PROFILE : Nancy O’Connor: Carroll’s Best Fan

Nancy O’Connor never smoked, never wore makeup in college. Now age 60, she’s never had a perm, never colored her hair, never had a face lift.

Six feet tall, she’s just lost 40 pounds. She pulls her fingers gracefully through her pretty gray-streaked hair like a college girl. “A face lift--that is one of the things I’ll never have. My father had good bones. My mother had high cheekbones and a strong chin. (Her grandmother was a Shawnee and member of the Crow tribe.) And, I don’t mind gray hair, if it’s pretty gray hair.”

There’s little pretense about the woman behind Emmy-awardwinning actor/writer Carroll O’Connor of “All in the Family” and “In the Heat of the Night” (he’s star and executive producer). She does, however, give herself credit for being a superb helpmate for 38 years.

“I take great pleasure in being supportive. I really feel--and so does he--that my vision of his talent has been very instrumental in his success. I have always felt he was very gifted as an actor and a writer; he is multitalented. Gentle to the core. Very honest. Very fair. He is often seen as determined. All Irish are determined.”

Nancy O’Connor also believes that her husband’s sense of fairness and the strain of portraying conditions of the South in “Heat” partly led to his need last year for open heart surgery. However, she adds, “I am not going to take him off the hook for smoking, but he had strain.”

Since his surgery, she notes, O’Connor has lost 25 pounds, “and is feeling better than he has in 15 years.” Did she get him to stop smoking? She had to be patient: “He had six bypasses; he stopped smoking--in that order.” Nine days later he had his gallbladder removed. She spent 18 days at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta while he was a patient.

Their relationship began in a September blizzard. He had seen her in a Moliere play the previous spring. In the fall, he was cast as the Episcopal minister in “Life With Father” where they were students at the University of Montana at Missoula. “He was disgruntled. He wanted to be Father. I was working on costumes, and he wouldn’t come in for a fitting. I stopped him in a blizzard under a pine tree, and I said, ‘I’ve got to get your inseam and your chest measurement.’ And then he came over to the theater and asked if he could walk me home.”

The O’Connors led happy years in Ireland and Rome, pursuing theater careers. Today they own apartments in Manhattan and beach houses in Santa Monica and Malibu. They headquarter at their cozy Italian-style home in Westwood. For the last 7 1/2 months, however, they’ve lived in rural pines “with Southern people who are sweet” on location for “Heat” in Covington, Ga.

Now, they are back in the city. Nancy O’Connor is working with Paul Blitzblau of Manhattan, renovating the Ginger Man restaurant in Beverly Hills, to be known in the future as Carroll O’Connor’s Place. She also intends to return to painting (she has a degree in fine arts and drama and has been an art teacher) and has outfitted a studio at the Dakota in New York City. “I tend to neglect myself,” she says.

She’d also like to get back to theater. In Dublin, for two years she was assistant set designer at the Abbey Theatre. She was a stage manager for an Abbey-Gate Theatre Tour to the 1951 Edinburgh Drama Festival and appeared subsequently at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin. When she and Carroll spent a season in winter stock in St. Louis, she acted, designed scenery and costumes and was stage manager before going to New York where she also acted, designed costumes and was a technical adviser for Burgess Meredith’s 1958 production of “Ulysses in Nighttown.” She’s now vice president of her husband’s production company.

On Saturday the O’Connors will be honored by UCLA’s John Wayne Cancer Clinic Auxiliary at the annual Odyssey Ball, this year called the Southern Odyssey Ball, inspired by O’Connor’s hit TV series. The O’Connors, who have given more than $350,000 to the clinic, will be given the Duke Award that night at the Santa Monica Air Center.