In a small café in Tel Aviv's chic Florentine neighborhood, Lovitch seems the epitome of confidence. She approaches dressed in black, sunglasses propped on her head, with a forceful gait. She has the unshakable composure befitting the no-nonsense-power-broker-femme fatale she plays on television. But her intensity is mitigated by an unflagging sense of propriety and a clear-eyed bent toward the sincere.

It's precisely the sort of combination you would expect from a media consultant turned soap-opera diva.

Stardom, however, hasn't come easy for Lovitch, a 39-year-old native of upstate New York, who came here 15 years ago.

Having earned a degree in psychology, she found herself a member of New York City's most vaunted class of jobless residents - actors on their way to fame. Interestingly, the allure of fame lost out to that unseemly itch some Jews get, usually at a susceptible twentysomething age, to make aliya.

"When I was 18, I came here on a one-year Young Judaea program. I thought to myself, 'This is a nice place, but I don't know if I'd want to live here.' I was coming from the sticks. And Israel back then just seemed like more of the same."

But at the age of 24, her identity and Israel both resurfaced as nagging unaddressed issues.

"I just had to see if I wanted to live in Israel," Lovitch explains. "I grew up in a place where being Jewish was not very popular. St. Patrick's Day was a big thing. I wanted to know what it felt like feeling normal being Jewish, feeling part of the majority.

"Plus, I remembered the lifestyle in Israel as being easygoing, less pressured, less formal. I turned out to be right. "

Lovitch continued to pursue acting in Israel at Seminar Hakibbutzim in Tel Aviv. She managed to land herself modest roles in various productions in theater, television and film, though most of her income came from voice-overs and dubbing for multimedia companies and cartoons.

Israel's celebrated B-movie action favorite, director Menahem Golan, cast her in the Chuck Norris film, The Delta Force.

"That was special," quips Lovitch.

The sarcasm underscores the difficulty English speakers encounter in finding employment in Israel's cultural establishment. Americans in particular, Lovitch contends, seem to suffer from a peculiar form of reverse discrimination.

"There is this attitude of, 'Why the hell are you here? I wish I was there [America]' sort of thing," a rankled Lovitch says. "It's real hard in the beginning. The American accent is a hindrance. Let me tell you, that resh is a killer."

Although initially Lovitch found it difficult breaking into Israeli film and television, she managed to find a creative niche, rich in potential and in great need of her performing experience: Uncouth Israelis bumbling about on television.

In 1988, four years after moving here, she joined a company that arranged seminars in media performance and public speaking. Shortly after she took the job, the owner left Israel, promising Lovitch that upon his return he would make her his partner. He never returned.

She took over the company, renamed it, and began to run it single-handedly out of her apartment in Tel Aviv. Luckily for her, the government was chock full of officials in need of her services.

Her clients run the gamut from the Foreign Ministry and B'Tselem to the Atomic Energy Commission and individual politicians. Through her courses, she teaches Israelis how to come off as less aggressive, speak clearly and concisely, and avoid the nervous behavioral mannerisms to which we are all prone.

Neither her degree in psychology nor her master's in communications, she says, has trained her for the job as proficiently as her experience in the arts.

"For my media consultancy, my background in acting has proved crucial: where to look, what to wear, how to sit, what to say, and timing."

On the eve of a stint as the Israel Police liaison to Bonn, Col. Moti Naftali, 47, of Tel Aviv attended Lovitch's media seminar two months ago and found the instruction he received to be invaluable.

"As a police officer, I was not completely comfortable in front of audiences or in television interviews. I would play with pens and wave my hands around. She teaches you things you don't notice yourself."

Naftali claims that if he had known she was an actress before taking her seminar, he would have been that much more excited.

"She is very serious at what she does," he says. "I'm sure she is as good an actress as she is a consultant."

Indeed, acting never quite vanished from her purview. She attended as many auditions as possible, but found her responsibilities to her husband Hanan, her children and business increasingly demanding.

"I've been doing the media seminars and acting in parallel for years. But the acting, especially in the last five years, was very difficult. Now I have three kids under the age of six, so in the last few years I've been either pregnant or giving birth."

Her resilience under both biological and professional pressures finally paid off. The call to audition for Kesef Katlani came as a surprise, not only because she had been out of the theatrical circuit for a while, but also because she had been rejected two years earlier by the same casting directors.

"When I got the call for new auditions, I was just sort of, 'Yeah, yeah, sure, I'll do it.' "

As it turned out, her what-the-hell attitude was exactly what they were looking for. In a series of auditions, Lovitch stole the show with her irreverent spunk and an uncanny ability to portray the pathos of revenge with Shakespearean flair.

"By the second audition we were all told to translate a piece into English and read it. I was the only one to translate the climax to: 'I'll kill every f--ing one of them.' The director loved it."

By the third audition the only question remaining was whether the camera would take a liking to Lovitch. Could the rigid professional be transformed into a manipulative femme fatale in word and appearance?

"The director wanted to see if the makeup artist could make me look glamorous. I'm not originally blond, you know."

In the world of television anything is possible and with her salty tongue and new look, she is the perfect Elsa: a fiery woman who lives to avenge the murder of her lover - by any means.

Kesef Katlani is modeled after American series, along the lines of Dynasty, in which the rich and beautiful tango in a formulaic dance of blood and lust. Conspiracies are hatched, hit men hired, and all are seduced in an omnisexual soap opera, Mediterranean style.

The show, produced by Spot Hafakot, aired for its first three years on Channel 2. The fourth season - to be aired on the Family Channel - is set to begin in early September, when the character of Elsa makes her debut.

Amidst all this campy melodrama, it seems the creators have found room, given a mental stretch, for a bit of half-hearted feminism. Elsa is no high-strung vixen waiting to be broken.

Lovitch assures me her character is not just another Jezebel. You won't find her cuddling into some man's outstretched arms playing the, "I'm-just-strong-enough-to-be-a-floozy," routine.

Johanan Herson, who has been on Kesef Katlani since it first aired, and is a fellow native English speaker, talks of the obstacles to breaking into Israeli television.

"It is really quite difficult to make it initially. Mastery of both the language and the accent takes an enormous amount of discipline."

Herson views Lovitch's presence on the show as a welcomed victory for native English speakers. He also has nothing but kind words for Lovitch's portrayal of Elsa.

"Her character is complex; she is both villainous and needy in the most human of ways. I play the part of Marcel, her evil counterpart and watching her act has been fantastic. She is wonderful in the part."

Lovitch approaches the role with a characteristic equanimity.

"There is both a positive and a negative side to the character of Elsa. She definitely has power. It's great playing a woman who runs a company and makes all the decisions. But she also tries to kill everyone off," Lovitch says.

She also admits that playing a character like Elsa is liberating.

"I wish I had the [guts] of this character."

The luxuries that come with acting on television and the sheer power of the character she plays might seem an intoxicating mix for Lovitch, but at the end of the day, it's back to her apartment in Tel Aviv.

"I'm not Joan [Collins] or Elsa at home. The place is a mess and needs cleaning, the kids are crying, a pizza needs ordering, and there is a floor to clean."

Like always, Lovitch seeks a balance between her home and work, acting and consulting. She was actually quite scared that her new role might not be well received by her upscale clientele.

"I was worried what people would think," she said. "I work with politicians and government ministries and I thought, 'What will they think of me working in a soap opera?'

"So far, it has been all positive. One woman politician I'm working with called and said, 'Oh, I see you're in the paper, very nice.' She loved it."

Lovitch hopes the type of character she plays might even convince potential clients that she is the right person to be dealing with.

"My sister-in-law, who is a corporate lawyer, said my TV character will help my business because I'm playing a ruthless businesswoman and not some bimbo running around in lingerie all the time." Whether or not her sister-in-law's predictions prove accurate, Lovitch still wants to "dance at many weddings at once."

"It's hard enough to make a living here," she says. "Why not make it at more than one thing?"