of embarrassment, "but he was looking at me and fell backward into a hole. I felt terrible." And yet he's hardly the only man to have been knocked off his feet by Kanakaredes' lithe 5'7" form and wanton curls. "When she gives you that smile and her puppy-dog eyes, you just melt," says Tom Verica, who plays her old flame on the show. "All the guys I know are incredibly jealous. Nobody believes that I actually get paid to kiss her." Even better, says costar Mike Farrell, "she's extremely genuine. I'm used to meeting beautiful women in this business; what I'm not used to is meeting one with such a beautiful soul." Kanakaredes isn't perfect, though. She has no resistance for chocolate, thanks to her family's candy business back in Akron, where she grew up. "If a box is in the house and it's open, I have to finish it," she says. And while she easily works off the calories in the pool at a private club near Melina KANAKAREDES frets about the damage all that sugar has done to her teeth. "My parents were always saying, 'Cavities! Cavities!' she recalls. "Now I have a mouthful of them." To ward off more, she never leaves home without her Braun electric toothbrush, a habit that nearly caused a tabloid scandal during a recent Hawaiian vacation with her husband of six years, chef and restaurant consultant Peter Constantinides. When the bellboy dropped their luggage in the hotel room, "all of a sudden you hear this vibrating sound and see the shape of the toothbrush through the bag," says Kanakaredes. "I learned that if you travel with an electric toothbrush, make sure you take the batteries out."
