Growing Out of a Role

Stockard Channing made her motion-picture debut in style, acting up a blizzard with future cartoon characters Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty in “The Fortune.” Fourteen years later, the Tony-winning performer appears in tonight’s “Perfect Witness,” a made-for-HBO movie also starring Brian Dennehy and Aidan Quinn.

Channing is Dennehy’s girlfriend in this film, but only 10 years ago in a TV movie she portrayed the stocky actor’s daughter . Was it awkward kissing that same gentleman she used to call Dad?

“I was playing 14. I don’t know what age he was,” recalls an amused Channing, noting also that Colleen Dewhurst played her mother in that movie. “And yes, lots of scenes had a tremendous amount of laughter and jokes. Given the grimness of the material, it was a good way to relieve tension.”

The grimness Channing alludes to in this HBO endeavor sprouts from the premise. The Quinn character, a good family man and restaurateur, sees a brutal contract assassination at his local watering hole. Nobody wants to get involved, so Manhattan D.A. Dennehy applies the screws to get the reluctant Quinn to testify.

Channing has a few pointed words to say about federal “protection” programs that occur in the real world, outside the safety of a movie set.

“You name it . . . got an afternoon?,” asks the concerned actress when queried about what could be done to better protect people who risk much to finger villains. “I think that in the next generation they could educate our kids better. We need a shift of focus, a shift of attitude. Between the home and the environment, it’s really about the children.”