Sela Ward: why later is better

She plays the Hollywood game by her own rules, and now, as her TV show begins a new season, the star of ABC's "Once and Again" is holding all the cards

It's a lazy Sunday afternoon on the patio of an L.A. restaurant known for its pasta and privacy. So no one even looks up when Sela Ward breezes in, a little out of breath, dressed California classic: a crisp black cotton fitted shirt, a mid-calf khaki A-line skirt and square-toe slide sandals. Ward carries herself in a way that reminds you she's a former model, yet it's surprising to learn later that she's only 5 feet 7 inches tall. After a firm no-nonsense handshake, Ward picks an inside table far from her usual patio perch and apologizes for being late. It seems that her 4-year-old daughter, Anabella, was not at all pleased that Mommy was going out on a Sunday without her.

"She's something; very feisty and headstrong," says Ward, settling in, taking a deep breath and pushing back her long chestnut hair with her sunglasses. "But she's so funny. She just gets that defiant thing going on like, 'I am not sleepy! I am not going to take a nap!' and I just have to laugh. She's going through this terrible separation anxiety." Nerves still jangled, Ward digs in her purse for something to stave off a headache. "I don't know what I'm going to do next. She'll just have to come with me every morning to the set."

Delete the word set and the award-winning actress sounds like every woman trying to balance her family's needs with a demanding career. It's a role Ward also struggles with on-screen as Once and Again's Lily Manning, the divorced mother of two who re-enters a much younger work world and falls for a divorced hunk (Billy Campbell) with two kids of his own. Throughout her career, Ward, now 45, has been cast as the smart, self-possessed woman who tries to handle life's curveballs with dignity and humor. A veteran of TV movies (including Almost Golden: The Jessica Savitch Story) and feature films (The Fugitive, Runaway Bride), her defining role in the public consciousness was that of Teddy Reed, the troubled artist/family black sheep/recovering alcoholic on the groundbreaking 1991 to 1996 TV series Sisters.

But it has been her work on Once and Again, the second-chance saga from thirtysomething creators Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, that has brought Ward the greatest acclaim of her career, something nearly unprecedented for a fortysomething actress. Entering its third season this month, the drama has been a favorite among critics. But quality and quantity clashed last season, as the network considered canceling the show because of relatively low viewership. What ABC did to increase the show's audience has put Ward in the spotlight as never before: It moved Once and Again into 20/20's time slot (Fridays at 10 p.m., E.T.), igniting a media firestorm that raised the specter of 20/20 host Barbara Walters leaving the network. (Ward has chosen not to comment on the controversy.)

Ward's role on Once and Again and her hip commercials for Sprint have helped make her a phone-card-carrying spokeswoman for a generation of women who've blossomed late. "If I can hold a banner for women in their forties that says life isn't over and sexiness isn't over, then great," she says. "I do consider myself a late bloomer. So far, my forties have been the best time of my life."

Her words hardly surprise Once and Again writer/director Zwick: "I think Sela has been very brave to take on this public role rather than lie about her age or to shy away from it."

The actress battled the age police from the get-go. And she hasn't always won. "There was a time when I would obsess over 'What am I going to wear to this audition? How am I going to do my hair? How much makeup to wear or not wear?' All to look younger. But for what? Nobody can notice that I'm not twenty-five anymore? Now, I think you do great violence to yourself as a woman by lying about your age, because it undermines your self-esteem."

How she met her man
When she was in her mid-30s, Ward met another self-confessed late bloomer, Carrie Wiatt, now 43, a nutritionist and founder of the weight-loss program Diet Designs, at a dinner party. The two became fast friends, and Ward says she owes her trim figure to Wiatt's portion-controlled low-fat meals. Before long, Wiatt set Ward up with a friend, venture capitalist Howard Sherman. "I'd known Howard since we were very young," says Wiatt. "So I said, 'I've got a really great guy for you,' and she said, 'Yeah?' Howard, of course, was very tentative because Sela was an actress. But I said, 'Howard, forget that. She's the loveliest human being you'll ever meet.'"

Wiatt smiles at the memory of the couple's first double date. "We went to a Raiders game, and it was so cute because Sela was with us in the backseat of my date's jeep and Howard was driving his car. When we got to a stoplight, she said, 'I should be with him!' So she got out, ran over and jumped in his sports car, and that was that."

Ward, whose previous Hollywood steadies had been actors Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver) and Peter Weller (Robocop), married Sherman in 1992. Today, besides their daughter, they have a son, 8-year-old Austin Ward. "Howard has a great sense of humor, and he's very creative and smart," his wife says thoughtfully. "I love listening to him talk about business, just the way I used to with my dad [an electrical engineer with his own business]. Plus, Howard really listened to me and my crazy schemes."

Although theirs is not an entertainment-industry union, the couple still has Hollywood-style hurdles to overcome. "You have to have someone whose ego is really in check," says Ward. "People who aren't in this business are treated so rudely. At the last awards show, I was on the red carpet, and the paparazzi shouted to my husband, 'Could the background please move out of the way?' Or we'll be at an industry dinner and someone will go, 'And what do you do?' and he starts to tell them and they say, 'Oh, that's nice' and turn their back."

If Ward's personal life is fuller now than she could have imagined, the same holds true for her career, thanks largely to her TV character. Lily resonated with Ward -- and the fans who've sent hundreds of letters to the show -- from the moment the actress read the Once and Again script: "On the first page Lily says in a voiceover, 'I always thought I was making the right, the safe choices, but they never really were.' And that has just been such a theme in my own life. I've never done anything really safe. . . . I keep going back to Mississippi for that sense of belonging, roots."

A few years ago Ward and her husband invested in a 300-acre farm in her hometown of Meridian, so she can spend more time with her father, Granberry, and mother, Annie (both have been battling cancer in recent years), and enjoy visits with her brothers, Berry and Brock, and younger sister, Jenna. "Growing up in the South had a great impact on Sela," says Jenna, a spa director in Miami Beach. "There's an ease and warmth about her."

Over the past few years, Ward has become one of the leaders of Meridian's revitalization, helping to raise funds to renovate an historic opera house and consulting on a new performing-arts center. She and her husband are also on the board of Hope for Children, a new foster-care center designed to rescue kids who fall through the cracks in the state welfare system. "This center would not exist without Sela's help," says school chum Bruce Martin, an insurance executive and chairman of the center, who notes that Ward has raised money for the project from the entertainment industry.

The Southern belle heads north
Friends and family say Ward's generous nature was shaped in childhood. As she grew up, her real-life script had predictable scenes: Southern belle goes off to college (University of Alabama), becomes a cheerleader and dates the star football player. But here the plot takes a twist. After graduating with a B.A. in art and advertising, Ward headed to New York City, where she worked as a graphic artist, supplementing her sporadic income by modeling and doing TV commercials (her first for Maybelline).

Her success at commercials led to Hollywood in the early 1980s. By then, Ward was 27, nearly over the hill by Tinseltown's standards. She nonetheless took a crash course in acting and made the casting-call rounds. "Ever felt like giving up? Oh, please. From the first week I was out here," says Ward, rolling her hazel eyes.

She distinctly remembers being scared silly when she was cast as Tom Hanks' love interest in Garry Marshall's Nothing in Common (1986). "There was a line producer who came up to me after one scene I was having trouble with and said, 'You know, Marsha Mason would have really nailed that scene.' And I thought, Well, no kidding! It was such an insulting thing to say to me. But I kept going because I think, on some level, I just wasn't going to be daunted."

Her perseverance paid off. She received a Golden Globe for Sisters in 1994; in 1996, she earned a CableACE award for her portrayal of the late newscaster Jessica Savitch in the film Almost Golden. Despite accolades, Hollywood's big-screen doors still didn't fling open. When Ward auditioned to be a Bond Girl, the director admitted, "What I really want is Sela ten years ago" -- never mind that she was 39 at the time. But Ward now calls the callous remark "a gift."

It propelled her into starting production of a documentary entitled The Changing Face of Beauty, which aired on the Lifetime channel in 2000. "We interviewed these twenty-year-olds obsessed with lines under their eyes. It's a tough one, because it's sad to lose your youthful looks. But nobody escapes it, so better to embrace it."

Facing Hollywood realities meant Ward had to re-examine her future as an actress. "I thought, If the roles run out, then I need to produce. So I started a production company, did a deal with CBS and a TV movie. It all acted as a catalyst for me to start exploring other avenues for myself." That led to the offer of the starring role on Once and Again, for which she won an Emmy in 2000.

Ward has just finished Behind the Sun, a dark, independent film in which she has a small role as Billy Bob Thornton's ex-wife. For the moment, she has no plans for any more feature films. These days, besides her projects back in Mississippi, Ward is savoring as much time as possible with her husband and kids, and, oh, yes, her work on Once and Again. "There's so much more of me there now, and that's really the secret of acting: to bring as much of yourself to the part as you can. Now I get it."

A sprint to success
And her colleagues say it's brought out a more playful side of Ward. "She has great comedy instincts and timing," says Zwick, who describes a moment in the show when Lily returns from a date and her daughters want a full report. Lily tries to be calm but keeps fumbling things on the counter. "That fumbling wasn't in the script," says Zwick. "That was Sela."

"She's one of the most down-to-earth people I've ever worked with," says her co-star Billy Campbell. "Most of what we do all day on the set is giggle."

One can only imagine the chuckling that goes on during the making of her Sprint commercials, which have always been marked by their humor. One of Ward's most popular spots is called "The Power of Two," in which the sexy star shimmies to hip-hop music. Turns out the dancing was the advertising major's own idea. Well, kind of. "I had said to the creative director, 'Let's do a dancing spot,' thinking me and a lot of other dancers," she explains. "But when I showed up, he said, 'We're going to do that dancing thing today. But it's going to be just you up there.'"

Ward's eyes widen with the recollection. "I said, 'But . . . I don't even . . . !' So I had my makeup artist, who's a great dancer, stand in my line of vision and dance while I just mimicked her," says Ward, grinning conspiratorially. "And it all worked out fine."

It most certainly did. __ Elizabeth Snead, LHJ.com (August 8, 2001)