Catherine Lisa Bell was born on 14 August 1968 in London to a Scottish father, Peter Bell, and an Iranian mother, Mina Ezzati. Peter was an architect under contract to an oil company in Iran; Mina had traveled to London to study nursing. Bell's parents divorced when Catherine was two years old. She was raised by her mother and maternal grandparents. The family eventually moved to California's San Fernando Valley. where Bell was exposed to diverse influences. The family spoke Persianat home. The grandparents were Muslim, but Catherine was also exposed to Catholicism and attended a Baptist summer camp. In her teenage years, Catherine came under the influence of her California surroundings: "I am definitely a Valley Girl. I was a tomboy. I liked to skateboard, play football, and push the envelope a little bit." Catherine enrolled at UCLA, where she considered a career in medicine or research. However, when she was offered a modeling job in Japan, where advertisers value "American beauty," she dropped out during her sophomore year.
Career
When Bell returned to the United States, she decided to try acting. She studied at the Beverly Hills Playhouse with Milton Katselas. She also worked as a massage therapist for 8 years at the Peninsula Hotel, and her clients included singer Peter Gabriel. Her first television acting role was one line spoken to Gabriel on the short-lived 1990 sitcomSugar and Spice. Among her first parts was serving as Isabella Rossellini's nude body double for the 1992 film Death Becomes Her. In 1994 Bell starred in the Dolph Lundgren film Men of War. While filming the movie in Thailand, Bell and her co-star Trevor Goddard bonded over contracting amoebic dysentery. Goddard would later play Bell's off-and-on love interestMic Brumby the following year on JAG. They remained friends until Goddard's death from a drug overdose in June 2003, an event that the bereaved Bell described as "horrible". In 1995, she obtained a three-line role in one episode of the NBCTV seriesJAG, which centers on the work of the United States Department of the Navy's Judge Advocate General office. NBC canceled the show after which it was picked up by CBS, which restructured the series, incorporating a female Marine Corps lawyer character, Sarah MacKenzie. Bell auditioned for that role and won it. One episode of the show established that MacKenzie is an Iranian-American, and featured Bell speaking Persian. She continued in this role until the series ended in 2005. Beginning in 2007, Bell starred in Lifetime's ensemble drama seriesArmy Wives as Denise Sherwood, the wife of a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, who endures domestic violence at the hands of her teenage son during the show's first season. Bell played the role of Cassandra "Cassie" Nightingale, the main character of Hallmark's The Good Witch, and its sequels The Good Witch's Garden, The Good Witch's Gift, The Good Witch's Family, The Good Witch's Charm, The Good Witch's Destiny, and The Good Witch's Wonder. She was also a co-executive producer of all of the movies. She also starred in another Hallmark movie titled Last Man Standing. In 2015 it was reported that Bell would star in the movie Love Finds Its Way, which would begin filming in 2016. Production began on the film in March 2017, with Vancouver as the filming location, and 9 July 2017 as the date for the film's premiere on the Hallmark Channel. On April 2, 2019, CBS announced that Bell would be reprising her JAG role of Sarah "Mac" MacKenzie alongside former co-star David James Elliott for a multi-episode arc in the tenth season of .
Personal life
Bell is fluent in Persian and English. She is fond of motorcycling, skiing, snowboarding and kickboxing. Her hobbies include cross-stitching and making model cars, which she has done since age eight. In 2002, The Sporting News falsely reported that Bell correctly predicted that the New England Patriots would beat the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI, 20 to 17 in a celebrity survey conducted just before the season started. However, Bell's prediction occurred after the NFC and AFC championship games had already been completed, so she did not predict the teams that would be participating, only the final score. During the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, Bell took flying lessons in a Cirrus SR22. Bell met actor-production assistant Adam Beason on the set of the 1992 film Death Becomes Her. They were married on 8 May 1994. They are the parents of two children. They lived in a nearly faux-Tuscan-style mini-mansion in Calabasas, California. The couple sold the house in 2010, and publicly confirmed that they had separated sometime before September 2011. Since 2012, Bell has lived with fellow Scientologist, photographer and party planner Brooke Daniells in Los Angeles. In 2014, Bell paid $2.05 million for a recently remodeled,, single-story ranch house on a lot in the gated Hidden Hills community in the western suburbs of Los Angeles.
