The Akron Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio • Page 60

AA6 Akron Beacon Journal Tuesday, June 19, 1984 Sex-symbol role doesn't embarrass actor Hexum si 'csW- (-. v- -r-r-- 0 'Male Model' star exercises to keep fit By Barbara Manning When Jon-Erik Hexum was approached about doing an exercise fitness book, he responded: "If someone wants to lose weight, I'd tell them to stop eating and go exercise. There's no easy way. And if that's not working, you're not exercising hard enough." And he should know. The 190-pound, blue-eyed Hexum (he's Norwegian) has been playing football and soccer since he was 8.

He also wrestles, swims and lifts weights. And he works out in the gym three times a week without fail. Hexum (if you don't remember him from TV's Voyagers, you might have seen him with Joan Collins in The Making of a Male Model) knows he's thought of as a sex symbol, and he doesn't mind the moniker as long as it doesn't keep him from getting good roles. And it sounds like he's got a winner coming up on TV (it's a CBS series) called Cover Up in which he plays a "James Bond of the '80s." It also stars Jennifer O'Neill. Then, come September, he'll be playing superstar quarterback Pat Trammell in The Bear, a feature film starring Gary Busey, due to open the first day of the college football season.

Q. Do you like to exercise? A. Every morning I get up and have an argument with myself about exercising it's a real fight. Then I go running with my headset on while listening to Pat Benatar tapes. My legs are messed up from all the sports I've played so I sprint for about 30 minutes and always on the grass.

Q. Do you go to a gym? A. I go to the gym three times a week for two hours. It's boring, painful and monotonous so I turn Pat Benatar up as loud as I can stand and go through my routine from one thing to the next until I'm finished. Q.

What is your routine? A. I do all the basic exercises: bench press, military press, curls, leg curls, leg extensions, squats, half-squats, sit-ups. I do everything. I lift mostly heavy weights. Q.

What are your measurements and how old are you? A. I'm 6-foot-l, weigh 190 and am 26 years old. Q. Why is it important for you to be fit? A. I've always had the Rocky mentality and I believe in taking care of myself.

And it's good for my career, too. Q. Are you embarrassed about being thought of as a sex symbol? A. I've courted that image and I don't mind it at all. I'm not embarrassed.

As long as it doesn't get in the way of my getting serious roles, I don't worry about it. I take classes, I train and I do the best I can. Q. Have yon always been in good shape? A. Yes.

I've played organized sports since I was 8: soccer, football, and I also did a lot of diving, swimming and wrestling. I played football at Michigan State and weight training and cardiovascular training were always part of the sport. Q. What position did you play in football? A. I was a strong safety.

Later I went to Green Bay for six weeks; I wasn't asked; I just went. I said, "I'm coming." I lasted six weeks, I just wasn't quite good enough. Q. What kinds of foods do you eat? A. Fruit, green vegetables, juices.

No Cokes or candy. I understand red meat jnakes you aggressive so I eat that. I like steaks and burgers. New York Times Syndicate on-Erik Hexum will play a James Bond-type character in CBS's Cover Up He opens his mouth and a band marches out Michael Winslow's comic noises are a hit, but he also relishes straight movie roles figuring out saxophone, harmonica, synthesizer, guitar, drums and everything, I'll have moved on to something else." Winslow, 23, grew up in an Air Force family, and began imitating the sounds of aircraft while he was a child. His antics didn't go over well with his teachers.

But after successfully opening for a touring rock band, he quit school and hitchhiked to Hollywood. "I lived in the sand on the beach for a while with a bunch of hippie musicians from Ann Arbor," he says. He also worked the city's nightclubs, doing better in the music venues than in the comedy places. At a country-and-Western club "they liked me a lot," he says, slipping into a hillbilly accent: "Boy, he can do Jimi Hendrix pretty good let's eat him." That job led to an appearance on The Gong Show, on which he won the $516.32 prize. "I bought a car and lived in it for a while, which was better than living in the sand with the hippies from Ann Arbor." It was the late Count Basie who helped Winslow get the part in Police Academy.

"I was opening for him in Long Beach and the producer and director came to see the show. He told them, "This kid's going to be I never got a chance to thank him." Now he has more work than he ever expected. He appears with Jamie Lee Curtis in the forthcoming Grandview U.S.A. as a racetrack announcer. "It's such a shoestring operation that I'm doing two different voices to make people think there's commentary going on." He also has a role in Lovelines, which he describes as "a giant rock video.

I even do a Michael Jackson takeoff called Beat Him. And he does he gets beat up." Winslow will continue to seek straight parts, like his role as a drug runner in Alphabet City. "I like stand-up comedy," he says, "but I'm a performing artist, and that means I won't be pigeon-holed. If I want to do dramatic roles, I will." Universal Press Syndicate t. f-r-W "-Li i By Vincent Brown Michael Winslow calls his brand of comic sound effects "vocalvision," but that's putting it mildly.

His repertoire of funny noises includes everything from animal sounds to musical instruments to a full-blown video game. Winslow's talents got their first widespread exposure earlier this year in the film Police Academy. He also has a straight dramatic role in Alphabet City. Two more films are on the way this summer, and he has just signed to make an album for Island Records. It's the album that has him the most excited.

"George Benson had been telling me to start multitracking my voice, because it sounds like a band," he says. "I'll probably be working with some songwriters and musicians who can play certain tracks, and then my voice will complement them. "Al Jarreau was teaching me some of the stuff, too. I'll never forget the time Al taught me how to do the flute. He said, 'No, no, try R-H-U, try that How does Winslow do it? It isn't easy to explain.

"I'll take the sound and I'll sleep with it for a while. I'll get to know it. When I'm comfortable with it, that's when I do it. "There are a lot of sounds that other people do that I don't want to do. That's why I stay in the musical area.

By the time they finish i Comic imitator Michael Winslow (J For Cindy Gibb, Tame' is no snap Work takes her to Europe for summer 7 Vi By Jim Bohen Performers who think the pace of a normal television series is grueling ought to try working on Fame. The show, which enters its second year of syndication this fall, following two years on NBC, requires all the usual performance and production work, plus singing and dancing. "It takes seven working days per episode," says Cindy Gibb, who plays dance student Holly Laird on the series. "That's unusual. Most other series do it in five days.

But since we have two production numbers each week, it involves a lot of dance rehearsals and trips to the recording studio. One production number takes an entire day of filming, normally a 12- or 14-hour day." Miss Gibb, 20, joined the cast at the beginning of last season as an upper-class newcomer to the show's School of the Arts. The part isn't all that far from reality for her. "One of the stories last year was about me and my mother," she says, "and that in a lot of ways paralleled my own life. My character is from Darien, and I'm from Westport, Conn.

She comes from probably about the same social background. And there was a time when I was working in New York City, living on my own and pursuing what I wanted to do, and my mother was trying to Woody Allen, who had seen her picture in a magazine, cast her in his film Stardust Memories. From there, Miss Gibb went into an off-Broadway play, and then to a two-year stint on the NBC soap opera Search for Tomorrow, which ended two days before she began work on Fame. This summer, she'll join the show's cast in Rome to film the new season's two-part opener, after which they'll give concerts there and in Sweden. In August, while the series continues filming in California, she'll make the film Youngblood with Rob Lowe.

"It's about a hockey team, and I'm the coach's daughter," she says, "so it's an action-packed sports story and love story wrapped up in one." In September, shell rejoin Fame and finish the season. She expects her character to have grown a bit this year as she has herself. "I'm a lot more comfortable with the cast and with the show," she says. "I know now more of what direction I'm headed in. I won't be the new kid on the block anymore, so the character will probably change for that reason." IMvwmI Press Svftfott Nis Cindy Gibb character is growing make some decisions about her life, which is what happened with Holly's mother." Miss Gibb's mother was a ballet teacher and co-director of the Westport Dance Center, which had a lot to do with Miss Gibb's own interest in dance (she began lessons at age 5).

She signed a modeling contract at 14, thinking of it as a way to earn money for college. Two years later, she found herself thrust into show business for good, after Rod Stewart embarking on 82-cIty tour Jeff Beck joins Stewart for album, summer show Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck, I show with one intermission and Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck, yoga of capitalism after he wed Chris boussin. (She will wed teacher Paul Grilley.) Maude, and her director-husband, John Carpenter, have kept a happy secret (from this column at least). They had a baby boy, John Cody Carpenter, on May 7 at Cedars Sinai in California. tina.

Diminuative actress Linda Hunt was having dinner the other night at Hisae's Backstage and having a chat with the tall Jeffrey "Un-Cola" Holder. Chita Patti Davis is a liberated 1st daughter By Hi Smith Liberated! That's Patti Davis, daughter of President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan. The beautiful young actress bought her own engagement ringjn Paris at the elegant Mau- Betty Hutton, once Hollywood's bombshell musical star, says she has finally decided no one can help her write her life story, and certainly no one else can do it for her, so she is busy taking creative-writing courses in Portsmouth, R. where she now lives. Storklet: Adrienne Barbeau, the daughter in television's no opening act.

The album, due this week, includes Stewart's versions of Todd Rundgren's Can We Still Be Free's All Right Now and Robert Palmer's Some Guys Have All the Luck. The producer was Michael Omartian, who handled Christopher Cross' two albums and Donna Summer's She Works Hard for the Money. IMverui Press $cte who fronted the Jeff Beck Group together in the late '60s, have reunited for Stewart's new album. Camouflage, and summer tour. Beck plays guitar on three of the album's tracks, including the first single, Infatuation.

The tour, sponsored by Canada Dry, begins July 3 in Reno, and concludes Nov. 12 in San Francisco. It will hit 82 cities in alL Stewart will play a three-hour Rivera, your average size, also joined in. Jimmy Coco, the diet maven, was eating spaghetti That huge Mercedes 500 SL saloon car, costing more than is a gift to Christina Onassis from her former husband, Sergei Kauzov, who used to be a KGB officer (so they say) but became quickly accustomed to the luxury squash marinara at Elaine's "Only 80 calories!" he said, wav ing at friends across the crowded dining room. 1.