WITH AN EYE ON . . . : First home is where the heart is for ‘Babylon’s’ Claudia Christian--and a good role is comforting too

Claudia Christian rummages through her new digs in the Hollywood Hills doing something her strait-laced Lt. Commander Susan Ivanova on “Babylon 5” would never do: search for something lost. You see, Ivanova would never lose anything.

“Argh!” Christian says as a greeting. “I have looked everywhere for my diamond earrings.” Heavy sigh. “I can’t find them anywhere.”

She recites an inventory of where she looked and where they could have been. She sighs again. “They were the only nice things my ex-husband gave me.”

Eventually, she ends the search and declares, “Oh well, I guess it was meant to happen.”

Christian’s new home came with a first-time homeowner problem: “I moved in two weeks ago,” she says drolly, taking a munch out of a cracker. “Then I found out there’s a gas leak . It was like, ‘Oh, hello!’ ”

“I was tired of paying other people’s mortgages,” Christian, 29, explains about buying her first home. In addition to the main house, there’s a pool house and a guest house, as well as the home’s piece de resistance , 10 parking spaces for guests. “I love to entertain,” she says.

Having a home of one’s own, she adds in the third person, “is a really good feeling, especially for someone who got her first series at 18. So after some 11 years in the business and some 30 features, it was about time.”

Born in Glendale and raised in Connecticut, the aspiring actress returned to the City of Angels at 16. “I don’t have a formal education,” she explains, “but I educated myself through travel.”

Christian worked in a coffeehouse and at a clothing store before getting her first role at 18 (a guest part on “Dallas” in 1984). From that point on she supported herself through acting.

More guest roles followed “Dallas,” then regular parts on NBC’s “Berrenger’s,” “Blacke’s Magic,” “The Highwayman,” “Shannon’s Deal” and ABC’s “Police Story,” as well as lead parts in the feature films “The Hidden,” “Clean & Sober” and “Hexxed.”

She wasn’t a film actress opposed to television, so she found herself drawn to “Babylon 5” and series work. Especially, she says, “after a couple of lawsuits came at me from car accidents and drained me financially.

“I’d had leads in studio features but had done a lot of television. I was worried about becoming ‘Ms. Guest-Star Queen,’ but I’d also been on five series and I wanted to branch out with this. Now I’m really grateful I was forced to take it. Everyone’s great.”

While she says she no history with science fiction, she was drawn to “Babylon 5” because she felt Ivanova “was strong, with a wry sense of humor. I liked the quality. I knew it wasn’t going to be ‘Baywatch in Space.’ ”

Acknowledging she’s perhaps biased, she says that the series is “by far the best science-fiction show; we’re much more colorful than anyone else.”

Christian enjoys the shoots at “Babylon 5’s” studio in Sun Valley. “We have everything here,” she says in an earlier conversation from the set. “All the production offices, the makeup, looping to special effects. Since there aren’t the usual distractions of a studio, like a shop and a cafeteria, you really concentrate on your job and get out faster. We don’t have the usual 16-hour days. You get there at 6 a.m. and can go home by 7 p.m. You can actually have a social life with this job.”

For now, her social life is limited to her friends and family. “I’m just learning to create a social life for myself,” she says. She’ll be heading to Europe with her mother next week, and when she returns she’ll look for a job while on hiatus from the series.

“Work is work for me, as long as the part is interesting and the people are quality, I’m happy,” she says. “I’ve played all kinds of roles, from transsexuals to femme fatales, from nut cases to vulnerable mothers, drug addicts, strippers, all sorts of things. It’s everyone’s dream to be a movie star, who are we kidding, but I really am perfectly content to just work.”

“Babylon 5,” which begins new episodes this week, airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on KCOP.