INTO THE SPOTLIGHT / ARLENE PARNESS : THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Marcia Clark Look-Alike Courts Fame

For 25 years, Arlene Parness waited for her big break. She danced with a cow in a milk commercial, played a corpse in the movie “Outbreak,” and stood around in crowd shots on the television show “Models Inc.” She passed her photo out to dozens of casting agents, always hoping for the role that would make her a star.

But no one was much interested. Until Marcia Clark hit the scene.

Now the struggling actress, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the famous prosecutor, is getting more work--and attention--than she ever imagined.

It started last week when Parness talked her way onto a “Tonight Show” appearance with Jay Leno’s “Dancing Itos” quintet. On Thursday night, the show brought her back to tango with a dancing F. Lee Bailey. Strangers see her on the street, stop dead in their tracks and run up to her, thinking she is the prosecutor.

“This could all die down and nobody will talk to me when it’s all over,” she said. “But I’m hoping to get enough work by being Marcia Clark that people will know about me and know I can do stuff, then I could audition for sitcoms.”

Parness’ husband was the first to notice that Parness and Clark looked alike.

“I’ve been an O.J. junkie since the preliminary hearing,” Michael Sadler said. “I’d say, ‘Honey, you look just like Marcia Clark, I swear to God.’ The first time I saw (Clark), I said, ‘That’s my wife.’ At first, she just pooh-poohed it.”

But then Parness’ co-workers started noticing the likeness. A couple of weeks ago, while Parness was working as an extra on the set of a TV movie about Elizabeth Taylor, the crew started calling her Marcia.

“The assistants would say to me, ‘Miss Clark, could you stand over there, please,” ’ Parness said. “They kept telling me I looked like her. I would just roll in looking like a zombie with no makeup and they thought I still looked like her.”

Parness didn’t waste any time in trying out her act.

“The crew of the Liz Taylor movie told me that Jay Leno does comedy sketches on the Simpson case,” she said. “I decided to crash the show.”

*

On March 14, she put on a suit she borrowed from a neighbor, painted a beauty mark above her lip and headed to the NBC studios in Burbank.

Parness said she pretended she had an appointment with Leno’s casting director. Once inside the studio, the crew was struck by her resemblance to the prosecutor--and tickled to learn that she could dance, show representative Jennifer Barnett said.

The casting crew told her they would be in touch. They called her back two hours later.

“They told me to show up for rehearsal the next day,” said Parness, who sometimes becomes breathless when talking about her newfound success. “If I could do the dance steps, I could do the job. . . . It was like a dream come true.”

After a six-hour practice session, Parness taped the skit with the “Dancing Itos,” five men dressed in black robes. The show aired March 16. On Thursday night, she came back with a rose clenched in her teeth to dance with a Bailey look-alike.

Parness, who won’t reveal her age beyond saying she’s roughly as old as the 41-year-old Clark, said she is amazed at how many people do double takes when they see her in costume.

To demonstrate, earlier in the week she stopped by the Beverly Center to pick up a meditation tape.

One man asked for her autograph, convinced that she was the prosecutor. Another woman asked for a hug.

“You look even more beautiful off the screen,” Edith Lewis told the actress, thinking she was Clark. “Isn’t she lovely?” Lewis asked a reporter, who did not have the heart to tell her the truth.

But Celeste Musick and Brian Stevens, who work at the 9 West store, knew immediately that Parness was a fraud.

“She wears too much makeup to be Marcia Clark,” Musick said.

“Plus,” Stevens added, “what would Marcia Clark be doing in the Beverly Center at 3 p.m. on a court day?”