Fox soap Melrose Place bubbly, sweet-faced Courtney Thome-Smith plays the ruthless, alcoholic ex-ad exec Alison Parker. It's not as big a stretch as it first appears. Although Courtney doesn't drink, works out religiously and surrounds herself with loving pals, the 27-year-old says she "completely understands where Alison's com-ing from." She adds, "If I didn't do all the things I do to stay sane and happy, I'd probably be Alison." And in fact, during the early years of Courtney's acting career she was headed in a self-destructive direction-as an obsessive dieter.
Success came to Courtney quickly. As a senior in high school she was cast at an open audition as Charlie Sheen's girlftiend in the film Lucas. Although she worked consistently, her diet went to pot. "I was on my own, lonely, and feeding myself for the first time in my life. I wasn't exercising," she explains. As time a result, she gained close to 15 pounds. But a TV producer complained, and that started Courtney off on four years of compulsive dieting. "It was horrible," she recalls. She'd starve herself, or eat just fruit for a week at a time. She was so focused on depriving herself that life wasn't much fun.
Then when she was about 23 she picked up Fit or Fat by Covert Bailey, which promotes lifelong exercise as the right way to maintain a desirable weight. And so she joined the fitness movement.
she works out almost every day and has stopped dieting. Instead, she just follows a menu of pasta, seafood (no red meat or poultry), vegetables and fruit.
Atypically for a star in Tinseltown, Courtney exercises alone. She explains, "I had a trainer real briefly, but I'd rather use exercise as the time I get to spend with me. And when I'm done working out, I feel clean. My body just feels light and alert."
Observed carefully by her beloved basenji dogs, George and Ed (there's no man in her life right now), she works out first thing in the morning for two hours in her Hollywood Hills home gym. For her ever-changing regimen, she emphasizes cardio work (40 minutes to an hour on a Stair-Master, treadmill and/or recumbent bike) but also does yoga (she has lots of tapes; "Ali Mc-Graw's Yoga Mind and Body" and "Buns of Steel Yoga" are favorites), mediation(she just took a transcendental meditation course) and free weights (done as low resistance, high repititions).
"If I didn't work on Melrose Place," she says, "I would do less cardio and more weights. I'd be a little broader; I'd be stronger. I'd probably be five pounds heavier. But on my show," the five-foot-six, size-four actress says with a tinge of jealousy, "I'm literally surrounded by people who are naturally a size two. So I have to stay in proportion or I'll look big. It's amazing. I've been on Melrose so long-three years-that I see myself as 10 pounds heavier than I am. I always buy a size too big in clothes because I think I'm that size."
Courtney uses meditation, yoga and other exercises to
ward off stress. �I�m lucky I do these things, and that I�m
surrounded by loving people," she says. "And it helps that 1 play someone like Alison. I need that reminder - that that's what I could be like!
