PhotograPhy by Cliff liPson • styling by angelique o’neil CBS’ MOST STUNNING CRIME FIGHTERS— LAUREN LEE SMITH OF CSI, COTE DE PAblO OF NCIS AND EVA LA RUE OF CSI: MIAmi— TRADE THEIR BADGES FOR A DAY IN THE CALIFORNIA SUN. by Jim ColuCCi They hunt down stray hairs and other crime scene clues. They dissect dead bodies. Sometimes, they even rough up rogue gunmen. And all the while, they look darn good. These are the lady crime fighters of CBS. With beauty as their special weapon, Cote de Pablo, lauren lee smith and eva la rue can stun any adversary into submission—and us viewers as well. At our photo shoot in Laguna Beach, Calif., Watch! asked these stars from NCIS, CSI and CSI: Miami, respectively, to trade in their firearms for mascara wands.e ffectively disarmed, the three sirens of the small screen revealed the secrets behind their pulchritudinous power. GLAM 42 June 2009 Watch! FdCW0609_42-53_Glam Squad.indd 42 4/7/09 2:44:55 PMSQUAD GLAM SQUFdCW0609_42-53_Glam Squad.indd 43 AD4/7/09 11:36:15 AM 44 June 2009 Watch! FdCW0609_42-53_Glam Squad.indd 44 4/7/09 11:37:44 AM CSI AIRS THURSDAYS AT 9 P.M. ET/PT ON CBS. LAUREN LEE SMITH or Lauren Lee Smith, the with each role, the chameleon-like actress fresh-faced actress behind has sported a different look. “For every major CSI’s newest investigator project, I try to change as much as possible. Riley Adams, a high-style I’m surprised that I actually have hair on my photo shoot can be a welcome head right now, because it’s been every color change. “All of us every day of the rainbow,” the actress says. “For me, go to work and we’re tough the one thing that always bothers me when I chicks,” she says of the characters she, La Rue watch actors is if they always look the same, F and de Pablo inhabit from week to week. “So then I identify them as that one character. So it was such a treat to get to wear these beauti- I think I’ve been quite lucky in that a lot of ful dresses, these phenomenal shoes, and times, people will say, ‘That was you?!’ I love get made up. It was really fun to get to let the it when I hear that. Because I think it’s part of inner girliness come out.” the character to look as different from Lauren Of course, for a jeans-and-T-shirts gal like as possible.” Smith, the wired false eyelashes she wore here But when it came to creating CSI’s Riley for Watch! were foreign, exotic—and more Adams, who debuted last fall in this season’s than a little scary. “I really don’t wear a lot of third episode, Smith decided to imbue the makeup; I like to be comfy,” Smith admits. character with many of her own real, casual “And these lashes were like 3 inches long. It traits. Like Smith, Riley is “a confident girl, was a little bit intimidating because they took and a tomboy. She’s a wash-and-go kind of gal, about 25 minutes to get onto my eyes. And who wants to be accepted as one of the guys.” then I was afraid,” she adds, laughing, “that In fact, the actress has no problem even play- I wasn’t going to be able to open them.” ing down her own natural, glowing good looks It’s unusual for the 28-year-old Canadian in service of her role as a junior investigator actress, who credits her laid-back outlook often called upon to sift through the muck to her wandering, international upbringing and mire of a crime scene. “I love to play it the by self-described “hippie” parents, to spend grungiest, the dirtiest, and the most minimal,” time thinking about such small, cosmetic she stresses. “Putting aside my vanity helps details. “I’m pretty comfortable in my skin,” me feel like the character.” she avows. “We all have our flaws. That’s what In researching her role, Smith says, she met hair and makeup and wardrobe are for, to with a Las Vegas CSI Level 2 who showed up create this sort of illusion of perfection. But in camo cargoes and a T-shirt, sans makeup, in reality, we all get pimples. We all have fat “and she looked amazing.” After all, for the days. I think you have to embrace that stuff.” real team, there’s no time to reapply one’s The tall, slim blonde maintains her con- lipstick. “They get a call in the middle of the fidence (and her good looks) quite casually. night, and they have to go.” She doesn’t plan an exercise regimen, but just Of course, this being network television, naturally loves to run. And she doesn’t stress home of the pretty people, the actress does out about diet either, indulging in hamburgers understand that Riley may sometimes have and pizza about as often as she opts for brown to end up smudging a bit of unlikely eyeliner rice and veggies, a meal she grew up with thanks as she peers into a lab tech’s microscope. to her vegetarian mom. “Like everything in “It’s a bit of a compromise,” she admits. Both life, it’s all about balance,” she says. on screen as Riley and in her own personal After her high school years spent per- life, chasing after her two black Lab puppies forming Shakespeare at a local theater in in the park with her fiancé, “I would love Los Angeles, Smith curiously left Hollywood always to wear a messy ponytail.” But it’s the and moved back to her native Vancouver to high-glam days like this one, at the Watch! start an acting career. The strategy worked; photo shoot, where Smith says she realizes, she was soon appearing in a wide range of “after all, sometimes it’s kind of pretty to let Canadian-produced TV series and films. And your hair down.” Watch! June 2009 45 FdCW0609_42-53_Glam Squad.indd 45 4/7/09 11:49:35 AM NCIS AIRS TUESDAYS AT 8 P.M. ET/PT ON CBS. COTE DE PABLO f you’ve ever watched a worldwide admits. Another downfall: potatoes. “In any beauty contest like the Miss Universe way, shape, or form, I love them.” Pageant, you’ve undoubtedly noticed In 2005, de Pablo joined the cast of NCIS that the continent of South America for its third season. Ironically for the actress consistently produces young women as now playing the Israeli Mossad agent Ziva vibrant and long-stemmed as the roses David, “Cote” is actually a common Chilean that grow in NCIS star Cote de Pablo’s nickname for Maria Jose, meaning “Mary native Chile. South of the equator, with so Joseph.” “You can’t get more Catholic than I many native, European and African ethnicities ‘the father and mother of Jesus,’ ” she points mixing together, “it’s a melting pot culture, out, laughing. So to research her role, de and you get all these beautiful creatures,” de Pablo traveled to the Middle East to meet her Pablo theorizes. character’s real-life counterparts. And while And although the world continues to TV’s Ziva may seem to be the hottest possible succumb more and more to a plastic-surgery- woman ever to don camouflage cargo pants, obsessed Western culture, she remembers her de Pablo says that in Israel, she found plenty homeland, from which she emigrated with her of equally beautiful men and women working family to Miami at age 10, as a place that val- in service to their country. “You could cast ued much more natural looks. “Often, they’re them in an action movie and they could be not conventionally pretty, and that in itself can stars tomorrow, just based on their looks.” be so very beautiful. You can have a big nose, Still, from the beginning, she wanted to play and carry it with such pride. That’s why to me, Ziva’s looks on the plainer side. For one thing, the perfect kind of beauty is a little boring.” it keeps de Pablo’s time in the hair and makeup During her college days studying musical trailer down to a mere half-hour of blow-drying. theater at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon But more importantly, as a character choice, University, de Pablo recalls her classmates “I wanted to wear very little makeup, and just encouraged her to play up her natural assets, to make the character’s beauty come from her and thus juice up her grades. She would confidence in her sexuality. Her appeal doesn’t refuse, “because I wanted people to perceive have to come from her being glamorous, or me based on what I did on stage. I felt like my cookie-cutter beautiful. It just comes from her beauty might make people not take me seri- security as a woman, from being in control of ously. That it would never enhance anything, the situation,” she explains. and might even take something away. So my In the seasons thereafter, de Pablo has oc- reaction to beauty was always to get rid of it.” casionally acquiesced to a little more primp- Even in her adult career, she says she has ing, especially when it’s tied to a particular never read a Hollywood casting “breakdown” storyline. In this season’s premiere, Ziva looking for the pretty girl role.