Profile : Mills Unknotted : THE ACTRESS’ POST-’KNOTTS’ CALENDAR IS FILLED WITH PRODUCING--PLUS A NEW MOVIE

Recognized worldwide from her eight-season stint on “Knots Landing,” Donna Mills remains one of the reigning queens of TV movies and miniseries. This week, she stars in NBC’s glitzy four-hour drama “Barbara Taylor Bradford’s ‘Remember.’ ” And her Donna Mills Productions wields some clout with 10 hours of projects in development at ABC.

Not a bad record for someone who never wanted to become an actress. “I wanted to be a dancer,” says Mills, a lithe Chicago native who seems 180 degrees removed from her image as “Knots’ ” calculating Abby Cunningham.

“My mother always wanted me to take dramatic lessons but I wasn’t interested. Then when I was just out of high school, I was dancing in summer stock. That finished and there was an audition for a play, ‘Come Blow Your Horn,’ at the Drury Lane Theatre.

“I went and auditioned and got the role of Peggy, which is a very funny role. I didn’t know what I was doing. But the first night, hearing those laughs just turned me on so much that I decided I might like that.”

For a time, Mills attempted to pursue both careers. But eventually she hung up her toe shoes. “I saw early on, the acting career was longer than a dancing career.”

Though known primarily as a dramatic actress, Mills’ first TV series--NBC’s 1971-72 “The Good Life’--was a comedy.

“Right after I shot ‘Play Misty for Me’ I came down to L.A. and like, two weeks later, got the pilot,” she says. “The next year, I was offered every comedy pilot that was being done.”

But she turned them all down.

“I didn’t want to be known as a comedy actress,” Mills acknowledges. “Now I am fighting, saying, ‘Hey, I can do (comedy). I can do it. I can do it. I can do it.’ ”

But she still ends up doing drama, both heavy roles and the more escapist fare of “Remember,” which NBC is programming against the World Series on CBS. Mills says it was a nice break from her recent more dramatic, emotionally demanding roles.

Shot this past summer in Amsterdam, Barcelona and Dublin, “Remember” finds Mills playing Nicole Wells, an international television correspondent whose fiance, a dashing English aristocrat (Derek De Lint), disappears and apparently commits suicide on their wedding day.

If that isn’t enough, a year after his death Nicole begins an affair with world-famous photographer Clee Donovan (Stephen Collins), only to discover her fiance might be alive.

“The overall plot lines are very serious,” Mills says, sipping on cranberry juice in her office. “But there are some light and charming things between my character and Clee.”

In the original script, Nicole was more of an old-fashioned romance-novel heroine who was constantly crying over her lost love. The script was rewritten to make her more of a ‘90s woman. And, thankfully, one with a sense of humor. “She’s still vulnerable,” Mills says.

“The way it was originally written, she was wearing her heart on her sleeve. The way we rewrote it is that she maintains herself. She’s not sniffling all over the place. She keeps up a face as most women these days would. They have to work and have to keep on going.”

“Remember” took its toll physically on Mills. Not only did the production shoot in three locations, she worked six days a week. And it rained almost every day in Amsterdam. “It was tough because I got bronchitis,” she says. “I was on antibiotics, which made me feel icky. I lost my voice. Then when we got to Ireland, I got another cold.”

The action scenes--there’s a terrorism subplot--were also trying. “The director would keep saying, ‘Isn’t this fun? Aren’t you having fun?’ I’d say, ‘No I hate this.’ I hate that kind of running, jumping, car screeching, guns.

“I hate guns,” she says firmly. “I didn’t have to hold one, but I had to have one with me in one of the scenes. The director was loving it. He was having the best time.”

The actress has no qualms about turning down projects that she considers too violent. “I can’t watch violence on the screen,” she explains. “If I go to see one of these big movies, which I don’t go to often, I just say, ‘Tell me when it’s over.’ I can’t look at it. Therefore, I don’t want to do it. There’s a point in my career where I don’t have to do it. I don’t believe it and I don’t want to do it.”

Mills formed her production company in the late ‘80s and produced the popular CBS movies “The World’s Oldest Living Bridesmaid” and “Runaway Father.” She also is one of the executive producers of her upcoming ABC movie “My Name Is Kate.” Mills plays a woman who struggles to overcome alcoholism in a rehabilitation center after her family intervenes to save her. Daniel J. Travanti, who is a recovering alcoholic, portrays her husband.

“I know a lot about (alcoholism) because someone very close to me is an alcoholic,” she says. “I went to a number of AA meetings and I have been at AA meetings with friends. It’s amazing when you go to some of these meetings, how many people in Hollywood are recovering alcoholics.”

“Barbara Taylor Bradford’s ‘Remember’ airs Sunday and Monday at 9 p.m. on NBC.