We loved Marcia Cross on Melrose Place. As demented Dr. Kimberly Shaw, she thrilled and chilled us like few other soap villainesses ever have. She seduced Jane's husband, hired thugs to gay bash Matt, stole Jo's baby, and, to top off her considerable litany of sins, blew up the whole damn apartment building! Now, she's baaack...

Cross has just joined the WB's Everwood as yet another lady doc, Linda Abbott. "Uh, yeah," she chuckles. "But she's a very different kind of doctor. My character is a doctor who's been around quite a bit with Doctors Without Borders. I've been in China studying Chinese medicine, and I've come back to Everwood because I want to stay. And eventually, I'll become Treat Williams's love interest."

Damn. We were hoping she'd terrorize the show's idyllic Colorado hamlet Kimberly-style. But we'll get over it. Anyway, we haven't seen much of Cross since Melrose wrapped, except for occasional TV guest spots. Where's she been?

As a fallback career, the 41-year-old earned herself a master's in psychology at Antioch University in L.A. She was a year into her counseling internship at a Beverly Hills clinic when Everwood called. "I think that my whole thrust of being an actress is that I love people," she says. "I love people, and I'm completely drawn to everybody's story, and interested in people's lives and their journeys. That's just who I am."