ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 9, 1996 TAG: 9603130008
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LUAINE LEE NEW YORK TIMES
The male characters on Bonnie Hunt's CBS television show stand whenever a woman walks into the room.
It's a courtly gesture, about as hip as powdered wigs and duels at dawn. But Hunt is an old-fashioned girl.
In her scripts for ``The Bonnie Hunt Show'' - which has been renamed ``Bonnie'' for its Sunday re-premiere (at 8:30 p.m. on WDBJ-Channel 7) following its six-week trial in the fall - Hunt resolutely clings to outdated customs such as manners, devotion and honesty.
Her life reflects the same dedication to old-fashioned values. After her offbeat series, ``The Building,'' had a trial run in 1993, Hunt was told that CBS was eager to bring it back in a regular schedule slot.
But there was a catch: The network insisted that Hunt, as writer/producer/star, replace three of the performers on the show - friends who'd risen through the ranks with her all the way from Chicago's Second City theatrical troupe.
Hunt refused to do it, and thus effectively canceled her own show.
``You have to call on things in your heart,'' Hunt says, perched on the edge of a couch in her publicist's Los Angeles office.
``I remember one executive said to me, `Your loyalty has made you so stupid.'
``In the back of my mind I was thinking, `Is he right? Should I have gone ahead?'
``But I thought of the alternative - picking up the phone and saying, `The show's going, but you're not on it.' I was just too selfish in my own heart to make that phone call.''
What she calls selfishness, others would call generosity of spirit. But Hunt insists that she is in fact quite an egotist. She is a performer, she says, ``probably because I have a big ego, am selfish and want people to notice me.''
``I was sixth out of seven kids, and my dad used to walk in and say, `Which one are you?' You lose your identity, and maybe this is a way of getting myself out of there.''
Hunt's tightknit, performance-oriented family has served as fodder for her routines for years. Her mother used to make up colorful stories to tell the children. And Hunt remembers seeing her older brothers and sisters performing in school plays.
``I used to watch them in amazement, thinking, `They're so great - I could never, never do that.'
``I was the quiet one. But the oldest kids get the tough time because parents are so much stricter with the first few kids. When it got to me - my brothers and sisters not having taken this route, being good kids, being responsible - I basically cashed in on all their personalities.''
Wherever the performer's personality came from, it was something that others noticed before she did. Hunt was working as a nurse at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital while taking workshop classes at night with Joan Cusack and Holly Wortell.
Wortell, a good friend who is a member of the cast of ``Bonnie,'' had been in the class for three years. Hunt had only been there six weeks when she was offered a job with Second City's touring company.
``I thought, `Oh my gosh! I'm going to get paid Equity scale here,' which was $400 a week at the time, and to me that was a fortune to be paid as an actor. I thought, `Maybe I can do this for a while - then I can go back to my real job.'''
It was Wortell who had helped Hunt transport her homespun humor from nighttime coffee klatches to the stage.
Today, Hunt's resume includes two self-penned television series, a burgeoning screen career in movies such as ``Rain Man'' (1988), ``Beethoven'' (1992) and ``Beethoven's 2nd'' (1993), ``Dave'' (1993) - she played an unctuous tour guide - and the upcoming ``Getting Away With Murder.'' In April she begins ``Jerry Maguire,'' her second movie with Tom Cruise.
Her returning CBS show features Hunt as Bonnie Kelly, a Chicago television reporter. Wortell plays the TV station's make-up person and Kelly's best friend, Holly Jankofsky, while fellow Second City veteran Tom Virtue appears as cameraman Tom Vandoozer.
As the show's Chicago setting and cast of old friends suggests, Hunt hasn't lost sight of her roots. In fact, Wortell insists that success hasn't changed Hunt at all.
``Bonnie has amazing values and a very normal upbringing, and I think she's the same person,'' says Wortell, who has joined Hunt in her publicist's office.
Part of her ability to stay balanced, Hunt says, comes from the support of her husband of eight years, investment banker John Murphy. They were married in the summer of 1988; that fall, she was offered a role in ``Grand,'' a series filmed in Los Angeles.
``I felt since I was married I had to stay home and hold the fort. That's how I felt,'' she recalls. ``That's how I was raised. I didn't think there was an option.
``He said, `Go ahead and do it, because I don't need you yelling at me in 15 years saying, `If it weren't for you I could've gone to California.'''
They spent the next four years in a long-distance marriage, commuting whenever she had a break, until finally Murphy was transferred to Los Angeles.
``It was tough,'' Hunt says. ``I really give him the credit for making it work because he was very supportive, because he knew I really loved it - though I kept saying, `I don't need this in my life. I just want to have a family. I just want to be home.'
``I think he knew me better than I knew myself.''
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ``Bonnie'' returns to the CBS lineup Sunday night atby CNB8:30. color.