Moonlighting Mother

Motherhood can create problems in Hollywood--unless, of course, it’s part of the script. Babies are generally tolerated only if they’re on the screen, and even then with degrees of impatience.

“An actress pays a price for motherhood. There are a number of actresses who said you can’t have children. Katharine Hepburn and Lillian Gish, two of my role models, said you can’t do both.”

Cybill Shepherd, an actress and a full-time mother, reflected on that thought in the living room of her Encino home, where she lives with her 3-year-old twins, Ariel and Zack, and 11-year-old daughter, Clementine. The trappings of motherhood were everywhere--Big Bird in the playroom, giant plastic playthings in the back yard, a swimming pool enclosed in a kid-proof fence.

“I’m filled with guilt every 10 minutes, just like every other mother who ever existed,” said Shepherd, who is twice divorced. “I mean, mothers are blamed for everything.”

Producer Hal McElroy explained his decision to pursue Shepherd, who turns 41 next month, for his Monday night movie “Which Way Home” on TNT. The adventure story is about an American nurse whose maternal instincts lead to a rescue attempt of seven young orphans from the political upheaval in Southeast Asia.

“I suggested her to (TNT),” McElroy said. “Hers was a name that came up really early. I was aware, but not as much as I am now, of her pro-abortion activities and that she was a career mother. She’s ideal because she’s a mother and she’s politically committed.”

Shepherd became pregnant her second time during the 1987 ratings peak of the ABC hit series “Moonlighting,” which co-starred a doo-wapping Bruce Willis. She could no longer endure 12-hour work days and because of her growing belly “couldn’t do the sexy, snappy repartee that made the show work,” an ABC source said then.

“I absolutely carried the rap on that,” Shepherd said. She furrowed her brow and paused before continuing. “But it is tough. I mean, I guess it was almost like people saw the negatives instead of the positives of the situation. I was pregnant with twins, which is a really high-risk situation, and my doctors really didn’t want me to work at all.”

Reports of bickering on the set spread, and eventually Shepherd took a half-year maternity leave. When she returned, she nursed her twins on the set for 20 months, but the show never recovered and was canceled in 1989. Although proud of “Moonlighting,” she has no intention of doing another TV series.

“I can’t imagine doing that now, working that much. It’s just an unbelievable grind. There was no time for life. And if you have kids . . .,” she said, adding: “I don’t have any bitterness.”

She smiled slyly. “And it brought the world Bruce Willis. I mean, what do you want?”

“Moonlighting” also made a born-again star out of Shepherd. The former model graced national magazine covers at 18 and launched a movie career in 1971 in the celebrated Peter Bogdanovich film “The Last Picture Show.” But romantic entanglements with Bogdanovich and a series of miscast roles hurt Shepherd’s career.

Before she was offered “Moonlighting” in 1985, Shepherd was living in her hometown of Memphis, Tenn., where she had moved to raise Clementine.

She spent the time developing her acting skills in the relative obscurity of regional theater, although she returned briefly to Hollywood in 1983 for NBC’s short-lived “Yellow Rose” series.

“The theater was a crucial step leading up to ‘Moonlighting’ and the comedy I do now,” Shepherd said, “because I was doing a lot of comedies in the theater and trying to be funny, and I wasn’t too funny. Then at a certain point audiences suddenly found me funny. I don’t know what happened. I was doing the same play, and somewhere between Detroit and Denver I became funny.”

While living in Memphis, Shepherd read the book “September, September” by Shelby Foote about three whites who kidnap a black boy in Memphis. Moved by its statement against racism, she optioned the book, co-wrote a script and tried for eight years to make a film deal.

Using her role in “Which Way Home” to bargain with, she finally found a willing partner in TNT. Shepherd produced the project, retitled “Memphis,” and completed filming last year in Memphis. Because of a backlog of TNT movies, however, it will not air until 1992.

“The two films, ‘Which Way Home’ and ‘Memphis,’ restored to me a kind of excitement about filmmaking,” Shepherd said. “They reminded me of my first film, ‘The Last Picture Show,’ where you’re doing a small-budget picture in a very short period of time, and the whole cast and crew is full of passion.”

Shepherd hopes to alternate now between comedy and the serious drama she did for TNT and in last year’s “Texasville,” the sequel to “The Last Picture Show.” She has a small role in the current Woody Allen film “Alice”; has already shot the upcoming Arthur Hiller comedy “Married to It,” with Ron Silver, Stockard Channing and Beau Bridges, and in March heads to France to begin filming an untitled movie with John Candy and Jim Belushi.

Of course, when she heads to France, her children will travel with her.

“I try to be really present for my children,” Shepherd said. “And there are periods of time that are quality not quantity time. Right now we have quantity time, and I really rejoice in that.”

“Which Way Home” debuts on TNT Monday 5 p.m., with repeats Monday at 8 p.m., Tuesday at noon, Wednesday at 9 a.m. and Saturday at 7 p.m.