<< back                                      November 14 2005 Tribune News Service
Author: Luaine Lee

After almost 10 years as the spunky wife, Debra, on "Everybody Loves Raymond," Patricia Heaton has her life back. Well, almost.

As the mother for four boys ages 6, 8, 10 and 12, Heaton finds herself packing lunches, splitting homework patrol with her husband, emptying the dishwasher, doing much of the cooking and squeezing in commercials for a national market chain.

She's also executive producing, with her husband, a major TV film in which she stars: "The Engagement Ring," set to premiere Nov. 28 on TNT.

"The thing about working on a show from 10 to 4 - four days a week - if you can call that work - those times are blocked off and you just focus on that," says Heaton, seated on a sleek couch in her modern office at the Disney Studios.

"Now that that's opened up, nature abhors a vacuum. So all this stuff comes in and stuff you've been wanting to do for a long time. You want to do these charitable opportunities you've had for a long time, you want to see the friends you haven't seen for a long time. I started tennis and golf also ... But my kids are now at the point in school where they're getting TONS of homework ... My husband has a documentary that's been going around to film festivals, which I produced, so it's been really, really crazy."

Dressed in a gray T-shirt and jeans, her chestnut hair pulled back with a rubber band, Heaton looks like a harried housewife.

But a life crammed with events is nothing new to the actress, whose mother died when she was 12, burdening her with what C.S. Lewis called "a severe mercy."

"I often think that my mother dying was sort of a severe mercy in my life - a very odd and painful gift because I think it made me always keep my own mortality in perspective, which I think is important," she says.

"It just made me have to be a stronger person. It's horribly painful, but I feel it's given me a truer view of the world and your priorities and an extra side thing is it really enriches your ability to empathize and have compassion for people which, as an actor, you have to completely be able to experience some suffering and pain - even for comedy. You need to know pain in order to do comedy. Comedy is just pain plus timing," she laughs, that warm chuckle that 16 million people recognized each week on "Raymond."

"I'm an independent person anyway and then, when my mom died, I really got a sense I was on my own. And I've always felt not lonely but alone. Ultimately you're alone. It's up to you - alone except for God. You strip it down, that's it. And it's your responsibility. I think that's what keeps me moving along."

Though Heaton, 47, bounced onto the "Raymond" show full-blown, she'd spent nine frustrating years in New York trying to unearth an outlet for her talent.

The day she sublet an apartment from actor-producer Dave Hunt turned out to be pivotal in more ways than one.

"The 'apartment' turned out to be a room ... with three other guys. It was one room in a three-bedroom big, old apartment with communal kitchen and bathroom," she recalls.

"One guy was a bartender, one was a schoolteacher and there was another guy who I don't think we ever actually saw."

She kept in touch with the landlord "because of phone bills and whatever," she says.

"He was kind of hitting on me a lot. It took about a year. I had sublet the apartment so I could move closer to the guy I was dating. So that ended shortly after. But it was about a year before Dave and I actually dated. I was going to Los Angeles to do an industrial show and he was in L.A. shooting a Clint Eastwood movie, so we got in touch there and from that weekend we started dating."

She and Hunt are partners not only at home but at work. Sometimes that can be tricky, she admits.

While they were producing "The Engagement Ring" (Hunt also plays her fiance) they clashed. "It was a little difficult because it was the first time we were working together and producing, and we had all the kids with us so we were doing pre-production stuff and still working on the script and in production and still working on the script.

"So in between, we'd have to go into the dressing room and work on the scene or go out and check on the set to make sure it was right. And there was no downtime, and we were exhausted. When I had a day off I was with the kids and he was working. When I was working, he was with the kids. I'm not used to those 12-hour days so we were a little bit on the edge with each other ... I think it would be easier if one of us were acting and the other were producing."

But Heaton is able to admit when she's in the wrong. One day the director of "The Engagement Ring" called her aside. "He said, 'You know, Patty, I notice you have a tendency to direct Dave.' He said, 'Don't.' To my credit I told Dave he said that," she laughs.