Fox's "24" has run through a slew of American presidents, from saints (David Palmer) to scoundrels (Charles Logan), but President Allison Taylor is the show's -- and ostensibly America's -- first female president. Halfway into the show's 24-hour day, she's already been through a lot.

Taylor, played by 1978 Carnegie Mellon University graduate Cherry Jones, is recovering from the death of her son, her husband has been shot, a terrorist plot took out an airliner, she's launched a military invasion of an African nation, the White House has been invaded, and two weeks ago she got slapped in the face by the dictator of fictional Sangala.

Jones, who's known more for her film ("Erin Brockovich," "Signs") and Broadway roles (including best actress Tony wins for "Doubt" and "The Heiress") than TV, said filming the White House invasion that aired earlier this month was as action-packed a role as she's had, even if she didn't wield weapons herself.

"Being pulled down the grand corridor and thrown in a safe room doesn't count for much on '24,' but it did for me," she said in a phone interview last week. "I remember when it was over, [star] Kiefer [Sutherland] turns to me and says, 'Your first fire fight?' Yeah, my first fire fight. Before that, the worst I'd gotten to do was gouge my father's eyes out in 'King Lear.' "

Jones, a native of Paris, Tenn., said she wasn't particularly interested in a regular role on a TV series before "24" (9 tonight, WPGH) came calling.

"Television is so fast, I never thought I would want to do it," she said. "I'm a slow, Southern girl. I speak slowly, I move slowly."

A call out of the blue changed all that. Jones knew of the show's reputation -- mostly through PBS talk show host Charlie Rose, who is a fan -- and she got hooked after watching a few episodes from season one. Eventually, she watched every episode from every season.

"I'm someone who has always disliked, greatly, gratuitous violence. I don't believe in torture," she said. "Yet I found the story lines and characters and action and espionage so addicting, it would have been hypocrisy for me not to do the show."

The ethics of torture have played a pivotal role this season on "24," from torturer/tortured hero Jack Bauer (Sutherland) testifying before Congress to Taylor ordering Bauer to cease torturing a congressional aide with knowledge of the White House invasion plans.

Jones said she was less than two miles away from the World Trade Center on 9/11 and watched the second plane's impact. A month later she had a conversation with a man at a Lincoln Center board dinner who was passionate about his belief that Americans should not torture and that the minute we do "we start linking arms with the Taliban and al-Qaida and the warlords of Africa, and we as Americans don't do that."

She acknowledged the conventional wisdom that real-life scenarios such as the kind Jack Bauer finds himself in regularly -- where he has someone in custody who knows where the bomb is and has limited time to extract that information -- almost never occur in the real world.

"Lord knows given the grave we've been digging for ourselves in these last few years and corruption at the highest levels of institutions we thought we could trust and the moral authority we've lost around the world for any number of reasons, it would sure be great as a nation to get that one thing right, that we do treat human beings with dignity," Jones said. "But then I put myself in Jack Bauer's position, and all bets are off. And that's what is so fascinating to people about '24' and why liberals love it."

"24" generally makes no explicit statement about the political affiliation of its U.S. presidents, and Taylor is no exception.

"I have my own theories, which I will not share because I think it's interesting that they always make a point of leaving it up to the individual audience member," she said. "My hair seems to be Republican, but I don't know about the rest of me."

Jones seemed surprised but thrilled to hear that a few days earlier in a teleconference with reporters, "24" executive producer Howard Gordon indicated her character will return in the show's eighth season, expected to begin airing next January.

"She'll be back in the eighth season in some fashion," Gordon said. "We just, frankly, haven't found the story yet so we have to."

Jones hasn't made many trips back to her old CMU stomping grounds, but she was back in Pittsburgh two years ago with a touring company of "Doubt" that played at the Benedum Center. She immediately called college friends Greg Lehane and Laurie Klatscher and met them for dinner at Ali Baba in Oakland, an old hangout.

"The man there literally said, 'You've been away for a while,' " Jones said, surprised to be remembered at the restaurant. "He really did recognize me from 30 years earlier. My roommate and I came there often, and I think they had just opened back then."