Crossover Dream Coming True for Clio Winner Kathleen Garrett

Judging by her schedule, Kathleen Garrett is on her way to becoming hot property.

“Last week I had seven auditions in one day,” she says. “We arranged it so that I wore one type of wardrobe all morning and another type in the afternoon. I put 90 miles on my car that day. By the last audition, I couldn’t even read the script.” She collapses back on the sofa and grins. “I’ve never heard of anybody having seven.”

Then again, not every actress wins a Clio Award, either. The advertising industry’s Oscar, Clios honor top commercials in a contest that this year included 25,490 entries from 59 nations. Garrett won best actress for a spot she did for a New England department store chain.

In the commercial, which will air as part of a Clio Awards special Wednesday at 8 p.m. on KTTV Channel 11, Garrett’s character re-enacts a phone conversation in which she tells her sister about a white sale. It may not sound like a meaty role, but Garrett manages to infuse it with her trademark humor.

“When I did that commercial, we did six takes of it and I couldn’t get it right. So finally, I started doing it in accents,” she says, demonstrating. “That loosened everyone up.”

Without Garrett’s knowing it, the ad agency entered the spot in the Clio competition. When Garrett found out she won, she was away from home, checking her answering machine for messages.

“I went absolutely ape,” she says. “I was out of my mind, going, ‘I won a Clio! I won a Clio! Gimme a pen!’ ”

Garrett, who cut her teeth on roles like the tragic Greek heroine Clytemnestra, has played “the naked porno queen” in an episode of “Hooperman” and Melanie Mayron’s grandmother in a “thirtysomething” flashback. Most recently, she appeared in a Trident gum commercial as “the girl carrying the groceries who falls down.”

“That’s why,” she jokes, “I went to drama school in England.”