Glenn Close stands on the front walk of a house on a corner in Los Angeles' Silverlake district, today's location for the FX police drama "The Shield."

Wearing a neat gray suit, dark striped blouse and shades, gun on her hip, she's waiting for Michael Chiklis to work out camera angles for his arrival at the location and his trip up the steps to meet Close.

Finally the sequence is sorted out, and Close smiles patiently at Chiklis, then calls out, "I forgot it was all about you."

Starting with the fourth-season premiere at 10 p.m. Tuesday, Close, a five-time Academy Award nominee, joins "The Shield" as Capt. Monica Rawling, new commander of the Barn, a precinct in L.A.'s fictional Farmington district. She steps in because former Capt. David Aceveda (Benito Martinez) has been elected to the city council.

Chiklis' character, Detective Vic Mackey, has spent three seasons butting heads with Aceveda while simultaneously fighting crime and lining his own pockets as the head of the elite Strike Team. After a particularly lucrative scheme -- robbing an Armenian "money train" -- went seriously south last season, the Strike Team broke apart. With only Detective Ronnie Gardocki (David Rees Snell) still at his side, Vic is stuck reviewing videotapes as part of a sting operation.

Rawling's arrival could mean a new beginning, if Vic can control his worst impulses.

"Certainly in the short term he will," Chiklis says on the street between shots. "He realizes there are some great opportunities to be had by having a great rapport with this woman, but you can't change the spots on a leopard. She'll give him a foot of leash, and he'll probably take nine."

"I don't know if she's out to reform anybody," Close says, digging into Mexican food during her lunch break. "She's out to motivate people. I'd like to think she's a leader, but she's a leader by example and smarts.

"She would be very good at psychology, so certainly the worst thing to do would be to set out to reform Vic. She's trying to redirect him, and it's a huge risk. I don't think she can afford to trust him."

While Rawling and Mackey circle each other warily, Close and Chiklis are feeling the professional love.

"Whenever you admire someone," Chiklis says, "when you like their work, there's always this reluctance when you meet them, because you're hoping they're as cool a person as they are an actor. There are those times when you get disappointed, and then there's meeting Glenn Close.

"She exceeds your expectations. She's full of anecdotes, great stories, and consistent, not mood-swingy. Let's face it, she could have shown up and said, 'I'm Glenn Close, and you're not; bring me my green M&Ms,' but none of that. The opposite of that."

"The core acting group," Close says, "they're the kind of people you'd love to have in your life as your friends. Chiklis is wonderful, so talented. He embraces life; he embraces everything else."

While Chiklis is used to the show's run-and-gun shooting style, for movie star Close, it's a whole new world.

"It's really hard work," she says, "nine scenes in a day, 14 hours sometimes. I've never done filmmaking like this, not the way they shoot, hand-held cameras. I love it. It's very fluid. It feels spontaneous."

In the season premiere, Chiklis meets Rawling when she visits a crime scene. After she dispatches the situation with grace and humor, he watches her depart, and the shock and awe on his face raise the question: Does he want her?

"Sexually?" Close says. "On some subliminal level, there's a fascination. I don't know if the writers have something up their sleeves."

"Everyone's asking me this," Chiklis says. "Does Vic want her? I have to come up with a stock response to this, because everyone's asking me this, and I don't know what to say. Stay tuned."

Close, who's standing nearby having her mike wired up, interjects, "Shall we say, he's met his match."

While Mackey sorts out this new relationship, it's time to mend fences with former Strike Team cohorts Shane Vendrell (Walton Goggins) and Curtis "Lemonhead" Lemansky (Kenneth Johnson).

Kate O'Hare

CHIKLIS MEETS HIS MATCH AS CLOSE JOINS 'THE SHIELD'