Movie Star Names Fill TV’s Anonymous ‘Smith’

PASADENA, Calif. (July 17, 2006) — An unremarkable name belies the big-name cast that stars in “Smith,” a new heist drama on CBS this fall.

Movie actors Ray Liotta (”Goodfellas”), Virginia Madsen (”Sideways”), Shohreh Aghdashloo (”The House of Sand and Fog”) and Jonny Lee Miller (”Trainspotting”) join Simon Baker, who starred in the CBS series “The Guardian” in the new project by creator and executive producer John Wells (”ER”).

Wells told the Television Critics Association on Saturday that he came up with the show’s title first.

“It was just something that I heard from a law enforcement officer who was referring to unidentified suspects as Smiths and it sort of stuck,” he said. “The idea being that it’s someone who’s trying to live sort of anonymously in the world that other people are trying to find.”

Madsen said the show’s script drew her from films onto the small screen, and she recalled her first venture into television, a long-ago movie for HBO.

“I loved the movie, but it did some damage to my career,” she said. “I crossed over from film, which was thought to have been a huge mistake, a huge step-down. Now it’s not so much. People can go back and forth now, and it’s really good.”