Is there better proof of the circle of life than the fact that Jeanne Tripplehorn—who first steamed her way into movie theaters as a sexy police shrink in Basic Instinct—is returning to the world of chasing psychos? This fall, the Emmy-nominated actress gets her badge as a profiler on Criminal Minds, the popular FBI procedural entering its eighth season on CBS. A lot has happened in the 20 years between these two roles, both on-screen (she’s been in everything from The Firm to Sliding Doors to HBO’s multiwifer Big Love) and off (she married actor Leland Orser and had a son, now 10). The Juilliard-trained actress, 49, even flashed her funny bone earlier this year as Dermot Mulroney’s ex-wife on New Girl, so you can pretty much forget the old Hollywood triple threat: these days it’s called Tripple-horn.
Watch!: So what attracted you to Criminal Minds?
Jeanne Tripplehorn: Well, it kind of came out of nowhere!
Watch!: Jeanne Tripplehorn isn’t a crime procedural junkie?
Jeanne: I do not watch these shows! I have a hard enough time turning my mind off before I go to sleep, so shows like this just get me all wound up. I was not familiar with Criminal Minds, but I sat down with [executive producer] Erica Messer and [creator] Mark Gordon and just thought it was a great opportunity. It was an example of the right role at the right time.
Watch!: How so?
Jeanne: Right now, my main focus is my family and I don’t want to travel, and that narrows your field of work opportunities. I was also trying to find something that was very different from Barb, my character on Big Love. This character is very cerebral and the tone of the show is just a complete 180 from what I’ve been experiencing the last five or six years.
Watch!: What can you tell us about your character’s back story?
Jeanne: I’m still kind of learning about her, but she’s career FBI, one of the youngest people recruited, a real hotshot. She’s a Georgetown professor in forensic linguistics, she’s a loner, worked on the Unabomber case, very driven, no children.
[Read the whole interview on cbswatchmagazine.com]