By Paige Albiniak

Former JAG heartthrob David James Elliott returns to CBS this fall as the hard-driving, media-savvy new boss of beleaguered prosecutor Annabeth Chase (Jennifer Finnigan) on Friday night’s Close to Home. Season two starts fast, with Elliott’s D.A.
 
James Conlon stirring things up at the Indianapolis District Attorney’s office upon his arrival. That puts Annabeth in a pressure- cooker: She’s not only dealing with the sudden death of her husband and her new role as a single, working mother, but she’s also facing more stress at work.
 
Elliott’s Conlon is an assistant district attorney who has transferred from Manhattan to Indianapolis to advance his career more quickly. “He’s brought in his Manhattan attitude and New York timetable,” Elliott says. “He doesn’t suffer fools well and it’s his way or no way at all. There’s immediate conflict in the office upon his arrival.”
 
Elliott is taking over from veteran character John Carroll Lynch, who in season one played Annabeth’s supportive and protective team leader, Steve Sharpe.

“We felt we needed someone younger who would bring a bit more pizzazz to the role,” says the show’s new executive producer, Eric Overmyer. “And we wanted someone who would throw off a few sparks of one kind or another with Annabeth. David James seemed like a natural fit, and he tests very well with the ladies.”
  
FINDING THE BALANCE
Elliott is a television veteran, having starred as Cmdr. Harmon “Harm” Rabb on CBS’ JAG for 10 years. He left the show because he was tired of working “16-, 17-, 18-, 19-hour days. It got to the point where my daughter kept telling my wife that she loved her. When my wife asked her, ‘Why don’t you tell Daddy you love him?’ my daughter said, ‘Well, I don’t know Daddy.’ So I started thinking, ‘Is this just about coming in and killing myself every day? If so, that sucks. I’m making good money, but I’m not living my life.’”

Even more to the point, Elliott lost a few very important people while he was making the decision to leave the show that made him famous. “Near the end of JAG, I lost my father,” Elliott says. “And right after JAG was over, I lost my brother. Life can be pretty short, so why not try to enjoy it?” he says.
 
Now on Close to Home, “a long day for me would be three hours. I do a page and- a-half or two pages a day. On JAG, we did five or six scenes a day. The scenes on Close to Home are good, fun and interesting to me. And I’m not getting killed.”

With greater balance in life, Elliott is spending more time with his family. He’s been married to actress Nanci Chambers since 1992, and they have two children, Stephanie, 13, and Wyatt, 3.
 
Stephanie is a “big swimmer, who has designs on the Olympics,” says Elliott, who often hits the pool with his daughter. Elliott has always been athletic, and in recent years has reforged himself as a serious triathlete. He’s run several marathons and plans to compete for a second time this October in the legendary Ironman triathlon in Kona, Hawaii.
 
“I got into triathlons about six or seven years ago,” he says. “My publicist asked me if I was interested in doing a leg of the Malibu triathlon, which was a half-mile ocean swim, 18-mile bike ride or four-mile run, to raise money for pediatric AIDS. I said, ‘Hell, I’ll do the whole thing.’ And then when I got into the water I basically dog-paddled my way through it and had to make up the time on the bike and the run.”
 
Today, he trains with a USC stroke coach and runs and rides all week. “I like to set goals that get me out of bed in the morning. Excuses don’t make a difference when you are staring down the barrel of 26.2 miles.”
 
Elliott also has a serious interest in music, going so far as to have a recording studio in his Brentwood home. In high school, he wanted to be a rock star. He quickly realized he had a minuscule chance to become the next Jon Bon Jovi and turned to acting, but he still plays guitar and a little saxophone and is learning piano. “I like to set goals that get me out of bed in the morning. Excuses don’t make a difference when you are staring down the barrel of 26.2 miles.”
 
“While the JAG crew was setting stuff up and we were just hanging around the set, people would come into my room and we would jam. I always had three to four guitars in there.”
 
LEARNING FROM THE BARD
Music was an early passion, but Elliott caught the acting bug at 19, after reading Shakespeare’s King Lear in a theater history class. He studied theater at Ryerson Polytechnic Institute in Toronto, and then acted at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario.
 
“I heard they were doing auditions so I went down and waited in the room. They asked me who I was, and I said, ‘I don’t have an audition, but if someone doesn’t show up, I’m here.’ Five or 10 minutes later, sure enough, someone didn’t show up so they called me in. I got the job and was there for a couple of years.”
 
At Stratford, Elliott acted in as many as four Shakespeare plays at once. “We’d be working six days a week and often putting on two shows a day. We even had one show on Sunday afternoon, and when you weren’t doing that, you’d be taking classes with older actors.”
 
With Shakespeare as his foundation, Elliott feels he has the skills to take on any acting challenge. “Shakespeare is the greatest poet that ever lived, but the language is obviously not your standard modern English. If you can handle that language, then you can certainly handle any language, any play that is written. Getting a good firm background and a good solid training is a great pedestal to prop your career on.”

While the difference between Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Macbeth and JAG or Close to Home may seem vast, Elliott says the core issues in all good dramas are the same. “Shakespeare is timeless because he writes about human relationships. That will always be watchable because as a human race we haven’t changed. It’s 500 years later, and we are driven by the same wants and needs.”