Down Under Charm
By Kate O'Hara

You may not be able to tell from watching him on The WB's "Charmed" -- or even, for that matter, on his last series, the NBC crime drama "Profiler" -- but Julian McMahon is not from around here.

"You know," he says, "I haven't used an Australian accent in any work I've done for the last 10 years. It wasn't even really a consideration for me."

While his Australian origins are evident in ordinary conversation, McMahon has managed to make a career for himself in the United States by emulating Yank speech or even a British accent (NBC's soap opera "Another World"). In this he follows other such Aussie talent as Mel Gibson (a New York State native who moved to Australia at 12), siblings Anthony and Jonathan LaPaglia, Cate Blanchett, Russell Crowe and Heath Ledger.

"What happens is," says McMahon, "you're coming from behind as an Australian. When you're coming from where we're coming from, so far away, we had to work at every opportunity we could to achieve any kind of roles. That was taking what you could, so you had to adapt to any kind of environment you were in."

McMahon is also not just anybody back home. The six-foot-two actor -- whose chiseled good looks won him modeling jobs in his younger days -- is the third child of a former Australian prime minister, the late Sir William McMahon, and his wife, Lady Sonia McMahon. Reportedly, his socially active mother was not too thrilled with her son's career choice.

Asked whether Lady Sonia is now happy with his success, McMahon laughs and says, "You'd have to ask her that."

Now married to actress Brooke Burns ("Baywatch Hawaii" ), McMahon was briefly wed in the early '90s to actress Dannii Minogue, sister of top Australian singer Kylie Minogue.

After several seasons on "Profiler," playing troubled, romance-deprived cop John Grant, McMahon is happy with his role on "Charmed," which centers around the Halliwell sisters, a trio of good witches in San Francisco.

He plays the charming but dangerous Cole Turner, who first appeared as an assistant district attorney but was later revealed to be the evil demon Belthazor. Despite being ordered to kill the Halliwells, who wield power as "The Charmed Ones," Cole romanced -- and truly fell for -- Phoebe (Alyssa Milano), to the consternation of sisters Prue (Shannen Doherty) and Piper (Holly Marie Combs).

"They said he's the baddest of the bad," says McMahon of Cole. "When the head chief devil person calls up and says, 'I want the meanest, nastiest, scariest guy out there,' that's when they call me."

"Which is great, because you come in with such power, and at the end of the episode, I don't die. I've suffered a lot of things, but I'm still around."

And there's romance. "Yes, we have to have romance."

So, is Cole an antihero or an outright bad guy? "Hmmm," says McMahon, "I think he's pretty mixed up. I'd like to think of him ultimately as being a bad guy. I don't know. I think I'd leave him as a bad guy. But maybe he's a bad guy with a good heart. How's that sound?"

How is this working experience different from "Profiler"? "The working aspect of it, for me, is much more expressive. In that way, it becomes, over a period of time, more and more enjoyable, as opposed to playing a straight kind of character the whole time."

"[John Grant from 'Profiler'] was a hard character to play, because there wasn't too much room. The performance was limited to the subject matter, so that's hard. It's fine when you start, but after a while it becomes a little grating, because you want to express yourself in different ways. 'Charmed' gives me the ability to do that, and to evolve from show to show."

Does he enjoy working with so many women? "I like working with women, that's for sure," says McMahon. "I've done it a lot. I've had a blast."

McMahon reports that he has a good working relationship with Milano. Apparently, developing chemistry wasn't a problem.

"I haven't worked with a woman that I haven't had chemistry with. I don't know what that experience would be like. That's a difficult one, to not have chemistry with a woman. But it's also about creating stuff. I think Alyssa and I have great chemistry, but I also think we work hard to create moments that are played realistically."

One aspect of "Charmed" has always been that, no matter what the outrageous supernatural circumstances are, the emotional lives of the three sisters remain grounded in reality. McMahon attributes that to his co-stars.

"The girls are so talented at keeping a lid on their performances and keeping themselves based in reality. It's only the concept that goes flying off the wall, it's not them. It takes a certain type of performer to be able to do that, and all three girls are extremely talented in that way."

"Charmed" airs its season finale, "All Hell Breaks Loose," on Thursday, May 17, at 9 p.m. ET. Written by executive producer Brad Kern and directed by Shannen Doherty, it finds the sisters trying to save someone while coping with the exposure of their powers by an ambitious news reporter (Mercedes Colon). In the end, the sisters must turn to Cole for help, but there's a price to pay.

"This one's a pretty big one," says McMahon.

Does it involve the end of the world? "Gosh," he says, "almost. The end of the world as 'Charmed' knows it."