Just Perfect for the Part

In CBS’ upcoming remake of the 1979 movie “Tim,” you’ll see actress Candice Bergen strolling down the beach in a bathing suit. But the perfect figure in the swimsuit won’t be Bergen’s. It belongs to 29-year-old Shelly Michelle--body double.

Never mind that Bergen is 50; most viewers of the made-for-TV movie will never be the wiser. Nor were most aware that Michelle doubled for Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman,” for Ann Jillian in “Fast Company” and for Sandra Bullock on the box of the video of “A Fool and His Money.”

“In ‘Fast Company,’ I actually doubled for Ann Jillian, and I doubled for another girl and I had a part in the movie too,” Michelle says. “The director said: ‘Do you think people are going to know it’s all the same body?’ They never caught on, though.

“I think for the most part people assume [it’s the actress’ body]. They look for perfection, so they assume the actress is going to look great,” says Michelle, a leggy former Joffrey Ballet corps de ballet dancer who got her start doubling the legs of Kim Basinger in the 1988 comedy “My Stepmother Is an Alien.”

To the audience, she says, “it doesn’t click: ‘Oh, that’s the double.’ But someone in the industry is going to say: ‘That’s not her legs.’ ”

As a body double, Michelle has learned to take personal pride in the successes of the actresses whom audiences think she is.

“In [the 1992 Showtime movie] ‘Nails,’ I did this love scene for Anne Archer with Dennis Hopper,” Michelle says. “Being a dancer, I always choreograph love scenes to the count of four: He’s on top of me for four, I roll this way for four. . . . Anyway, I was on top of him and it was this nude shot of my back and my butt and my legs, and I made her look gorgeous! And I thought to myself, everybody thinks this is Anne Archer. She told me it put 10 years on her career. She told me that!”

For Michelle and others, doubling is big business. That’s why she has launched Body Doubles and Parts, a just-over-1-year-old Los Angeles agency that finds not only the obligatory shapely female forms for Hollywood nude scenes but also perfect ears for earring commercials and comely hands to hawk wedding rings and salad dressings.

“We do things with legs and feet, but mainly I’d say that hands are most popular, so I have a whole slew of hands,” Michelle says.

At a private home high in Topanga Canyon, during a break from taping the “Swimsuit Edition” of one of a series of pay-per-view specials she is hosting, Michelle says her fledgling agency already makes about 300 women and 100 men available to casting directors, who traditionally had to go through the Screen Extras Guild to find doubles. “Nobody has ever had a business like it in the world; no one has capitalized on this particular niche,” she says.

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Michelle says that business is booming because, among some female stars, doing nudity is definitely out--and not just for aging stars who may want to stay covered for reasons of vanity, not modesty.

“Once a celebrity becomes big, for some reason, she doesn’t want to do any nudity, she wants to be like this,” says Michelle, wrapping what little there is of her short robe up tight around her neck.

“I think somebody like Demi Moore says, ‘I work so hard on my body, I don’t want a body double’--but now, I think it’s the in thing for the actress to say: ‘I want [the audience] to know that’s a body double.’ It’s a double standard, because the actress wants to look great and perfect [nude]--but at the same time, the actress is saying, ‘I don’t do nudity.’ ”

For herself, Michelle feels perfectly comfortable baring it all. “I’ve always been a ballet dancer. . . . My body, I look at it like an art form; it can be very tasteful,” she says. “My work is my body, and being a double, you have to kinesthetically act with your body. If the actress is supposed to be sad at that point, or passionate, or scared, you’ve got to show that with your body.”

In this setting, with Michelle and several other women frolicking in the sunshine around a swimming pool complete with man-made waterfall, alternately clad in such attire as faux-alligator bikinis and hip boots or nothing at all (depending on the shot), Michelle’s workaday world resembles an NC-17 episode of “Fantasy Island.”

For Michelle and those who work through her agency, however, the body is just a tool of the trade.

And if they don’t have those tools, Michelle says, most would-be doubles head for the hardware store. “About 85% of the women who do body doubling definitely have had surgery, especially breast augmentation,” she says.

“A lot of girls will come to me in the agency and say, ‘Hey, should I get my breasts done?,’ and I have to tell them, ‘Well, yes, it’s going to help you,’ and they will work more nowadays with larger breasts. It’s a shame, but that’s just the way it is now.

“I think possibly it will come back down to reality some day, when real bodies are acceptable, but at this moment, with technology and surgery, more is [better]. But not too outrageous. Some girls will go out and get too much done, and then I can’t work them at all.

“I think the reason I have doubled so many different actresses is that I’m kind of a generic type. Not too tall, not too short . . . I’ve doubled people who are 15 years older, people who are 15 years younger, five inches taller, three inches shorter. I’m a very in-proportion size.

“Of course, if I was going to get breast augmentation, I’d get it out to there,” she adds, laughing. “I haven’t, but if it would enhance my career, I would definitely consider it.”

Michelle realizes that the career of the body double is even shorter than that of the actresses she doubles for, and she aspires to move into acting. She is getting married this month and realizes that pregnancies may necessitate a career change. Michelle says she is studying martial arts and she’s branching out into singing as well.

“One of my reasons for forming the agency is so I can graduate to movies myself,” she says. “I didn’t think I’d be doubling this long--but as long as I’m still in shape and in demand, I’ll do it.”