As TV stars go, she’s just plain folks
For five years, actress Mary McCormack was afraid to answer the telephone because she knew bill collectors were on the other end.
“There was no way to pay my rent and school loans, so my sister and I – she was in law school – they’d say, ‘Is Bridget McCormack there?’ I’d say, ‘No.’ We always played the other one.”
Eventually, her sister went to work as a trial lawyer and McCormack snagged her first significant job, as a defense attorney on Steven Bochco‘s “Murder One.”
“That was when I could pick up the phone and just write (a check),” she says.
McCormack has been writing checks ever since. With guest spots on “ER,” “West Wing” and “K-Street,” word about this tall blonde with intense brown eyes got out.
When the role came along of hard-case U.S. marshal Mary Shannon in the USA cable network’s “In Plain Sight,” premiering tonight at 10, McCormack was ready.
“I love that part,” she says. “I never loved a part so much. She’s totally tough and not always likable … she’s like a real woman.
“I always say I got the boy part – by that, I don’t mean strong and tough, although she is that. I just mean, from my experience, the boy parts are generally more complex and women are usually the moral center or the ethical barometer.”
McCormack. 39, was a late bloomer, not hitting puberty until she was 18.
“I was 5 feet tall at 17. I’m 5-8 now. I was little, a little girl,” she says.
“I wore bowling shoes every day. … I was 5 feet tall and had a size 10 foot. On bowling shoes it says the size on the back, so what was I thinking?
“I had these (big) hands,” she adds. “I can palm a ball. I was like a puppy.
“I used to go to thrift stores and buy men’s jackets. I just wanted to look like it was on purpose. I couldn’t compete (for male attention) so I pretended that didn’t interest me.”
Eventually it did interest her, especially when she met her husband, British producer Michael Morris. They’ve been together eight years.
“I liked him immediately,” McCormack says. “You don’t know you’re going to love him madly, you just know you want to hang out with him and make out with him. You don’t know you want to have kids and see him as an old man.”
She has two little girls, ages 1 and 3, but McCormack isn’t letting motherhood stop her.
She has finished shooting the first season of “In Plain Sight” and recently opened to good reviews in a Broadway play, “Boeing-Boeing.”
“I don’t know what else I would do,” she says. “It’s a great life. I travel, I work when I want to work. I raise my kids and still get to do what I want to do.”
The birthday bunch
Actor Andy Griffith is 82. Singer Pat Boone is 74. Actor Morgan Freeman is 71. Actor Rene Auberjonois is 68. Guitarist Ron Wood (the Rolling Stones) is 61. Actor Jonathan Pryce is 61. Actor Powers Boothe is 60. Country singer Ronnie Dunn (Brooks and Dunn) is 55. Actress Lisa Hartman Black is 52. Actress Teri Polo is 39. Model Heidi Klum is 35. Singer Alanis Morissette is 34. MTV host Damien Fahey is 28.