Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 19, 1994 TAG: 9402220001
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By JACKIE HYMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
``I am blessed. I have three children,'' says the actress, who has a 14-year-old daughter and 6-year-old twins. ``Infertility is not a problem I've had to deal with.''
``In the best scenario or the best situation, in playing a part I learn something that I haven't lived that will help me with my life,'' she said. ``It gives me a little piece of another lifetime.''
In ``Baby Brokers,'' which airs Monday (at 9 p.m. on WSLS-Channel 10), Shepherd plays a real-life psychologist named Debbie Freeman. After providing financial support to a young couple in hopes of adopting their baby, Freeman learns the mother has a history of offering her babies to multiple sets of parents.
In observing Freeman's work as a counselor, Shepherd also learned something new about young people.
``She works with what I call high-risk teen-agers, kids that are having problems, that are truant,'' Shepherd said. ``I went and I sat in her group therapy with kids.''
``It's a scary world for kids,'' she said, ``and as a result the kids get pretty scary themselves.''
Shepherd plans to play someone more like herself, a single working mother, in an as-yet-untitled CBS situation comedy that may air next fall.
``I've had some funny situations that I've never seen on a TV show,'' said the twice-divorced Shepherd. ``It's like when you've got kids with two different dads and you're trying to date.
``We can end up like kids' birthdays with boyfriend and two ex-husbands. It's kind of amusing.''
Having children has made her better ``in every way,'' she said.
``I did not understand prioritizing,'' she said. ``And then I had to learn it in order to work outside the home and have a child. It helped me enormously as an actress to feel and to learn to allow myself to feel the things that I have to feel in my life. I have an emotional base to come from that my kids have given me.''
Though she won critical praise for her first movie, the 1971 Peter Bogdanovich film ``The Last Picture Show,'' Shepherd has taken a long time to feel comfortable on camera.
``I can chart my personal growth through my appearances on `The Tonight Show' over the years,'' she said. ``I went on when I was 18 and (had won the title) Model of the Year and I didn't say a word, I was so frightened.''
And after ``The Last Picture Show,'' the situation didn't improve much.
``I went on `Dick Cavett' and talked a mile a minute and sounded like my brain was blond,'' said Shepherd, a Memphis native who speaks with a slight Southern accent.
``I knew that the Chatty Cathy thing wasn't really me, so then I went through my aloof thing where I said very little and acted superior, and that wasn't me either,'' she said.
In 1985, she landed the hit ABC series ``Moonlighting,'' which revived her career and launched Bruce Willis to stardom.
``After `Moonlighting,' I finally figured out a way to be myself on talk shows,'' she said. ``I try when I go on talk shows now to be myself in the ways that are shocking to people, like wear two different kinds of shoes, one for my mother and one for me.
``I'm also very serious politically and I take a stand on certain issues,'' she said, citing women's rights, freedom of choice and civil rights for minorities and homosexuals.
Although better known as an actress, Shepherd has recorded four albums as a singer. Reluctant for many years to perform in public, she sang the national anthem live at the Sugar Bowl on New Year's Day and on March 19 will sing live on a BBC radio show in London.
``I have to go out and sing in public so I can stop torturing my family,'' joked Shepherd, who started formal voice training at 16 and studied four years of opera. ``People laugh when I sing opera. I sound like Jack the Ripper got me. That's the reason I gave it up.''
by CNB