Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Dylan McDermott Hopes Daughters Don't Go into Show Business/Celebrity Inmates Pain in the Cellblock for Jail Personnel

Dylan McDermott hopes his two young daughters don't follow his footsteps into show business careers. "It's too hard, this business — especially for women," says the star of TNT's "Dark Blue" drama that begins its second season Aug. 4.

"Actors — guys — can get old, but for women, it's tougher," he explains. "There's always the younger girl coming up, and it's rough."

McDermott's looking forward to focusing on quality time with his girls — Colette and Charlotte, ages 14 and 5 — now that he's completed filming of the second season of his series about cops who work in the deep undercover netherworld.

Last season of the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced show began with critical kudos, but the season finale ratings crashed. Why? "I think it was a bunch of things. We had a rerun of 'Leverage' instead of an original episode. That obviously didn't help for the finale," answers McDermott. "But this year, I think it will help that we're in an earlier time slot — Wednesdays at nine."

He also notes, "Every show is a work in progress. I look back in Season 1 and see really good things — but also ask, 'What do we have to change?' We've definitely made adjustments in my character and in the show, lightening it up a little bit, bringing in romance."

For the latter, Tricia Helfer of "Battlestar Galactica" has come aboard.

"My character, Carter Shaw, was underwater with his marriage over, the loss of his wife last season. The character was very dark. This year, he's believing again in — I don't want to say 'love,' but the possibility. He's trying to change. He knows there's a real chance for him to be a different person. I think the show is a lot more dynamic this year. There's more at stake, more at risk."

However, the former "The Practice" star still has ample opportunity to play multiple characters, as Shaw takes on different personas for the job. "Every episode, I really try to bring in different things. I've done an Argentinean guy, a guy from Texas ... a drug dealer. There are so many guys I've played within the seasons. That's my favorite part of the show. That's why I did it."

FROM THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT: If Fox's forthcoming "Lone Star" drama fails to click, it certainly won't be because of a lack of chemistry within the attractive young cast including James Wolk, "Friday Night Lights'" Adrianne Palicki and beautiful blonde Eloise Mumford.

The ladies play con man Wolk's fiancee and wife, respectively, in the show about a guy who has set up false lives for himself while bilking unsuspecting oil people out of millions.

Mumford tells us, "I hadn't known any of them before, but we all got along so well shooting the pilot in Dallas, we'd get together and go around to each other's hotel rooms. When we finished shooting, we all tried to get on the same flight back to L.A. And when they were in New York for the upfronts," she adds, referring to the networks' new season presentations for advertisers, "they all stayed at my apartment.

"We love each other and feel it's unusual in this business."

To hear Mumford tell it, her casting was almost as charmed as the group's interpersonal dynamic. "It actually happened really fast. This was the first time I've done this whole process so I feel really lucky," says the actress, who previously had a recurring role on "Crash."

HARD TIMES: You can be sure there've been plenty of personnel at the L.A. County Jail hoping that Lindsay Lohan's new attorney — former O.J. Simpson lawyer Robert Shapiro — would succeed in his last-minute effort to sidestep her 90-day sentence, ordered to begin tomorrow (7/20), by getting her into rehab last week. Holding high-profile celebrity prisoners can be a nightmare for penal institution staff. They generate extraordinary media scrutiny, receive love mail and hate mail, groupie wannabes, unsolicited medications ... They are the targets of other prisoners who believe they can make names for themselves by taking a celebrity down.

You may recall that Simpson's stay at the Los Angeles County Men's Central Jail — after his arrest in the 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman — reportedly cost more than $230,000 for the first four months alone. Special arrangements for the ex-NFL star included sleeping pills and a cervical pillow — after his attorneys made a fuss about his bed aggravating an old football injury. He was also reportedly allowed 10 more hours a week to walk outside his cell than other inmates. (Reports have Simpson "bored out of his mind" in his current incarceration at Lovelock Correctional Center in Nevada.)

When Robert Downey Jr. was locked up at the L.A. County Jail in 1997 on a probation violation, his friends speculated that he'd probably do just about 70 of his 180-day jail sentence because they figured he'd be in a private cell and it would be too expensive to keep him locked up for long. Wrong!

Authorities surprised Downey and his handlers and put the actor in "the Pod," or general population, of the facility. Shortly thereafter, headlines about Downey getting cut in an altercation with another inmate appeared everywhere.

Now it's Lohan facing a stay at the county jail — if, in fact, her sentence holds. Time will tell what style of treatment she'll receive.

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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