After graduation from the Yale School of Drama, Christopher Noth told his agent he wasn't going to do television. For many stage actors, TV work ranks just above ribbon-cutting at the local shopping mall.
Now, Noth smiles as he recalls that lofty notion from his youth. He recently completed a second season as Detective Mike Logan on NBC's Tuesday night drama series "Law & Order.""I was a snotty kid," Noth says of his early disdain for TV. "Then I went on the theater circuit, so I was ready when (the agent) said he had a pilot for me."
Noth is among kindred spirits on "Law & Order," where all the cast members have extensive theater back-grounds. He also can take comfort from the fact that "Law & Order" is leagues above most TV dramas.
The cases on "Law & Order" seem so real you feel you read about them in a recent newspaper. That's because you probably did.
"It has a great look," Noth said of the show. "We shoot on location in New York City. The colors are muted. We use hand-held 35mm cameras. We go barreling into an alleyway and the cameramen are right behind us with the cameras on their shoulders. We go out of our way to avoid melodrama and a soap opera approach. The format doesn't allow it. Everything is business. We don't go into the personal lives of the main characters."
Each episode is divided into two parts: the police investigation of the crime and the prosecution and trial.
Noth and Paul Sorvino, as Detective Phil Cerreta, handle the investigation, backed by Dann Florek as Capt. John Cragen. The prosecution is conducted by two assistant district attorneys, Michael Moriarty as Ben Stone and Richard Brooks as Paul Robinette, backed by Steven Hill as District Attorney Adam Schiff.
"I really don't feel that I'm doing television," Noth said. "It's like doing a small movie. We keep trying to stretch the parameters. I look at all the cop movies. They have more time and a bigger budget than we have, access to language and sex, but I think we do it better. They haven't done their homework. We go for the jugular."
Noth said his biggest problem doing "Law & Order" is that he had to dump three years of speech training to do Mike Logan's New York accent. He'll have to take speech training again to lose the accent, he said.
"I don't like to talk about the character because it sounds inane," Noth said. "But he's a young cop who's passionate about his job. I get most of my character from hanging out with real detectives. It's behavior. It's worth a pound of words. I don't think I got under Mike Logan's skin in the pilot. It was so foreign to anything I had done. It took a lot of research and study."
Noth has worked in Los Angeles - on "Hill Street Blues," for instance - but says he has yet to "bite the bullet" and move West.
"I was born in Madison, Wis., but I really grew up in Stamford, Conn.," said Noth, the son of former CBS reporter Jeanne Parr. "Mom was with CBS News. I got to know New York well."
He set out to become a writer, studying at Marlboro College in Vermont until he joined an acting group.
"The first time on stage I was in `She Stoops To Conquer,' " he said. "Suddenly, people laughed. I didn't think they would find it funny, but the audience roared. I almost lost it, and the energy it took me not to laugh added to the scene. I learned very early you have to take whatever comes up and use it."
He worked in the theater in New York, but felt he needed more training and auditioned for the Yale Drama School.
One of his greatest experiences was playing "Hamlet" at the American Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, Conn., with Zoe Caldwell directing, he said.
"We did the show for kids from the inner cities," Noth said. "Hamlet's soliloquies are meant to be played directly to the audience, and the audience should respond. The kids said, `Kill him! Kill him!' It was amazing the way the kids responded."
Noth also has appeared in the miniseries "I'll Take Manhattan" and the TV movie "The Mirror," as well as such feature films as "Off Beat," "Smithereens" and "Baby Boom."
Although he became an actor, he still writes and is working on a screenplay with a friend.
"It's Dante's `Divine Comedy' set in Indonesia," he said. "It's about a man who thinks he knows exactly what he is until he moves to an alien environment. He tries to find his soul through the land and culture. Its theme is finding your way home."