Profile : Ann-Margret Follows Her Instincts With ‘Heart’

Ann-Margret doesn’t like to repeat herself.

“I just don’t like to do something I have done before,” explains the five-time Golden Globe Award winner and former Oscar and Emmy nominee. “I’m instinctive and (a script) has to just grab me emotionally.”

Over the past three decades, Ann-Margret, 53, has become one of the most versatile actresses in film and TV. She’s portrayed such diverse characters as a sweet teen-ager in 1963’s “Bye Bye Birdie,” a terminally ill mother in the 1983 TV movie “Who Will Love My Children?,” the fragile Southern belle Blanche DuBois in the 1984 TV remake of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and a plantation matriarch in the 1993 CBS miniseries “Queen.” Two weeks ago, viewers watching the CBS miniseries “Scarlett” saw Ann-Margret as the glamorous Belle Watling, the madame and confidante of Rhett Butler.

Her latest film, “Following Her Heart,” premiering Monday on NBC, finds her as a lonely, plain-Jane widow on a journey of self-discovery.

On this rainy afternoon, Ann-Margret is relaxing on the floral couch in the living room of her impressive Benedict Canyon home, which she shares with her husband and co-manager of 27 years, Roger Smith. Also residing in the house are a 14-year-old Maltese named Sugar and a cat named Birdie. Ann-Margret is friendly and chatty, especially about the NBC movie.

“Following Her Heart” finds her playing Ingalill, a Swedish woman who has been trapped in a loveless, arranged marriage for more than 30 years. She was just a teen-ager when she married her older, stern husband Anders (Morgan Sheppard). The couple moved from Sweden to North Dakota. Anders spends most of his time lavishing attention on his pet parakeet while he keeps a tight rein on Ingalill. The only bright light in their marriage is their daughter Nola (Alexandra Powers), who is married to a womanizer.

When Anders dies of a heart attack, Ingalill, who teaches piano and sings, decides to take a bus tour to Nashville so she can finally meet her longtime pen pal with whom she has been writing songs. While on the tour she quite literally lets down her hair and falls in love with a kind widower (George Segal).

“Following Her Heart” was directed by Oscar-winning actress-director Lee Grant, someone Ann-Margret has long wanted to work with. “I met Lee seven or eight years ago,” Ann-Margret recalls. “She wanted me to do this thing I couldn’t do because I was doing something similar; I have always wanted to work with her. And this thing came up. I thought it would be a good project.”

For many reasons. “First of all, it is a Cinderella story,” she says with a smile. ‘But it’s every woman’s story. The writer (Merry Helm), I don’t now if you know this, is not a Hollywood person. She lives in North Dakota. It is her first screenplay. I really liked the script. I thought it was real charming. It’s a fairy tale.”

According to Ann-Margret, Helm wrote it with her in mind. But Helm got Ann-Margret’s native country wrong. “She thought I was Norwegian,” says Ann-Margret, who was born Ann-Margret Olsson in Valsjobyn, Sweden. Ann-Margret and her parents, Gustav and Anna, came to America in the late ‘40s. “All the names (in the script) were Norwegian. I said, ‘If I do this, we will have to change all the names.’ So they did that.”

Her mother also was very involved in the project. “I am always joking that my mom should get screen credit for this because she coached the gentleman who played my husband, Morgan Sheppard, in his Swedish accent. She has a very strong Swedish accent, and, of course, I have lived with that accent all my life. So this is really the first time I have ever done a version of her accent in a film.”

“Following Her Heart” doesn’t fit into today’s usual TV movie fare--it is not culled from the headlines and Ingalill is not the typical woman in jeopardy. “It is just very moving,” she says. “The whole family can see this. I know a lot of people in the big cities can be cynical. But I think they can really breathe a sigh of relief if they see this. It is uplifting.”

And the message, she says, is a good one. “It doesn’t matter how old you are, you can do something for the first time.”

When Ingalill, who is nicknamed Lena by her vacation tour mates, leaves North Dakota, it is the first time she’s “ever had her hair down,” says Ann-Margret. “The first time she’s ever gone in a restaurant. The first time she has ever really been in love. The first time she has ever had makeup on. Everything is ‘no’ to her. ‘No, I can’t do this. No, I can’t do that,’ because that’s the way it has been all of her life. Now, everything is open to her. She has never sung before people before. She never really had anything to drink before.”

Ann-Margret laughs.. “One of my favorite things is when she is a little (tipsy), she says, ‘Slow gin fuzz.’ ”

“Following Her Heart” also marks the first time Ann-Margret has sung in a TV movie (who can forget her sing-alongs with Elvis on the big screen?) And she plays the guitar here.

“Roger was teaching me how to play the guitar,” she says, laughing. “You know how a man should never teach his wife how to drive? Remember that? I must say he was really sweet about it because he has been playing guitar all of his life.”

What Ann-Margret found especially interesting about the project was that the film was “about a woman. It was written by a woman, directed by a woman, one of the producers was a woman, the production manager was a woman. I thought back to when I did ‘Pocketful of Miracles’ in 1961. There were just four women behind the scenes: the hairdresser, the wardrobe girl, the body makeup girl and a script girl. And on this, there must have been 40! It was incredible to see. We have come a long way.”

“Following Her Heart” airs Monday at 9 p.m. on NBC.