Which may surprise fans of the icily efficient Dr. Finch but not Michele's costars. "Once you know Michael, you know that she isn't totally Cleo," says Ming-Na (who plays Dr. Deb Chen). "If anything, Cleo is definitely more cool, more detached." Michele, 33, tends to be fussier. "For example," says Ming-Na, "she'll complain about her hair, although everyone thinks she's gorgeous from head to toe."
Where the 5'9" actress (one of PEOPLE's 50 Most Beautiful last year) is least self-conscious is on the basketball court. "After people saw me shooting hoops with Dr. Mark Greene [Anthony Edwards] on one episode," says Michele, "they wanted to know, 'Did [you] fake it?' No. I don't have to fake it." Indeed, back in Evansville, Ind.'s Benjamin Bosse High School, Michele was a star forward on the 1984 basketball team, and she continues to play on ER's Burbank lot, where her predecessor George Clooney once held court.
At work or play, "she's focused, totally serious, just like in high school," says her old classmate and pal Dr. Todd Duncan, 34, now a New York City dentist. It's a resolve that Michael Michele Williams may have inherited from her parents, Jerry, 57, a shipping executive, and Theresa, 53, a pharmaceuticals company manager. The fact that her father is white and her mother black seems not to have been an issue for Michael (named after a family friend) or her sister Erica, now 29 and an Indianapolis banker. "My mother often said, 'If someone doesn't like us, that's their problem. You girls have to live your lives regardless of what other people say,' " says Michele. "My parents' example helps me walk into pretty much any environment and do my job." Having a competitive sister also helped. She and Erica "were always going at each other," she says, whether jumping rope or shooting hoops.
At 18, determined to be an actress, she says, "I moved to New York in 1984, pretty much out of high school, and I did a lot of commercials to pay the bills." All the while, she was auditioning for films. Casting directors began to take notice. "They'd say, 'Who's this female named Michael?' " Michele recalls. "That sort of distinction can only help."
In 1991 she landed her first big role, playing gangster Wesley Snipes's girlfriend in New Jack City. They and fellow newcomer Chris Rock "were all pretty intense," Michele recalls. "It felt like a group of college kids who'd gotten together to do a film project. Everyone gave their all." She began working steadily, most notably as a lawyer on FOX's New York Undercover and an art-gallery owner on CBS's short-lived Central Park West.
But the show she really wanted to do was NBC's Homicide. "I'd get tapes of her, I'd get photos of her," recalls executive producer Tom Fontana. "After a while I had to ask, 'Who is this?' " After three auditions, Michele was signed as flinty detective Rene Sheppard for the show's last season. She calls the role "a turning point, because it cast me as a tough, emotionally complex cop"—and it opened the door for ER.
Still, Michele, now living alone in a two-bedroom L.A. apartment, is hedging her bets by keeping a place in Manhattan, where she commutes weekends to hang with friends who, she says, "have nothing to do with my showbiz life. We go out in a group, mostly. A big movable party. This is my social life." Included is "an older man" she declines to name "who I'm with from time to time."
Back in L.A., she plays in charity basketball tournaments—mostly against guys. In one game, she says, "it was like, 'You're a girl and you're gonna play with us?' I said, 'Hey, bring it on!' "
Michael A. Lipton
Pamela Warrick in Los Angeles
- Contributors:
- Pamela Warrick.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
