Her Own Milestones

Hard to believe how the time has passed, but Pam Dawber is turning the big five-oh next Thursday. The actress, who defined “cute” for a generation with her roles in TV’s “Mork and Mindy” and “My Sister Sam,” keeps busy raising her two boys, 9 and 13.

Dawber has been married for nearly 15 years to actor Mark Harmon, and her life is filled with kids, friends and family. (She’s still friends with her pals from high school in Michigan.)

“I had a wonderful, fascinating career,” she told us by phone. “To maintain a career is a career in itself. It’s not my priority. My priority is to raise well-adjusted children.”

When we caught up with her Thursday, Dawber was baking cookies for a school event and was planning to pick up auction items for tonight’s Rising Star Gala, a fund-raiser for the Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles at the Beverly Hilton.

A national spokeswoman for Big Sisters, she was approached by the group during her “My Sister Sam” days, since her character was mentoring a younger sister. (The show ended in 1989 after the actress who played her sister, Rebecca Shaeffer, was murdered by a stalker.)

“I’m such a zealot for this particular organization. I know that it works,” Dawber said. She added that there’s a waiting list of kids looking for mentors. As for turning 50, Dawber had this to say: “It’s just a number. I don’t even care. It’s about your attitude.”

In Defense of Action Films

Despite its chilling similarity to recent events, producer Larry Kasanoff is going ahead with “Heroes,” a movie about a terrorist attack on the U.S. that prompts a retaliation by Army special-ops units. Kasanoff has decided that only the opening five minutes should be changed.

Kasanoff, the producer of “True Lies” and “Terminator 2,” defended action movies in a phone interview and criticized those in Hollywood who are cautious about such projects in the wake of the attacks.

“Hollywood is reacting with fear,” Kasanoff said. Now is not a time for caution, he said.

“From our little corner in the world here in Los Angeles, our contribution has to be what we do best,” he said. “In the entertainment business, the little stone we contribute to the pile is making movies.”

Democratic U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey called two weeks ago, encouraging Kasanoff to encourage him to make an inspirational movie. “People need a little rah-rah.... ‘Win one for the Gipper,”’ Kasanoff said. “That’s what Hollywood did in Word War II, that’s what ‘Casablanca’ was.”

Earlier this week, in an essay published in USA Today, Kasanoff argued that “movies--and friends and swimming in the ocean and little kids and romance and theater and work and play and travel--are not to be given up during a fight. They are what we are fighting for.”

Liz and Roddy

Glamour is officially back. A hush settled over the party of Hollywood greats when their golden girl, Elizabeth Taylor, emerged from her stretch limousine fashionably late and decked out in diamonds, blond locks and a beaded violet gown. “It’s like waiting for the queen!” one woman whispered to another.

Dame Liz hugged and kissed her way through the champagne-sipping crowd that included Charlton Heston, Suzanne Pleshette, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Kirk Douglas, Janet Leigh, Piper Laurie, Dom DeLuise, Cloris Leachman and James Garner. Taylor’s publicist, Warren Cowan, followed, carrying her beaded handbag.

Taylor made her grand entrance Saturday night at the 80th anniversary gala of the Motion Picture & Television Fund in Woodland Hills, introducing the new Ray Stark Villa, a $21-million luxury elder-care facility that is an addition to the fund’s longtime retirement home. Taylor cut the ribbon on the Roddy McDowell Rose Garden, a lovely landscape of fountains and gazebos that fronts the buildings. Watching over the garden is a huge statue of McDowell as Caesar in “Planet of the Apes,” transplanted from McDowell’s home garden after his death in 1998 at 70. A smaller bronze sculpture poised at the edge of a fountain by artist Adam Kurtzman depicts McDowell as a child. The actor’s sister, Virginia McDowell, also attended the event.

Roddy McDowell was an avid fund-raiser for MPTF, which provides services to folks in the entertainment industry. He spent his last three months calling on actors, including Billy Bob Thorton and Steve Martin, to help keep the charity going.

Taylor met McDowell on the set of “Lassie Come Home,” when the two were children and became lifelong friends. “I didn’t know anything about acting then,” she joked. “And I still don’t!”

Cokie Cancels

Due to work demands, Cokie Roberts has canceled her appearance today at a luncheon in Newport Beach for Human Options, which aids abused women and their children. The event, however, will go on.

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Times staff writers Louise Roug and Gina Piccalo contributed to this column. City of Angles runs Tuesday-Friday.