Julianne Moore "Visits" Ally McBeal

David Duchovny and Julianne Moore are the latest Hollywood heavies to pay a visit to Fox's Ally McBeal. When a fire broke out last week on the set of their latest film, the Ivan Reitman-directed sci-fi comedy Evolution, the duo took cover on the show's nearby soundstage.

"David Duchovny and I got into a golf cart and went to Ally McBeal," Moore tells TV Guide Online with a laugh. Once there, the two-time Oscar nominee sought out her good pals Lucy Liu and James LeGros (her co-star in The Myth of Fingerprints). "[James's] call [time] wasn't until 12 o'clock, so we went to Lucy Liu's dressing room. She has a couch... it's nice in there."

Considering the events that had just transpired, it's no surprise that Moore was anxious to kick back and relax. Cast and crew — including a swarm of extras clad in gorilla suits — were forced to flee Evolution's Manhattan Beach, Calif., set when a 15-foot fireball ignited a plastic tree.

"We were literally chased out of the studio by a giant comic fireball," Moore chuckles in disbelief, adding that she was never in serious jeopardy. "It was really quite safe. The fire department handled it so well and all the guys in the gorilla suits were fine, because I was like, 'What about the guys in the gorilla suits!' I was really worried about them, because I thought, 'You're in a big rubber suit... smoke inhalation. It ended up being very silly."

Of course, after going toe-to-toe with Hannibal Lecter, outrunning a blazing globular mass probably seems tame by comparison. But flesh-eating psychopaths aside, it was Moore's gutsy decision to succeed Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling in the highly anticipated sequel to The Silence of the Lambs (opening Friday) that cemented her status as a true Hollywood daredevil.

"[Jodie] was so wonderful, and she played the role to [such] perfection that she really set a very high standard," the 40-year-old thesp says of her acclaimed predecessor, who picked up a second Oscar for her Silence work. "So, in a sense, it's good because you just have to buckle down and do the best of your ability."