Kelly Carlson, aka Kimber Henry

With sexy good looks and a penchant for portraying blonde vixens on screen, it’s easy to underestimate Kelly Carlson as just another pretty face. But, this 31-year-old Minnesota native’s appeal goes far beyond skin deep. In fact, her looks are the only thing she has in common with the character she portrays on FX’s groundbreaking show Nip/Tuck. JEZ talks candidly with Carlson about the role that put her on the map, life’s lessons, the single life and her next move.

When I arrive at The Flowering Tree in West Hollywood, Calif., for my tête-à-tête with Kelly Carlson, she is eating a tuna-stuffed avocado at a quiet table. “The food here is so good!” she exclaims. “It is so clean, so healthy, you know?” Her wholesome, Midwestern manner strikes a chord uncommon by Hollywood standards, as she orders another salad and eases into our conversation. Is this the woman I think I know from watching Nip/Tuck? At 5 feet 5 inches, Carlson has a flat stomach, toned arms and a huge toothy smile, but, like most women, admits to feeling “average.” Baring super-white teeth and revealing just a hint of a Minnesota accent, she says, “I have a decent body, but I also think I can be a little more voluptuous in areas.”

It’s her, all right, but Carlson is nothing like Kimber Henry, the self-absorbed, beauty-craved blonde she has portrayed for four seasons, with the fifth season starting this fall, on Nip/Tuck. Kimber is a character searching for her soul through the scalpel of a plastic surgeon, who also happens to be her enduring love interest. What makes fans of the drama drool for successive episodes is the show’s psychological subtext, written upon the faces of patients seeking perfection in their lives. But Carlson is charming, sweet, down-toearth and fulfills her needs from the inside out–the polar opposite of Kimber. “I’m nothing like my character,” she says. “I’m a very private person; I don’t seek the spotlight. There are a million beautiful women in this town and I’m certainly not one of [them], but I play a cute girl.” At this admission, I want to say something like, “Takes one to know one,” but before I can, she launches into an analysis of Nip/Tuck that is both incisive and self-revealing. “It’s not about plastic surgery,” she says. “Plastic surgery is just one of [its] accessories. It’s really about life and human nature, which is not always a good thing.” With this bit of insight, she delves into other matters of self-perception.

Perhaps the steamiest hour on primetime, Nip/Tuck goes further than most shows dare. Kimber’s seductive and emotionally abusive relationship with Dr. Christian Troy is one of the show’s central plots amid a cascade of human indignities that appear left and right in what easily might be dismissed as mental slapstick. “Alcoholism, sex, addiction, money, raising children–every topic you can imagine has been covered, but the good thing about the show [is that] none of the characters get away with bad behavior,” Carlson explains. “There are always repercussions, and there is always a moral to the story.”

Carlson quickly illustrates her point. “Did you see the show where Kimber sleeps with Christian and then punches him in the face?” she asks. “It’s a perfect example of how men feel differently than women. For her, it was an intimate thing; for him, it was all about his ego. And I can totally relate to that! Everybody has had a moment like that before.”

Her analysis of Kimber is so precise that it is hard for me to believe that I am talking with an actress describing her own character. I can’t help but notice that Carlson treats the show as if it was something else. “It’s almost a form of therapy,” she admits. “You learn so much through self-discovery because they write so much about relationships with my character.”

Relationships are indeed important to Carlson, but despite having been a voyeur’s sex goddess in men’s magazines like Maxim, she is holding out for the right guy. “I’m very stubborn,” she explains, taking a bite of her lunch. “I’m not going to give myself up until I’m ready, until I feel that I’ve conquered what I want to and feel proud of my decisions at the end of the day.” In the interest of full disclosure, Carlson was in love and involved in a serious relationship for five years, but didn’t marry because “it wasn’t the right timing.” She stops and takes another bite.

“Boy, I’m really being personal,” she says, somewhat surprised at her atypical modus operandi, as if just realizing that we’ve moved from Kimber’s world into her own. She thinks for a moment and then continues. “I had to leave [that] relationship in order to do what I do,” she says, recalling her decision to start acting. “It was the happiest time of my life, because I was doing something; I wasn’t just sitting around. There is a certain pleasure [in] providing for oneself. I didn’t want to be that woman who had nothing to say for herself: I love working, I love creating, I love accomplishing things...I want to work.”

When she decides to marry, Carlson insists her husband will have to be her very best friend. “I’ve seen too many failed marriages,” she sighs. “If you ask someone who is married who their best friend is, if they don’t name their partner, there is a problem.” She gently admits that “marriage is another phase” and then smoothly leads the conversation back to Kimber’s tormented love life on Nip/Tuck as if to signal that she is done talking about herself. “I think [on Nip/Tuck] you learn about the opposite sex a lot, how they think and why they react they way they do,” she says. “You learn [about] the male psyche…and how they deal with sex and relationships.”

But what makes Carlson so downright un-Hollywood is that she is so not in the moment. She doesn’t care for partying or for hanging out with people who don’t care about her soul. “There are people that get attention by being friends with you, and when you are not on TV enough or in the tabloids enough, they ask, ‘Why aren’t you?’ and that’s because they get attention!” she snickers, briefly glancing at her Blackberry. “Nothing bugs me more than when people project their own needs onto me when it comes to fame. It’s such an insult!”

Growing up in middle-class Minneapolis, Carlson was an only child. Her mother, a hairstylist, and her father, a teacher, provided her with what she describes as an “excellent childhood.” But she did get in trouble at her Catholic school when she entered a Metallica phase at age 13. “I wanted to be edgy,” she remembers, somewhat proudly telling me how she got expelled from school for “being naughty.” Just weeks after the said incident, she decided that “preppy” was her new thing and begged her father to take her to Ralph Lauren for an entirely new wardrobe befitting her new personality.

“He didn’t say one word,” Carlson recalls. “He got off the chair, grabbed the car keys, walked to the car and waited for me to get in.” Though her dad died 11 years ago, Carlson says that his death is a constant reminder to live a fulfilling life, which is her one priority. Prompting Carlson’s avid wanderlust is the fact that her father never really had the opportunity to go anywhere. “It is kind of my mission to go everywhere, to appreciate other countries and cultures and learn something from [them],” she says. “I crave knowledge, but I need to experience it, you know?”

Carlson shows her love for her mother, with whom she shares a close relationship, by gardening and planting flowers with her. And when her mother calls her cell phone, the actress excuses herself during the cover shoot to talk. “My mom is very gorgeous,” she tells me as she hangs up. We continue down memory lane, but not for very long. “I wanted to be a veterinarian, [and] I was a professional rider, which would have been my profession,” Carlson recalls. “Now we are producing a show about horses,” she says, veering toward the future. “I definitely want to be a producer. That is definitely going to be on my credits. I like to act, but I want to own.” Ambition? Oh, yeah. “I’m a big dreamer!” Carlson says. “Everything I’ve ever [written in my journal] has come true. My dad taught me to visualize and manifest everything that you want. It’s really powerful!”

By the time we wrap up, I realize that Kimber’s life on Nip/Tuck is as complicated and multi-dimensional as the actress that plays her. Though far from similar and professionally distant, if Kimber and Carlson ever met, they might just become friends.