January 6 2004

By Luaine Lee | The Beaufort Gazette 

If Patricia Heaton seems ideal as the wife and mom on CBS' "Everybody Loves Raymond," it's because that's what she really is.

In fact, her audition for the role of Debra Barone was wedged between frantic needs at home, says Heaton.

"My sitter had to leave. It was a very last-minute thing," says Heaton. "I said, 'I'm going to run over there, do the audition. I'll be right back. Please, just stay.'

"We really needed the job. Neither my husband nor I had a job and we were rapidly running out of money and had two children and mortgage payments," she recalls.

"There were 12 women ahead of me. I thought, 'I've GOT to get back.' I said, 'Would anyone mind, my sitter's there and I have to leave?'

"I went in there and they were so welcoming. I didn't know who Ray Romano was. And there was a guy sitting in the corner and I thought, 'I guess we have to wait till Ray comes in.' And then I was introduced that this was Ray Romano, and I just thought, 'Well, I'm not going to quit my day job yet because I don't see the magic here.'

"And I was in such a hurry and said, 'Can we just get to the audition and skip the small talk?"'

It's something that Debra would say, she thinks. "She's just a harried housewife and I think that's who I was when I came in. I wasn't nervous. Also it's a testament to how well it was written, I completely understood her relationship with Ray. It was a no-brainer."

Heaton, 45, may have endeared herself to audiences as Debra, but she's going to slay them as Paula McFadden in the hilarious new version of Neil Simon's "The Goodbye Girl" premiering on TNT Jan. 16. As Paula, the disgruntled divorcee, Heaton gets to re-live some of her own tougher times.

She spent nine years in New York trying to sculpt a career. She married and divorced.

"I couldn't get arrested in New York," she says. "I remember I was in between jobs and I remember thinking, 'In three weeks I'm going to be out of money.' And I was walking down the street and had this huge panic rising in me, and I was talking out loud to myself ... I was thinking, 'How can I get a job? I could be cleaning apartments. Maybe I could put those signs up where you have your phone number that can be ripped off the bottom. Maybe I could do that.' And I realized I had become one of those people who are walking along the street mumbling to themselves in New York City."

That's when she decided to risk L.A. She was living off residuals from an aspirin commercial and summarizing depositions on her home computer when she finally landed a job eight months after she arrived on the West Coast.

"My first job in L.A. was either a 'Matlock' or 'Alien Nation.' And then I got on 'thirtysomething' and ended up doing seven episodes of 'thirtysomething,' which was quite a coup because at the time I had not an agent or a manager."

Heaton had moved eight times during her nine years in New York. And one of those times she sublet an apartment from a British actor.

Like her character in "The Goodbye Girl," Heaton had no interest in dating another actor. It definitely wasn't love at first sight. But David Hunt grew on her. Eventually they married and now have four sons, ages, 5, 6, 8 and 10.