She
parachuted into "Drop Zone" with Wesley Snipes and waded through a Louisiana
bayou with Jean-Claude Van Damme in "Hard Target." But strangers still
mistake Yancy Butler for a long lost high school buddy. Or was it college?
"I just give up and say, 'I'm an actress,'" says Butler, 27. "I don't mean
for it to sound like an apology, but it always does."
Those
awkward apologies may be at an end. Butler has landed a high profile gig
as hardworking officer Anne-Marie Kersey on CBS's gritty ensemble cop drama
Brooklyn South (Mondays, 10 P.M./ET), the newest take on life on the beat
from producer Steven Bochco (NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues). "I think Anne-Marie
is a tough cookie," says Butler. "But she's also vulnerable. She brings
a woman's perspective to a cast that's mostly men."
In
the debut episode, that meant jumping straight into an emotional crisis
when her fiancé died from a massive -- and graphic -- head wound,
an event Anne-Marie will continue to deal with during the season. The harsh
footage earned the show both controversy and a stringent TV-MA rating.
"Yes, it's shocking," says Butler, who rode in a police van in Brooklyn's
76th precinct to prepare for the role. "But so is the violence of a police
officer's job."
She's
sitting in the booth of a Hollywood deli that reminds her of her native
New York City. At a trim 5-foot-7, with striking green eyes set beneath
heavy dark brows, Butler looks like she could perform a lyrical dance or
a lethal headlock with equal ease. Her unique name, culled by her parents
from a baby book, derives from the Native American pronunciation of Yankee.
But her most distinctive feature is a cool, gravely voice that suggests
both Bacall and Bogie.
"I
love her voice," says Bochco, who first saw Butler in a cameo as a junkie
on NYPD Blue. "I wish I had her voice. Yancy has this natural strength
and authority. And she's beautiful without being cupcakey. She makes an
entirely credible police officer."
Her
own background is decidedly artsy. Butler grew up in Greenwich Village,
the only child of Joe and Leslie Butler, who divorced when she was 12 but
remain close friends. Boomers may recall that Joe was the drummer for the
Lovin' Spoonful, the '60s band that had such hits as "Do You Believe in
Magic?" and "Daydream." The band broke up just before Butler's birth, and
after a stint in the musical "Hair," Joe found work in construction. Her
grandmother was a Broadway actress, and both her grandfather and mother
were in theater management. Butler herself studied dance at the Joffrey
and Ailey schools and acting at HB Studios and Sarah Lawrence College,
where she graduated in 1991.
As
for her streetwise persona, it's Joe Butler who provides the revealing
information: Yancy once whacked a boy over the head with a tennis racket
after he'd tried to do the same to her. She was banned from eighth grade
graduation after brawling with a classmate. And she's universally friendly.
And she never gives up. "Yancy has always been tenacious," says Joe, currently
on tour with a reunited Spoonful (sans John Sebastian). "If you're the
dog who eats Yancy's homework, you're a dead dog."
Although
her family warned her away from a life in the arts and insisted on a college
degree, even her father had to concede she had the right stuff. "It's hard
to be objective when it's your own kid," he says. "But I saw the video
of one of her college plays and thought, 'Wow. She has tremendous charisma.'"
Still, when Butler started acting professionally, it was not out of a deep
creative longing. "I was too short to model," recalls Butler, who studied
child psychology as a backup. "So I turned to acting to help pay off my
student loans."
A bit
part on Law & Order got the attention of the show's executive producer,
Dick Wolf. In early 1992, just six months after Butler's graduation, Wolf
called to offer her the part of an android cop in NBC's Mann & Machine.
"And then, literally 10 minutes later, [then CBS entertainment president]
Jeff Sagansky called to offer me a deal," she recalls. "The rule is that
you go with the first boy who asks you to the prom. And I did. My career
has had its ups and downs, but it started on a big up."
But
Mann & Machine barely chugged through the first season. Wolf followed
up with a role for Butler in the short-lived South Beach. Television had
become the dog who ate her homework. So Butler tumbled into action films
opposite Van Damme and Snipes. "I didn't grow up as a weakling," she says.
"But I never expected to be jumping out of planes with Wesley. Action-adventure
is fun, but you can't play G.I. Jane forever."
It
took Bochco to entice her back to TV. "I don't normally toot my own horn,
but bringing her on the show was my idea," boasts Bochco. "And the moment
I had the idea, I knew I was right."
A nice
accolade, but the stress of a big-budget series is intense. Thankfully,
the show's four-day shooting schedule allows Butler a measure of personal
freedom. She spends off-hours with boyfriend Michael Wiseman, 30, an actor
she has dated for almost a year. She sticks to a brutal daily workout on
a treadmill set at a 20 percent grade. She even has time to fret over a
mangy stray cat who meows around the backyard of her small house in the
Hollywood Hills. But if Brooklyn South takes off, one thing Butler won't
have to worry about anymore are those student loans. "There's still a balance
due," she admits with a smile. "But I've never missed a payment."
Dirk
Mathison is a writer whose work has appeared in Time, Life, and Parenting.
