Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 19, 1990 TAG: 9005190529
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL HILL THE BALTIMORE EVENING SUN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Ford was referring to her character on CBS' "Murphy Brown," Corky Sherwood, the former Miss America who joined a bunch of serious journalists on the show's fictitious TV magazine program "F.Y.I." Corky's wide-eyed naivete contrasts with the hard-driven approach of the show's title character.
"I was more like Corky in high school," Ford said. "I was Miss Drama and wanted to do everything right. Then I learned you shouldn't take life that seriously, just play it one day at a time, take it as it comes.
"Corky takes everything so seriously. She's Miss Good Two Shoes, very dedicated and stuff. But she has a childlike quality that makes her likable.
"She's not a ditz," Ford said. "I'm always fighting against that. Sometimes she says something that sounds ditzy, but she has a very reasonable point to make."
"If a thought enters (Corky's) head, it goes right out her mouth. She doesn't edit," explained Diane English, creator and executive producer of "Murphy Brown."
"We have made her a slightly better journalist this year because we figure she had to learn something being around for a year," English added. "She's fun to write, but she's the hardest character to write because you have to be careful. There are so many great dumb jokes you can do, and we don't do those with Corky."
Despite her claim of such a definite difference, Ford's biography seems a combination of just such Corkylike determination and her stated claim of a take-it-as-it-comes attitude.
"There's some of me in every character I play, so I guess there's some of me in Corky," she said.
After her years on the stage in high school in Pineville, La., where she went from junior high cheerleader to a regular on the Dixie Dance Line for the Pineville Rebels, Ford headed to New York in 1982. She had already been a finalist in Teen Magazine's annual model search and expected doors to open in that profession.
"I decided to take acting classes because I had always done that, but I thought acting was going to be a very closed off," she said. "Instead I found it was modeling that was closed off. The same people who had been so enthusiastic the year before now were saying my face just wasn't right. It was in acting that the doors just opened."
"The first thing I did was lose my accent because I didn't want anyone to think I was another little Southern girl, someone who was not going to stick with it, not willing to pay the price to be there, who would be on her way back home soon."
Within a year, Ford landed a job on a soap opera, playing over the course of the next year Muffy Critchlowe on "One Life to Live," then Julia Scheerer on "Another World."
"If I had to do it over again, I think I'd take advantage of New York and do more theater," she said. "But coming from Louisiana and all, a soap opera seemed next to gold."
Ford says that she has learned that actors are like migratory birds, roosting in New York for theater and some soap jobs, heading to Los Angeles every spring for the pilot season when the potential new shows are being cast.
She got a couple of guest shots in series and a TV movie during her trips West before she moved to Los Angeles after landing a part in a 1985 tryout series on CBS called "The Popcorn Kid," which was about teen-agers working in a movie theater.
"Now that girl was a ditz," Ford said of her role. "She just worked in the movie theater so she could have enough money to buy her cheerleader costume."
More guest shots in "thirtysomething" and "Almost Home" followed before Corky Sherwood came along.
"It's been very fantastic so far in my career," Ford said. "I've had pretty good quality projects, and now I have a show with great writing, a great crew, a great cast that's fun to work with. I'm having a great time."
by CNB