Wasn’t Born Yesterday

The many looks of Rebecca De Mornay are no accident. The actress who went from sultry in “Risky Business” and last year’s “And God Created Woman” to demure in “The Trip to Bountiful” and to downright plain in “Runaway Train” has now donned ‘40s gowns, librarian glasses and a Brooklyn accent as the dim but delicious Billie Dawn in a revival of Garson Kanin’s “Born Yesterday,” now playing at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Although it’s a role that requires glamour, De Mornay thinks she’s put enough distance between herself and “Risky’s” call girl to ward off stereotype casting.

“ ‘Runaway Train’ was very hard to get,” she said, “because the director (Andrei) Konchalovsky had bought into the dream he saw on screen. He saw ‘Risky Business’ and said, ‘No way could that girl be a train mechanic.’ And he refused to meet with me. So I went to his office with a darkish rinse on my hair--which I hadn’t washed--no makeup and wearing dull, lumberjack-type clothes. He didn’t recognize me.”

Someone who’s definitely taken notice is her estranged father, TV shout-show host Wally George, who split with her mother when De Mornay was less than a year old. (A Southern Californian by birth, De Mornay was reared in England and Austria.)

“I didn’t grow up with him at all,” she said coolly. “I never experienced him as a father. But a couple of years ago, I heard from people around the country that he was going on talk shows showing clips of (“Risky Business”) saying, ‘This is my daughter.’ I don’t appreciate being identified with who my parents are. The truth is, I don’t have a relationship with him. And I don’t think our life styles are necessarily that compatible.”