After a year of utter desperation, Jo Dee Messina's career has started to soar.

TV Guide (May 1-7, 1999) - Jo Dee Messina wants to be an actress, but on her own terms. The country music sensation - whose platinum album, I'm Alright, has earned her three ACM nominations - is in a San Francisco bar filming a scene for the CBS cop drama Nash Bridges. Making her acting debut in the episode (scheduled to air Friday, April 30) as a sweet, struggling country singer isn't much of a stretch. But that's the way Messina wanted it. CBS initially offered her a juicier part - the sexy getaway driver for an all-girl robbery ring - but Messina politely declined.

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"The character was too harsh," says the effervescent 28-year-old during a break in shooting. "I turned it down out of loyalty to the fans who have supported who I really am." And that loyalty was hard won. Just 17 months ago, Messina was on the verge of signing bankruptcy papers because, in a move considered career suicide, she had stopped releasing single from her 1996 debut album, Jo Dee Messina.

Instead, she and her record producers - Byron Gallimore and country superstar Tim McGraw - focused on recording a stronger follow-up. "But without radio play for over a year, gigs slowed down, money stopped flowing, bills kept mounting and friends stopped calling," says Messina. "It was devastating. I got to the point where I didn't have money for coffee or gum."

Born and raised in Holliston, Massachusetts, the half-Irish, half-Italian Messina was 4 when her parents divorced. From that point on, her mother, Mary, raised four children single-handedly while working as a switchboard operator and putting herself through school. Messina headed to Nashville at age 19.

Just prior to her money meltdown, Messina moved her mom there, too, and they shared a home. "When we were kids, Mom kept food on the table and a roof over our heads but never let on what a hard struggle it was. So I was determined to keep my desperate situation from her. Her time for worry was over." But Mom started to catch on near the end of '97. Says Messina: "Christmas was always a big deal in our family, so she got the gist of my crisis when I didn't put up a tree." Her eyes start to mist and she shakes her head wearily. "Oh, baby, you don't know how many nights God and I had to sit down and talk about a miracle."

And a miracle did occur. Her second album, I'm Alright, was released in March '98 and has so far sparked three consecutive multiweek No. 1 hits, a record for a female country artist. But even now Messina isn't quite financially solvent. Says the star, "I hope to be out of debt by this summer."

What about romance? Messina takes a slurp of diet soda and shrugs, "It's pretty nonexistent right now, which is OK. I had one really long and bad relationship, then dated a couple of other guys. But I don't have much luck with men." She is reticent to discuss her father, Vincent, who lives in Vermont. When pressed, Messina laughs and says, with no trace of bitterness, "He hits me up for a lot of concert tickets."

Messina begins to ruminate on how a kid from New England ever made it big in country music but is summoned back to the set. "Walk with me, will ya?" she ways in the quasi-Southern drawl she has acquired. "People told me, 'Don't go to Nashville. They won't have anything to do with someone from the North.'" The Nash hairstylist poufs Messina's copper-colored curls. "But you know what? Nobody in Nashville ever asked where I was from." A makeup man comes at her with a brush to redefine her lips. Obliging him, she clams up for a moment, then stops him mid-stroke to conclude her thought. "Country music ain't about where you come from," she says. "It's about what's coming from your heart."