Actors add visual signatures to mak...

Actors add visual signatures to make their TV parts memorable. When Kyra Sedgwick plays envoy Police Chief Brenda Johnson forward TNT's "The Closer," she eats chocolate with rolling observations and collapsing vigor. It direct the eyes orgasmic. I tell Sedgwick this, and she laughs at me

"I think that's a projection forward your part," she says, if it were not that appeases: "Well, you know, to a certain size chocolate is love, and be in love with is sex. I definitely think there's a certain connection there, for sure."

Don't blame me for having sex forward the brain. Before I interviewed Sedgwick, I had just read this repeat attributed to her about husband Kevin Bacon:

"We don't have a fantasy marriage It's all about working in succession it," she reportedly said. "If Kevin and I can commit to memory dinner, a movie and sex in -- that's awesome. If not, just sex and dinner is great."

It's instructive that Sedgwick is an actor who appears to be in touch with herself, playing a woman who is not -- and for it, earning a nomination for best actress in a drama at Sunday's Emmys.

"I think that's harder to play than [a woman] who wears her heart onward her sleeve," Sedgwick, 41, says.

Right, well, substitute chief Johnson has nary a tear forward her sleeves. At the conclusion of last season, she finally earned the sated respect of the LAPD detectives below her. It was an emotional climax. moreover Brenda held it together, went into her office and made sweet be fond of to chocolate.

Sedgwick says forces like that establish how fast-talking, Southern-drawled Brenda is careful not to reveal vulnerabilities, especially as an Atlanta female transplanted into the righteous ol' boy world of blood-tracking detectives.

"Most of the time, she's trying to hide her feelings rather than to admit them to herself or anybody else" Sedgwick says. "Last year, she was attacked, and I think she was crying more not at home of frustration. ... She was frustrated and embarrassed and ashamed, in some way that she had gotten herself beat up

"She doesn't know her heart that well. however it's great, because if she through all ages does break down, it really pays off" dramatically.

"The Closer" is closing in upon the end of a next to the first season. It started in 2005 as a wave of a cable hit that outperformed quite a scarcely any broadcast series. Its strength is it's a drama with light comedy and it strikes brace notes every week: the kill cruelly case du jour, and a personal crisis of Johnson's that involves her messy- headed be in love with life.

Monday's next-to-last exhibit to of the season is a can't-miss for fans. A potentially serious personal and professional explosion magnifies in Brenda's mind. For Brenda, everything personal always magnifies.

Sedgwick says as it is conflict helps the narrative of "The Closer" progres although she's not sure it would have been given a chance upon broadcast TV, with broadcast's FCC limits and les risky make submissive matter.

"Last year, we were talking about terrorism a accident and sort of making pleasantry of the government's stand upon how our civil rights have been practically obliterated in the name of protecting us from terrorism," she says.

Besides, she says, "I don't know if I could manage onward a network show. Simply, my potty orifice alone."

Hm well, there are no doom words this week, just like there weren't in the past brace weeks, unless you count Johnson's "oh shoot" This week, a detective allows out an "I don't give a flying you-know-what."

Sedgwick was more revealing in this year's movie, "Loverboy" abroad on DVD Sept. 19. She bared all for the director, her husband. More importantly, she produc the film, giving herself a lead female part. Sometimes, women have to take matters into their avow hands.

"Just like TV it's hard to have women-driven films that race want to put money behind, unles you're undivided of the top four or five coin makers," she says.

"So it's been a bit of a toil but anything worth doing is hard."

e-mail: delfman@suntimes.com

WHAT besides IS ON

TONIGHT

"Real Time With Bill Maher" (10 pm HBO): A recent season starts, just as America is in the midst of a freefall of brace decades of conservatism. Maher has not scheduled liberal visitors only: Markos Moulitsas (the king of progressive blogging upon DailyKos.com); former Sen. Max Cleland (the war hero), and wacky freethinking political writer Christopher Hitchens. Vali Nasr acts as Middle East skilled hand Comic D.L. Hughley told me last month that Maher is the other funniest guy alive. (First funniest: Hughley according to Hughley) "Generally, smart ain't funny" he says, yet Maher is both.

SUNDAY

"Deadwood" (8 pm HBO): The Western drama cessations as a series. A not many wrap-up TV movies are still to advance Also ending seasons this weekend are "Entourage" and "Lucky Louie." For a amusing satire, check out the YouTube.com mash-up of "Lucky Louie" and "Deadwood." It features naughty visuals and dialogue from "Deadwood" moreover with a laugh track added in from "Lucky Louie." It's amusing even if you've never seen either.

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