For childless Dana, playing a mom was a walk on the beach
Dana Delany is happy to describe her life as containing “no pets, no plants, no children.”
But, she says, “Don’t get me wrong. I like babies.”
Good thing, because she had to spend time with an especially cute one in “Baby for Sale,” a Lifetime original movie airing tonight at 9.
Actually, two babies portrayed little Gitta, who is offered for adoption to more than one family by a baby broker.
“We had no problem with the crying scenes,” says Delany, noting that 4 to 5 months old is a “bad age … because they are teething, they are still attached to their mothers, and they are aware that you are not their mother.”
All tears aside, the baby had to be irresistible, especially when Delany’s character falls for her at first sight.
But, director Peter Svatek says, “The magic in that scene really belongs to Dana. … When you are doing something based on a true story you don’t want it to be oversentimentalized, you don’t want it to be melodramatic. I knew she wouldn’t go there. She would keep the right emotional pitch all the time.”
The script was inspired by the experience of Lauren and Bill Schneider, who discovered in 1999 that the baby they were trying to adopt was being auctioned off to the highest bidder and agreed to help the FBI in a sting operation. At that time, baby brokering was only a misdemeanor in New York state, but their actions prompted a law making it a felony.
Delany said she chose not to talk with Lauren Schneider beforehand “because I usually get frustrated when I find out facts that can’t be included, because I want to put them all in. So I just decided to play her as a fictional character. I find if you do that, and if you are true to the essence of the character, it’s amazing how similar you are to the person.”
Delany, 48, won two Emmys as Vietnam War Army nurse Colleen McMurphy on “China Beach,” which aired on ABC from 1988-91.
Her series choices since then have been less successful. Fox’s lush melodrama “Pasadena” aired for only four episodes in 2001. In 2002, the CBS female doctor drama “Presidio Med” lasted 11 episodes.
Other television work has included the title role as the birth-control advocate in “Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story” and a daughter coping with a mother’s Alzheimer’s disease in “A Time to Remember.”
Last summer, she played Beatrice in a production of “Much Ado About Nothing,” with Billy Campbell (“Once & Again”) as her Benedick. It was the first Shakespearean role for the New York-born, Connecticut-raised and Wesleyan-educated actress.
“I had cleaned out my basement,” she recalls, “and I found this envelope I had written on in 1981 — the year my father died. I’d made a list of things I wanted to do in my life. One of them was Shakespeare. I’d done everything else on the list, so I had to do it.”
The birthday bunch
Actor-comedian Bill Cosby is 67. Singer Christine McVie (Fleetwood Mac) is 61. Fitness guru Richard Simmons is 56. Actress Cheryl Ladd is 53. Gospel singer Sandi Patty is 48. Actress Mel Harris (“thirtysomething”) is 47. Actress Lisa Nicole Carson (“Ally McBeal”) is 35. Actor Topher Grace (“That ‘70s Show”) is 26. Actor Erik Per Sullivan (“Malcolm in the Middle”) is 13.