Wednesday, January 20, 1999
Moore says pick a passion in your life
BY SUE MacDONALD
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Mary Tyler Moore
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Behind the cheery youth of housewife Laura Petrie and the confident maturity of newswoman Mary Richards is the real Mary Tyler Moore.
She's an actress and comedienne who schmoozes as sincerely with the prop crew and backstage hairdressers as she does with prominent TV and movie executives — a woman of grace and wit.
Miss Moore, 61, kicks off the Enquirer's sold-out “Unique Lives & Experiences” lecture series Wednesday with a talk inspired primarily by her autobiography, After All (G.P. Putnam's; 1995).
Born in Brooklyn and raised in Southern California, Miss Moore married the boy next door at age 18, gave birth to a son at 19 and soon launched a career in commercials, television and movies.
It's been an up-down life, with successful roles on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-66) and The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77), and an Oscar nomination in 1980 for playing a cold, surface-only mother in Ordinary People.
That year, her son was killed when his gun went off while he was cleaning it. In 1984 she sought help for a drinking problem and has been sober 15 years.
In 1983, she married heart surgeon Dr. Robert S. Levine and has been active with the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and animal-rescue causes. The Enquirer spoke with her by phone from her home in upstate New York.
QUESTION: As you look back on your life and career, are you happy with how it's evolved?
ANSWER: I feel this way about life: We all did the best we could at the time, given what we had to work with. Things evolve, and they evolve at their own place and time.
There are many things in my background that I wish I had another chance at. I wish I had at 17 the wisdom I had at 62.
Q: Given that, what advice do you give to young women just starting out in their careers?
A: I am not a college-educated person, so I don't know all there is to know about the business world or the world of education. ... I have to rely on my own experiences, and that tells me that if I had it to do over again, college certainly would be on my agenda.
I would not have had a child so early.
I was so driven with the unpredictability of youth and the driving need for a career that there was not very much left over for motherhood. That colors my feelings about whether it is possible today for women to work and have children. In some cases, there is no choice. It has to be done.
But I think it takes a good deal more energy — both physical and emotional — than many people are prepared to give, and I think it's the child who usually pays.
My general advice is to really want what you're going after. There is no substitute for passion about what you want.
Q: You've been a national spokeswoman for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation since 1985. How is your own health?
A: I'm doing very well, considering that I've had diabetes over 30 years. I've been among the lucky ones.
I've had eye surgery and eye laser treatment, and thank God, I think we've finally got a leg up on the problem. Diabetes can be a devastating disease.
Q: When critics pick their all-time favorite TV shows and episodes, The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show always receive a mention. How does that make you feel?
A: I have a very special feeling, the kind of feeling that is given to parents to know that you've changed somebody, made a difference in their lives. I know that's true of the whole world of Mary Richards.
In a way, I think I've been a part of history.
Q: Your thoughts about what's on TV today?
A: There's so little that is new and exciting, but there are some shows with good writers. I like Everybody Loves Raymond and I like Lateline. I like 3rd Rock from the Sun and Frasier.
Besides those, the best of TV for me is reporting and the CNN approach to what's going on in the world and the Sunday commentary shows.
Q: Of all your characters, which one is most like the real Mary Tyler Moore?
A: Interestingly and a little sadly, I found that there was enough about the character Beth in Ordinary People that I found in myself as well. As we did my preparation and rehearsed, I found that I was playing my father and his look at the world and his roadblocks to communication. I found that I had quite a lot of that in me — surprise, surprise.
It was eye-opening, very much so, and because I could identify with Beth, it helped me identify a lot with my father and to ... forgive him. In doing so, I knew that I was freeing him, too, to be more the kind of father I had been looking for. And today, we are great chums.
Q: Do you have any role models?
A: I don't think I look for role models any more. I read as much as I can, and I try to be open to new ideas and to hold onto the old, trusted ones that I have proven, through time, are valuable and in place where they should be.
I love seeing things like John Glenn going up in a space capsule, and I'm always applauding the people that Willard Scott announces on the Today show, the people who are 103 and still taking in laundry or whatever. I have a very fond spot in my heart for older people.
Q: What's next for you?
A: The movie Labor Pains is coming out this spring, a comedy about a young woman (Kyra Sedgwick) who's pregnant after a brief interlude with a young man she's not ready to marry (Rob Morrow).
She decides to keep it secret from everybody. She does not want to have an abortion or marry the young man. She plans to have the baby and give it up for adoption, and the day she goes into labor, the rest of us find out about it and descend on her.
I had a wonderful time playing this obnoxious woman who in spite of that, has some very interesting things to say.
And Valerie Harper and I have been talking about coming back on the air in a series called Mary and Rhoda. We talked with ABC, but I don't think it's going to happen there (ABC confirms the series is dead). So we're talking at the very least of making it into a movie for television.
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