The Best of Both Worlds

CSI: NY’s Anna Belknap has her head in the clouds in LA and keeps her feet on the ground at home in Maine.

By Amy Louise Barnett

Anna Belknap is about to have her first baby. Any day now. But on the set of CSI: NY, where she plays Detective Lindsay Monroe, Belknap is decidedly not pregnant. “They hide it,” she says. “I’m always standing behind something, or else they shoot just my face.”

She never tries to hide when she comes home to Damariscotta, where most of her family still lives. “My parents used to own the Belknap True Value Hardware store—they retired and now it’s the River Grill. I always go to Reny’s…and Shaw’s [Shaw’s Fish & Lobster Wharf in New Harbor]—that’s where I have to go. I eat lobster, and their onion rings, which are insane…and Moody’s Diner.”

Belknap and husband Eric Siegel, also an actor, have their own place in Waldoboro. “Last year we spent spring there. Except for the holidays, we usually stay away in the winter. We got married in my parents’ backyard. We love coming home to Maine.”

Siegel has his own rituals when he returns. “He gets a few Carhartt sweatshirts at Reny’s,” almost first thing. “Once I bought him a red union suit there!”

After high school at Lincoln Academy, Belknap, 34, received a BA in history and theater at Middlebury College in Vermont, then an MFA at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where she met Siegel. Then she headed to New York, where she struggled with the usual waitress and coat-check jobs while “doing theater, for not much money. I supported myself for the last two and a half years in New York working pretty consistently in regional theater and television in the city.”

Her first professional acting gig was the Sondheim musical Do I Hear a Waltz? and her first television assignment was on Homicide, filmed in Baltimore. More recently, she’s been capturing big audiences in Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU , Without a Trace, and The Handler, among others. Her regular role on CSI: NY allows her to work daily with Gary Sinise and Melina Kanakaredes. “Gary has amazing stories,” Belknap says. “He’s a brilliant actor. Melinda is a fabulous actress and fun. We goof around—keeping it light since we deal with blood and guts all day.”

She’s kept up her chops on the stage, too, since moving west. “I was in Pericles at [San Diego’s] Old Globe theater, and I did two Moliere one-act plays in L.A. with Brian Bedford.” How about films? “Only two—The Reality Trap and Alchemy. The trouble is, you don’t have time doing a TV series, except during the two-month hiatus. Last year I was pregnant, so I was always tired.” This year she’ll have the baby in tow.

Belknap doesn’t get the “star treatment” when she’s in Maine—or anywhere else off the set. “I don’t get recognized because I look different—they make my hair different, and I definitely dress better on the show. [In real life], I look like a Mainer. I don’t dress up. Maine is a good counter-balance for Los Angeles; great if you can have a little place to relax.”

Maine, she says, “informs my whole approach to acting. This character I play [in CSI: NY] is supposed to be from Montana. The whole ‘coming from a smaller, outdoorsy place’—I thought of how I felt when I went to New York.”

She’s never worked with some of Maine’s more famous actors—Patrick Dempsey, John O’Hurley, Stockard Channing—but “the brother of one of the guys who directed an episode taught with my brother at UMO, and an actress I know from the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles is from Cape Elizabeth. We met a kid at the UPS store who was from Maine. He was homesick, so we invited him back to our house.”

Asked about love scenes, Belknap says, “Thank god I’ve never had to see my husband kissing someone. And the most I’ve had to do is kiss. It’s weird. There’s 40 guys watching you. It’s technical—you worry about hitting your mark, where the camera is. One time I had to kiss a guy who just came from eating tuna fish and Doritos. I said, ‘You can’t do that,’ and I got him some gum.”

If there’s any doubt about how she feels about her home state, Anna Belknap is here to set the record straight. “I absolutely adore Damariscotta. I mainly stay around the mid-coast: swimming at the mill, down to Pemaquid, Camden, through the hills. And, of course, Freeport.”

She’s never been called upon to use a Maine accent for a role. “I wish I could, ‘cause I love the Maine accent. I do it joking around—the lobsterman accent. Other actors usually don’t get it right.”

This Damariscotta hometown gal seems to be getting life exactly right.

© 2007 Portland Magazine Colin Sargent, Editor & Publisher editor@portlandmonthly.com Click here to subscribe