Sherry Stringfield - New York Times
November 26, 1996

NEW YORK -- For Sherry Stringfield, the decision to walk away from the fame and fortune that came with her starring role in "E.R." was a simple choice.

"Do I want to continue going down this road?" she said. "Or do I want to take a different road? I had a pretty good taste of what working on the show meant in my life, and I just realized it's not for me."

Tonight is her last night in the plum role of Dr. Susan Lewis. Ms. Stringfield sent a small shock wave through Hollywood this week with the news that she was quitting television's highest-rated show to do, well, nothing much. All she wants, she said in an interview yesterday, is to "live a more normal life."

"It's a little embarrassing," Ms. Stringfield, who is 28, said of the attention surrounding her decision. "In my opinion, it shouldn't be that important. I do think it's kind of ironic, though. Here I'm supposed to be starting this normal life, and my name is in headlines all over the country."

Ms. Stringfield has moved back to New York from Los Angeles, one of the other goals of her quitting the show. She appeared totally relaxed over lunch yesterday at the Plaza Hotel. The actress was dressed in a dark velvet jacket that almost matched her hair, newly changed from Dr. Lewis's blond to a rich brown.

The decision to leave the Thursday night NBC show, which reaches 37 million viewers every week, was not especially hard for her to make, she said, though it did come slowly to fruition, mainly because "it took a while before anyone would take it seriously." First she had to convince her own representatives that she really wanted to take this step.

"My agent was, like, spitting water over the table at lunch when I said what I wanted to do," she said. Executives at Warner Brothers, which owns the show, reacted at first as if she were yet another star angling for more money.

What she really wanted, she said, was more of a life. She said she started thinking about the idea of just walking away from the show when an "E.R." director, David Nutter, said to her at the end of a typically grueling day on the set, "It's not a race."

"That said it perfectly," Ms. Stringfield said.

Though she had already spent one season on another hit show, "N.Y.P.D. Blue," Ms. Stringfield said she was prepared neither for the demands of "E.R." nor for the furor that swirled around the show from its first episode.

"It's confusing because within a day you're surrounded," she said. "That's how it is in L.A. All of sudden in everyone's eyes you're a big TV star, without any booklet on how to handle it."

But more than anything it was the pace of the show that got to her. "You don't get a moment." she said. Days on the set began at 6 A.M. and often lasted more than 15 hours. Unlike other shows where actors can spend many off hours in their trailers reading or relaxing, "E.R." demands an enormous amount of time on the set, she said, because many of the cast members appear in a majority of the scenes. Even off hours and weekends are filled with studying lines for the next day's shooting, she said.

"I wanted to go home and cook pasta," she said. "But there was no time."

More important, she said she felt she had no time for her family in her native Texas, or for her boyfriend, a successful businessman, in New York.

Ms. Stringfield laughed about the frantic curiosity that has arisen about her boyfriend, whom she preferred not to name, since her decision. "He thinks it's funny," she said. "It's like he's the hero. But it's not all about the guy -- a lot of it is -- it's a whole life style thing."

Curiously, Ms. Stringfield still calls herself a workaholic. "I really like to work," she said. But she may not be working a lot in the near future.

As a condition of allowing her to leave the show, Warner Brothers television mandated that she not work in television for the two and a half years left on her "E.R." contract, which allotted her a reported $70,000 an episode, and that she obtain its permission before working on any film unless it takes place during the 12-week hiatus in the "E.R." shooting schedule. "E.R." is making 22 episodes this year.

Ms. Stringfield said she was so firmly convinced that she wanted to "drive more slowly, stop and roll in the grass" that she had no real trouble agreeing to these conditions. In fact, she said, the restrictions might be helpful in "keeping me from losing my head and agreeing to take another part that would lead to 15-hour days and no life."

She said the studio was clearly "sending a message" to other television actors in imposing the limitations: "We're not weak." "It was definitely their point that other actors would not see this as a precedent," she said. Most other actors, those who wait on tables for years before getting even a small role on a marginal show, might have some trouble understanding the message that Ms. Stringfield herself wants to send. She readily agrees that her career has been "one blessing after another" of opportunities.

Shortly after finishing acting school, she got an enviable role as a vixen on the soap opera "Guiding Light." Soon after that she landed the part as David Caruso's former wife on "N.Y.P.D. Blue." When that role was made superfluous by Mr. Caruso's decision to walk away from that series, she was invited to read for the Dr. Lewis part of "E.R."

"I recognize what I'm doing is rather unprecedented," Ms. Stringfield said. "Some people may question this from the point of view of the American work ethic. But what about the American ethic of family values? There are people who seem to think it's weird that I don't want to be famous, that I don't want to be on magazine covers. I find that so alarming. I pick up a magazine sometimes and see someone on there in a strange pose with almost no clothes on, and I think there's something a little weird about that. Is it so weird for me to want more time to be free and be with my family?"

After she exits tonight, with Dr. Lewis moving to Phoenix to be with her niece, Susie, Ms. Stringfield said she would continue to watch "E.R."

"I love the show," she said. "It's so great. And they're all my friends."

She said she might try to do some theater in New York eventually ("I don't think they can stop me from doing that"), but for now her plans are more modest. "I have some travel plans lined up," she said. "But today," she said with a broad grin at the prospect.

"I'm going to the Pottery Barn to buy some long candles."