<< back                                        November 17 2005    LA Daily News
Author: Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Emmy-winning actress Patricia Heaton reports executive-producing and co-starring in TNT's Nov. 28 "The Engagement Ring" was "a real baptism by fire."

The former "Everybody Loves Raymond" regular says, "Working on a sitcom for nine years where I would go in four days a week from 10 to 4 was ridiculously easy. Then going to a minimum of 12-hour days, it's like, 'What is the big attraction with movies, and who wants to do this?' It was way too much like work, and it was really hard." However, she adds, "It's sort of like giving birth. As you're going through it you keep saying, 'I am never ever doing this again.' ... Until the next one when you see a script and think 'Oh, this would be so great.' "

Heaton co-stars in the wonderful romantic comedy about star-crossed lovers and an engagement ring that arrives in the mail 40 years too late with her husband and co-executive producer David Hunt, Lainie Kazan, Vincent Spano and Tony Lo Bianco.

The film is produced by Heaton and Hunt's Four Boys Films production company, and it's the first time the couple has worked so closely together on a project - not counting, of course, their four sons. "We had to kind of figure out how to not be married when we were on the set," she says, "and just be actors and producers. We were juggling an awful lot, and we had our kids with us, so I was really tired by the time we finished. But our kids were real troupers. Fortunately there was an excellent skateboarding park next to where we were staying, so they forgave us for dragging them away from their buddies for a few weeks."