When it comes to screen roles, Holland hit the mother lode

On the set of “Two and a Half Men,” Holland Taylor as Evelyn Harper is cooing her thanks for “the lovely birthday card” to everyone but her son Charlie, who appears to have forgotten the occasion.

Evelyn keeps pushing Charlie’s buttons and he starts to rant about her faults, including her “astounding narcissism.”

It’s a typical emotional skirmish on the popular CBS sitcom, starring Charlie Sheen as Charlie, Jon Cryer as his brother, Alan, and 10-year-old Angus B. Jones as Jake, Alan’s son.

Currently in reruns, the show (9:30 p.m. Mondays) begins its second season on Sept. 20.

“I’ve often played very strong, flashy, kind of inadvertently mean women. I am not that way in my real life,” Taylor says during a break.

That’s instantly apparent. Her appearance is not as flamboyant as Evelyn’s high-toned style. She’s simply dressed in T-shirt and red-and-white striped pants. Her pale auburn hair is unfussed, her conversation calm and philosophical.

“Holland has an innate sweetness, which enables her to make a character who could be very toxic alluring,” says Chuck Lorre, the series’ co-creator.

Says Taylor: “I think the dreadful mother is a very rich source in comedy writers’ bag of tricks, but by the same token the deck can get stacked. If that happens, then Charlie and Alan become more like victims and she becomes more monstrous, so I try to fully justify her.”

Taylor won an Emmy in 1999 for her recurring role as the sexually predatory judge Roberta Kittleson in “The Practice.”

She first starred in the 1980 sitcom “Bosom Buddies,” playing Ruth Dunbar, the ad agency boss of the cross-dressing Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari.

Before that, the 61-year-old, Philadelphia-born actress had worked almost exclusively on the New York stage. She starred in numerous plays, only once having to take a temp job when no roles were forthcoming.

“I remember I went to the job wearing white gloves, a little old-fashioned even for 1965,” she laughs — perhaps one of the reasons she often got cast in older roles, even as a young actress.

She’s played “a bunch of mothers” onscreen, including Jim Carrey‘s in “The Truman Show” and Nicole Kidman‘s in “To Die For.” In 1982 she was Princess Diana‘s mother Frances Shand Kydd in the made-for-TV film “The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana.” Upcoming, she’s Debra Messing‘s mom in the romantic comedy “Something Borrowed.”

Now she’s also able to play grandmothers, in “Two and a Half Men” and in the “Spy Kids” movie sequels.

“That’s hard,” she says with a faint laugh. “I’ve never been particularly maternal, but I’m certainly not grandmaternal!”

Taylor, who’s single and lives in Los Angeles, is halfway through a two-year college course in spiritual psychology.

“You know when you are little you have growth spurts. Then when you are older you have aging spurts, or — to be kinder — maturing spurts. I just sort of realized that I had definitely entered the last act of the three-act play,” she says.

“I didn’t feel very well equipped inwardly. I had been very much dealing with my career and the usual concerns of life and I hadn’t really paid very much attention philosophically and spiritually to life.”

The birthday bunch

Actress Vera Miles is 74. Satirist Mark Russell is 72. Actress Barbara Eden is 70. Singer Linda Thompson is 57. Country fiddler-singer Woody Paul (Riders in the Sky) is 55. Actress Shelley Long is 55. Singer-actor Rick Springfield is 55. Actor Jay Mohr is 34. Singer Julian Casablancas (The Strokes) is 26.