By Laurie Brookins, Photographs: Exclusive photographs by Rod Spicer

olly Sims is ready to be known as a serious actress, thank you. At least, that's what all signs indicate: She has bought a New York apartment, plans to do a play in Los Angeles, and on a recent photo set the former model demurred from wearing anything too leggy or revealing. Sex bomb might work for other blondes, but that's not where Sims sees her career these days.

Not to worry: The bubbly girl with the Southern charm isn't delving too seriously into the world of the thea-tuh. After all, at the end of last season we witnessed her TV alter ego, the conniving-yet-comical Delinda Deline on the NBC show Las Vegas, running down a hotel hallway in a $7,000 Monique Lhuillier bridal gown, ready to confess her undying love to the über-yummy Josh Duhamel. Las Vegas has always been more Melrose Place than Masterpiece Theatre, and that's just fine for Sims, who enjoys the journey she and her character have been taking. "I've read the first six episodes of the season, and I'm excited about where [Delinda] is going," Sims says on the photo-shoot set. "Originally she was supposed to be the rich, manipulative bitch. But [the writers] have given her a lot more depth, and her story is taking her in new directions. She has always been fun to play, but the arc of the character is getting really good."

By the time you read this, Duhamel's character, Danny, will have answered Delinda's knock on the door— though let's face it, in the television universe a declaration of love is never simple. But it's obvious things are going to work out for the on-screen couple, at least in the short term. "I have sex scenes with Josh on Tuesday," she reports, a sly grin revealing she is not averse to such a task. The pair's off-screen chemistry, Sims notes, makes the on-screen stuff look easy. "It's hard doing romantic scenes, but Josh is a great guy," she says. "When you're laughing and you don't feel like you're being weirded out by your co-star, you just take it for what it is—it's work."

Four seasons on a nighttime drama is just the latest in what even Sims believes has been more than a charmed life. The 33-year-old Murray, Kentucky, native originally had her sights set on law and after high school headed to Vanderbilt University, but the summer between her freshman and sophomore years would change her life. "I went to D.C. to work for a law office because I thought I wanted to go into politics," she remembers. "But after four months I knew that was never going to happen; it was the most disillusioning experience of my life."

Around the same time, a roommate convinced Sims to have some photos taken: "It wasn't the first time I'd heard I should be a model, because I was always very tall," she says. She had just completed her sophomore year when she got a call from a New York modeling agency asking her to come up for a week. Sims never looked back: By June she had signed with an agency, by August she was living in London, and by October she was working in Europe. Sports Illustrated's 2001 Swimsuit Issue and a hosting gig on MTV's now defunct House of Style soon followed, as did campaigns for Victoria's Secret, Old Navy and Cover Girl, for which she is still under contract. And it was a two-year acting program that helped secure her stint on Las Vegas ...

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