Down Under to over the moon
Like many acting hopefuls arriving in Los Angeles, Australian native Poppy Montgomery at 18 dreamed of stardom.
“When I first came to America my friend had an apartment at Motor and Palms,” she says. “If you went up on the roof you could see the whole Sony lot and I remember thinking ‘One day ... ‘ “
A decade later, she’s still starry-eyed but you could say her dream has come true.
“It’s like magic to me,” says Montgomery, who has lost her Australian accent. “When I drive to work on the Warner Bros. lot, it’s incredible. I am still aghast they are not going to throw me out.”
Montgomery costars in the CBS missing persons’ thriller “Without a Trace.” The Jerry Bruckheimer production is giving NBC’s long-running “ER” a run for its money in the 10 p.m. Thursday slot. Montgomery plays FBI agent Sam Spade, who is recovering from a gunshot wound in the leg and dealing with a lot of personal baggage, including unrequited love for her married boss, Jack Malone (fellow Aussie Anthony LaPaglia) -- all of which has led Sam to seek therapy.
Montgomery acknowledges that acting out her character’s flaws have been fun. “The relationship between Samantha and Jack came about one moment in the pilot when I went and fixed Anthony’s tie,” she says. “There was a lot of chemistry.”
Before landing “Without a Trace,” Montgomery hadn’t had much luck in series TV, despite working for some high-powered TV producers. She made her series-regular debut in Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick’s short-lived ABC show “Relativity.” She was then tapped to appear in Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson’s crime drama, “The Beat,” which had a disappointing showing on UPN. “Glory Days” from “Dawson’s Creek” creator Kevin Williamson quickly disappeared.
“The first time a show was canceled it was heartbreaking for me,” says Montgomery, relaxing in the living room of the antique-filled Spanish-style Los Feliz home she bought last fall. “After that, you sort of become a gambler in Vegas. I am a fatalist. I believe whatever is going to happen is going to happen. So I have come to a point where it doesn’t destroy me. With ‘Without a Trace,’ I thought it was an amazing project with amazing people. I knew it had a great lead-in, ‘CSI,’ but I knew we were up against ‘ER.’ ”
A self-proclaimed workaholic, “there is nothing that makes me happier than being on a movie set.” Last summer, Montgomery worked back --to back on two projects during her hiatus from “Without a Trace” -- the CBS movie “Raising Waylon,” which has aired, and the indie feature comedy “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” which will premiere at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival next month.
Montgomery is looking at a “few projects” to do during this summer’s break but says she’s too superstitious to disclose them.”I would prefer to work and if everything works out, hopefully I will be,” she says. But Montgomery will take whatever happens in stride. “If I get to hang out here, work on my house, see my friends or visit Australia, that’s fine too.”
