Like a number of other Hollywood celebs, from Tom Cruise to John Travolta to Kirstie Alley, she's a Scientologist. Elfman joined the controversial religion after meeting future husband Bodhi Elfman, who already belonged; she cites its teachings relentlessly in explaining her success. "It was everything I had been looking for, answers to questions I had been asking forever. They finally got answered for me."Mostly, though, Elfman seems a role model for a sort of post-Seinfeld, pre-millennial Get Happy Movement. Call her the queen of worry-free TV, a retro-hip Lucy for the '90s.
Says TV veteran and Dharma & Greg co-creator Chuck Lorre: "Jenna, like Dharma, knows what she wants and how to get it. In the '80s and early '90s, women stars on TV were victims, fighting battles, heads full of neurosis and angst -- crazy, poor and acerbic."
Crazy, poor and acerbic Elfman is not. "I [expletive] hate people who make fun of other people," she says. "It makes me want to strangle people!"
On the contrary, "you see how people get moved when there's a story about goodwill. There should be a lot of that," says Elfman, who has turned Dharma (Wednesday, 8:30 p.m. ET) into one of TV's few new hits this season, winner of last month's People's Choice Award for favorite new TV comedy series (in a tie with Alley's Veronica's Closet). "If what you're doing is going to actually create a good effect on someone, good. Do it!"
Surprising for her generation, Elfman comes from a nuclear family -- no exes or steps. One of three children of a Hughes Aircraft executive dad and a homemaker mom, she remains close to her parents and siblings (a sister and a brother). About the only show-biz connection is by marriage: Bodhi Elfman, an actor who this spring will appear with Bruce Willis in Mercury Rising, is a nephew of Hollywood composer Danny Elfman, whose credits include TV's Simpsons theme and the score for Tim Burton's Batman.
That may explain why the former Valley Girl (she was raised in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley) is starstruck by her own stardom, her ebullience cascading through long, triumphant sentences that merge into paragraphs without fear of punctuation. Is she worried about her upcoming leap to movies, a leap that has tripped many an aspiring actor?
"I'll learn from everything. I try not to worry or go into fear on that, because then you're going into scarcity of, like, 'Oh, God, what if?' and I have never been that kind of person. To me, that's a middle-class safety attitude -- 'What will the neighbors think?' or 'What if I can't do it?' Who are you to think you can't do something? Have you read Nelson Mandela's inaugural speech, 1994?"
And so on. Even with a place on year-end "in" lists and movie scripts pouring in, she is surprised to be recognized by Hollywood's hottest:
"I'm in this restaurant in Brentwood, and in a line of tables there's mine, and right next to me -- those really close tables where you have to go, 'Excuse me, I've got to put my coat on, pardon me' -- this is Tracey Ullman, [and] right like that is Jim Carrey, Carol Burnett and Tony Curtis all in a row. I wanted to say something so bad to her [Burnett], but she was talking to someone and then she left, but I did say something to Jim Carrey. I said, 'You rock,' and he went, 'Hey, you're one of the sexy girls [on TV Guide's sexiest-actors-on-TV list]! Congratulations on your show.' I couldn't believe Jim Carrey knew who I was. I was flipping out."
Still, she and Bodhi say they're determined to stay clear of the party crowd, to the extent "party" means drugs, anyway. Bodhi says they're "out of the loop as far as the Hollywood party scene. And it does exist. It bums us out. We thought maybe it was just a stereotype. As we go to bigger and bigger events, there's going to be a real dissection between me and Jenna and other celebrities. We're going to take a stance on drugs."
Elfman arrived on your prime-time screen the old-fashioned way, too: commercials (Toyota, Clearasil), a stint as a dancer (on tour with long-bearded rockers ZZ Top), and the obligatory small role in a lousy sitcom, ABC's Townies. Though a non-starter as Molly Ringwald's comeback vehicle, Townies got Elfman her own show. "Jenna's the real deal," says Dharma executive producer Chuck Lorre. "She's gifted. Her instincts are good. Her choices are wonderful."
She'll test her box-office mettle later this month in her first starring film role: In Krippendorf's Tribe, a black comedy, she and Richard Dreyfuss play rival anthropologists. "Right now, she's in a position of being confirmed as something big, and Krippendorf's might support that," Dreyfuss tells me over his car phone. "She has star power. She's the first person in 20 years I could compare to Lucille Ball."
Elfman is thrilled with the comedian comparisons she hears -- just don't stick her with any "slacker" generation stereotypes. "It's such a label. Every single being on Planet Earth is unique. It's their clothes that put them into a category. Which is so not what a person really is."
Especially not Elfman. "I was the girl at Marshalls who could pick out the best thing. I loved the game of not having an easy time of it and then making it go. But now I've changed the game. I said, 'How much can I make while still keeping the quality of my art?' I stated the amount I wanted to get for this movie, and I got it." The movie? Ron Howard's Ed TV, in which she'll co-star with another of Hollywood's new generation, Matthew McConaughey.
Just in case she doesn't land these juicy roles or get the big bucks, Elfman at least gets a souvenir. Auditioning for a part with George Clooney, she did some improvising. "I just decided: 'If I don't book this part, I'm not walking away saying I couldn't kiss him.' I did it with McConaughey, too. I planted one on him, saying: 'I'm not going to walk away having the opportunity to kiss this guy. If I don't book it, I have a great story to tell.' "
Gayle Carter, USA WEEKEND's entertainment editor, last profiled Friends actress Jennifer Aniston.
FUNNY LADIES
Lucille Ball I Love Lucy, 1951-57:
LUUUUUCY! TV's "first lady of comedy" and Elfman's inspiration.
Goldie Hawn Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, 1968-70:
Hawn was TV's first "dumb blond." Not so dumb: becoming a major movie star.
Carol Burnett The Carol Burnett Show, 1967-79:
A tug of her ear, a Tarzan yell, and those great moments when the whole cast cracked up on camera.
Mary Tyler Moore The Mary Tyler Moore Show, 1970-77:
Her classic series wins some critics' votes as the best TV show ever.
Penny Marshall Laverne & Shirley, 1976-83:
"Schlameel, Schlamaazal, Hassenpepper Incorporated."
Jasmine Guy A Different World, 1987-93:
Upper-class Whitley gave new meaning to "annoying."
Helen Hunt Mad About You, 1992-present:
Was Murray's daughter on Mary Tyler Moore; now Carol Burnett plays her mom on Mad About You, a neurotic look at couplehood in the '90s.
-- Michele Hatty
Photo Credit:THEO WESTENBERGER FOR USA WEEKEND
itting outside the Dharma & Greg sound stage in Hollywood, Jenna Elfman is just what you'd expect of her sitcom alter-ego: energetic, talkative, opinionated. "Her spirit, her love of life, is definitely me," agrees Elfman. But behind the loopy character she plays on TV -- the kind of woman who weds a man she just met and gives her dog a dog as a bar mitzvah present -- is a contentedly married 26-year-old with strikingly traditional views.
