Sunday June 15, 2008
Daly well-being
By NOORSILA ABD MAJID
A healthy alternative lifestyle is what takes years off this fiftysomething actor, appropriately the star of an offshoot of a hit medical series.
FOR Tim Daly, art imitates life. When the suave actor is not busy playing the smoking hot alternative medicine specialist Dr Pete Wilder on Disney-ABC’s Private Practice, he will be busy digging books on Chinese medicine. Or getting his acupuncture treatment.
“I personally don’t think it should be called alternative medicine,” Daly says on the set of Private Practice in Los Angeles recently. “If you go to China, a country of 1.3 billion people, it won’t be called alternative. It’s just medicine.”
Truly, his strong belief in traditional remedies has done wonders for his health – and his youth. “I take herbs,” he reveals. At 52, Daly has the powerful physique and energy of a man half his age. Yes, yes, the New Yorker is ruggedly handsome, smart, charming and can make any woman go weak in her knees – as he very likely did to Private Practice creator Shonda Rhimes and the series’ leading lady Kate Walsh. It was Walsh who recommended the killer woman magnet to an agreeable Rhimes for the role.
But sorry, ladies, unlike his character, Daly is happily married to actress Amy Van Nostrand. And both their children (a boy and a girl) were born at home!
“I’d like to think of it as integrated medicine,” he points out. “Anybody who tells you that alternative medicine is the only way to go is crazy. And anybody who tells you that Western medicine is the only way to go is crazy too.
It’s all valid. But the main thing is not to blindly accept anything that anybody tells you. You’ve got to ask questions. I find a lot of Western doctors are quick to prescribe you pills and drugs. If you just take those things without asking why, you’re crazy.”
Do expect Dr Wilder to handle child birth (and other complicated issues) in Private Practice in his unique ways. “It’s a totally different environment as compared with Grey’s Anatomy,” Daly notes about his show, which, if you haven’t already known, is a spin-off of Grey’s.
“We’re not primarily in a hospital. These people are in a different stage in their lives, where they are randomly happy to get selected to be at this hospital called Oceanside Wellness Centre. These are successful people who want to work together and try to achieve their next dream.”
It certainly helps that Dr Addison Montgomery (Walsh), formerly of Seattle Grace Hospital of Grey’s, is in his dream team.
And romantic fantasies. “You know, Pete doesn’t really know anything about Addison’s past,” Daly coos, “he just knows that she’s beautiful and he is attracted to her.”
But forget about him being her next “McAcupuncturist” (in the vein of McDreamy – Dr Derek Shepherd played by Patrick Dempsey – and McSteamy – Dr Mark Sloan played by Eric Dane – in Grey’s). Not even after their passionate lip-locking (“Kate and I spent half a day with our tongues down each other’s throat”). Well, not just yet.
“This show is different from Grey’s,” Daly reiterates. “You will see Addison’s new advantages because she’s in an entirely new environment with different people. Any time you put a person in an entirely new environment, their life changes.
“As for Pete, his spouse died and her death is a complicated thing for him to go through. He’s sort of harbouring guilt and grieving over it.”
Having said that, Daly assures us that Private Practice is going to be a sizzling hot dramedy. “Shonda’s writing for this show is really interesting. She’s created fun characters who at the same time are complicated, very human and flawed. So, who knows, we’ll find out more about Pete and Addison later.” Watch. It could happen.
‘Private Practice’ makes its debut on Ntv7 on Saturday, June 21, 10.30pm.
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Knowing Tim
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