Kennedy Now Feels Right at Home

When Mimi Kennedy was a story editor on “Knots Landing” last season, she read for a role in the pilot for the series “Homefront,” created by then-”Knots” co-executive producers Lynn Latham and Bernard Lechowick, and wound up as the show’s haughty matron, Ruth Sloan.

This is hardly a star-is-born scenario, however. The 43-year-old Kennedy has amassed years of solid acting credits, including a 1976 Broadway turn in “Grease,” the features “Immediate Family,” “Chances Are” and “Pump Up the Volume,” and numerous television series. Why, then, was she in front of the “Knots” computer screen instead of the cameras?

“Because of having children,” she replies. “They put the brakes on my acting career. (Son Cisco is now 9 and daughter Molly is 6.) Being at home with a small child is a very silent life--you get to hear your own thoughts. So I went back to writing, which I’d done extensively in high school and college. I’d write late at night at the kitchen table.”

Kennedy was offered the “Knots” job after she showed writing samples to the married Latham and Lechowick, with whom she had become friendly as fellow parents at the Oakwood School, where her own husband teaches high school English and history. She discovered that the two dissimilar professions also complemented each other.

“In writing scenes for ‘Knots Landing,’ I knew how long it takes to play out physical action, and I didn’t make demands actors couldn’t fulfill. The scenes were easy to play. And being in story meetings was a fantastic lesson that made me a better actress. I learned to sit in silence and not worry what other people were thinking about me. It was great for concentration.”

Though she previously lost roles by suggesting script improvements during her auditions, the actress post-”Knots” has become more relaxed. “I’m much more collaborative now. My job isn’t as big--it’s simply to fulfill my portion of the script,” she says. “There’s a pleasure to that. The writer creates it, and I portray it. It’s not my job to create it anymore.”