Mary Kay Place could have made an entire career of playing country-quirky mothers.
Her first big break came in 1976 as Loretta Haggers, a would-be country-western singer who yearned to be a mother, on the groundbreaking soap satire "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman." There was also the role of Reese Witherspoon's mother in "Sweet Home Alabama."
Currently on HBO's "Big Love," Place plays polygamist Adaleen Grant, mother of Nicolette (Chloë Sevigny). On IFC's "The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman," she has a recurring role as the mother of Jackie (Laura Kightlinger).
But Place has taken her career in other directions: She's been a Emmy-nominated writer ("MASH") a Grammy-nominated singer (for an album she recorded as "Loretta Haggers") and a prolific director ("Baby Boom," "Friends" and most recently "The Minor Accomplishments").
As both a serious and comic actress, Place has appeared in 37 feature films ("The Big Chill," "Girl, Interrupted"). Recently, her schedule has filled up with back-to-back projects, notably HBO's "12 Miles of Bad Road," in which she'll star along with Lily Tomlin as sisters in a large, rich, dysfunctional Dallas family.
Place said she's grateful for the recent boom in cable programming that has provided a surfeit of roles, many unusually cliché free, for older actresses. "Right now, there seems to be this incredible variety of nicely written, nicely layered work that involves women our age," she said. "It's a blessing, I have to say."
Together again
"12 Miles of Bad Road" reconnects her with creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, her old writing partner on "MASH." Shooting will begin later this month, yet Place said she doesn't even know what the plot is. "But it's a smart show," she said. "It's a laugh-out-loud comedy.
"It's definitely an ensemble piece," she said. "Lily is a sort of Ann Richards, the more liberal branch of the family. I'm more conservative. Sometimes, we have more money than good sense. It reflects different kinds of values in our culture and comments on a lot of different things."
Place's screen mothers also tend to be smarter and more complicated than the usual. "Big Love's" Adaleen is "an unemotional, detached, repressed person because of her circumstances" as the sixth wife of compound patriarch Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton), Place said.
"She buys into it lock, stock and barrel. She has her own subversive way of getting around it, but she keeps that to herself.
