Winging Her Way to Stardom

An interview with Touched by an Angel star Roma Downey

It’s a little after seven on a chilly evening last fall and a few hundred people are assembled at Gallagher’s, the famous Theater District restaurant in Manhattan, for a fund-raiser organized by the Omagh Relief Fund. Sharply dressed men and women are listening to various speakers from the Irish community, one of whom is former New York police commissioner Raymond Kelly. When Roma Downey enters, she does so quietly, so as not to detract from the proceedings. But Roma Downey cannot stay anonymous for long. Necks start craning, people start whispering and eventually she is announced to the crowd, who applaud enthusiastically. When the speakers finish, the petite star of CBS’s highest-rated drama, Touched by an Angel, is instantly swarmed by photographers, fans and well-wishers.

Dressed in a long black dress with stylish black pumps and carrying a small velvet beaded purse, she smiles graciously for pictures. Giddy young girls approach for autographs, as do middle-aged men probably more interested in seeing her porcelain skin and delicate features up close.

She talks to each one with sincere interest. You’d never suspect how long a day it’s been for Downey. In town briefly to talk about her current projects, including the 100th episode of Touched which aired last November, she spent the morning taping at VH1, and Comedy Central and Letterman and The View were up the following day. As the group around her continues to swell, it occurs to me that there will be no slipping out of this event, especially since the bagpipers have begun playing. As we finally head out, an elderly gent passes her on the stairwell then does a double take. “Roma Downey!…I know you by reputation!” That brings a riotous laugh from the star, who seems completely at ease and in her element.

Wherever Roma Downey goes people feel like they know her. That tends to happen when you play a warm, compassionate angel on television each week. But the Irish, of course, feel a special kinship with the 35-year-old Derry-born actress. As she does with them. You get the sense that Downey, deeply connected to her Northern Irish heritage, is more than thrilled to be hearing a roomful of familiar accents.

As we settle in to pasta and wine at Orso on Restaurant Row, the auburn-haired beauty laments that there isn’t much of an Irish community in Salt Lake City, Utah where Touched by an Angel is filmed ten months of the year. And she admits that there isn’t much in the way of cultural events, let alone Irish ones. Indeed, even though her New York trip is tightly scheduled with barely enough time for a trip to FAO Schwarz to buy toys for her 2-year-old daughter Reilly, she made sure to secure tickets to Martin McDonough’s Tony Award-winning play The Beauty Queen of Leenane. “I have no time here but I said I have to go. I’m dying to see it!” But since Touched, now in its fifth season, shows no signs of slowing down, she has decided to put down roots in Salt Lake. Long workdays (sometimes up to 12 hours a day, five days a week) was one reason but it was the birth of Reilly that convinced her to purchase a six-bedroom English country house and call Utah home.

“I’ve been in America just over ten years and it’s the first time I felt like I belong here. When you are an immigrant, you love going home but there’s a sense of not really belonging there anymore, and by the very fact that you’re foreign in America you don’t really belong here either, so there’s sort of a nomadic feeling created by the exile.”

For Downey, that nomadic exile has come full circle. For as we sit here in the heart of Broadway, she points out that it was just a mere three blocks away at the Ambassador Theater that as a struggling 25-year-old actress, she enjoyed the greatest success of her career when she appeared on Broadway with Rex Harrison.

The esteemed British actor hand-picked Downey to play opposite him in the Circle. “Sir Rex had come to see me playing Raina in Arms and the Man at the Roundabout Theater and based on that performance he cast me.

“I had a huge role in the Circle but it was the ingenue role. I would set up all the jokes and he would come out and get all the laughs. But it was the biggest break of my career,” she adds. Now the star of a show that reaches some 25 million viewers each week, the days of playing second fiddle to anyone are long gone.

As the angel Monica, Downey is the centerpiece of Touched. “A lot of the work goes to our guest stars but the story line is usually told through my eyes.” And while she may not be actively involved in every scene, the producers come to her for input. Though the tapings can be grueling and leave her little time for a social life, she’s proud to be such an integral part of the show and is appreciative of the quality of guest stars a Top Ten series attracts. For example, the 100th episode starred country music superstar Wynonna, and Celine Dion, a big fan of the show, also made a guest appearance. “The 100th episode is a terrific landmark for us,” says Downey. “Particularly since we had such a bumpy start.”

In fact, when Touched debuted in 1994, critics gleefully panned the spiritual and, let’s face it, somewhat sappy show. What saved it from television oblivion was the overwhelming audience response to the characters of Monica and Tess (Della Reese) and the chemistry they shared. Martha Williamson was brought in as executive producer to retool the show. “Martha gave the show a spiritual center,” says Downey. “I grew up in an environment where people were killing each other in the name of religion and it was very important for me from the get-go that I be involved in a show that embraces the spiritual.” Critics have especially poked fun at the dialogue, particularly the line that Monica utters each week to a conflicted mortal, “God loves you.” You wonder if she really buys into all of this. Can an episode starting Oprah be far behind?

“I know the show is sentimental but the basic premise is that there is a God and that God loves you,” says the star a little defensively. “It’s almost unhip to say you believe in God. I have God in my life and I’m not some fanatical right-winger.” Millions are tuning in and as Downey puts it “they can’t all be little old ladies in Iowa.” For a show that’s seen as sugary sweet, past episodes have explored such hard-hitting topics as AIDS, racism, alcoholism — even civil rights in China. “It feels great to be part of something that touches people’s lives in such a positive way. I probably get more letters from mothers than any other group and the recurring comment is how nice it is for them to have a show that they can watch with the whole family.”

“It’s almost unhip to say you believe in God. I have god in my life and I’m not some fanatical right-winger.”

One slightly frustrating aspect of playing the passive role of Monica is that it’s not particularly difficult. “My job is to listen and in fact, I believe I’ve become a better listener in my own life. I don’t mind doing that if, say, every fifth episode, I can be thrown a challenge.”

Despite her sentiments, she was nominated for an Emmy last year and in an effort to give herself meatier parts, she has branched out to producing. She starred in and produced Monday After the Miracle, the continuing story of Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller (played by Irish-American Moira Kelly). CBS has such faith in Downey that it aired the 100th episode on the same Monday during an all-important sweeps period.

“It’s such an exciting time. It’s just been quite a ride. I’m trying to keep a good perspective on it all but never in my wildest dreams…” she trails off, still obviously overcome that a girl from Northern Ireland could actually make it in Hollywood. One of six children, Downey was raised in Derry during the turbulent ’70s when violence was an everyday part of her world. “It was really, really bad there, shootings, bombings, riots. I remember ducking behind cars because of gun battles or being evacuated because of a bomb scare. I had a wee Saturday job as a shoe salesgirl in a strip mall that was blown up.” She personally knew people that were killed in the infamous Bloody Sunday massacre. “I went to school with one of the girls and it was her Dad. You could say there wasn’t anybody who didn’t know somebody that was related to the victims.

“My father, a retired schoolmaster, got the paper the day after, and the headlines of the English paper read `Thirteen armed gunmen shot in Londonderry’ and everyone knew that they weren’t. Some of them were sixteen, seventeen year old boys,” she says. “Even today, if a door slams I’ll jump and I’ve never been a big fan of fireworks.”

Compounded with those atrocities, Downey was dealt a devastating blow when her mother Maureen died of a heart attack when she was just 10. “I had this void in me my whole life. There’s a wonderful book on the market that Rosie O’Donnell gave me called Motherless Daughters, which I really identified with.” Those days were hard on young Roma as her older sisters were married and many of the domestic chores fell on her. “Like any good Irish Catholic household they were sexist in their handing out of chores. I hated ironing, just hated it! Even today, I would wear wrinkly things before I would iron them.”

Despite the hardships there were happy times. “Looking back, it’s absurd really, but never having known anything else, you sort of adapt and make the best of it. There was always great humor in Derry, great spirit.”

And it was during those formative years that the acting seed was first planted. “I remember watching old black-and-white movies on a rainy Sunday with Audrey Hepburn and Katharine Hepburn and being completely starstruck.” Years later, she actually got to meet the legendary Katharine Hepburn. “She came backstage to see Sir Rex and he summoned me to come down and meet her. I became twelve with three tongues,” she recalls, laughing at the memory.

It was her father Patrick who persuaded her to leave Derry and study acting at the London Drama Studio. Eventually she made her way to New York where one of her first jobs was hanging coats for the likes of Sylvester Stallone and Bette Midler in an Upper West Side restaurant.

After her turn on Broadway, she was invited back to Dublin by producer Noel Pearson. “Noel was running the Abbey at that time, and he offered me the role of Pegeen Mike in Playboy of the Western World.” Not long after, Hollywood came calling. She beat out 400 actresses to play Jacqueline Kennedy in the miniseries A Woman Named Jackie, which introduced her to American audiences. “I had dozens of callbacks and screen-tests and finally when I got cast, they whisked me into wardrobe, dialect lessons, horseback lessons,” Downey says.

If Downey thought she could write her ticket after that plum part, she soon discovered otherwise. She settled in Los Angeles and started the brutal process of auditioning. It was some three years later that Touched by an Angel came into her life. She applauds the producers for letting her speak in her own accent. “It’s one less thing for me to worry about. And I can’t tell you how many people have said they discovered the show because they were channel surfing and they heard this accent; so many shows are clones of one another.”

If Downey has her way, there will be a lot more Irish lilts in people’s living rooms in the near future. She has been lobbying her show’s producers about the possibility of doing a special episode that would be filmed in Northern Ireland. “I’m not sure what form the story will take, it’s just an idea at this time.” She has also taken a script set in Northern Ireland during the ’70s to CBS and at press time was still awaiting word whether or not the project will be greenlighted. Downey loves going home to visit and would relish the opportunity for her family to see her work.

In a bid to re-establish roots in Ireland, she recently purchased a plot of land in Donegal facing the ocean and plans to build a house there when she finds the time. It was in that area that her father, who died in 1985, would take the family to get away from the chaos. The property is just up the road from playwright Brian Friel and John Hume, who won the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize along with David Trimble. “John Hume is a dear family friend. In fact, his youngest daughter is named after my mother Maureen. I was so excited by [his win]. He’s brought honor to us all.”

Downey, like the rest of the world, was heartbroken at the senseless tragedy of the Omagh bombing last August and when she heard the news on her car radio driving to the set in Salt Lake she was so rattled that she had to pull over. “I really hope and pray like everybody else that as we approach the new millennium we can find a lasting and just peace.

“Everyone was so shocked and disgusted at the dreadful waste of life. But thank God it hasn’t derailed the peace process.” She thinks back to when her own beloved Derry was reduced to rubble. “Derry was annihilated during my time. It was filled with car parks and people were afraid to rebuild. But people together, people like John Hume have rebuilt it.

“It’s such a charming city and you’ll find no nicer people in the whole world.”

“Regardless of who did what or who said what, there can be no regrets because we have this lovely little baby. She’s really the light of my life.”

Though she’s not above poking a bit of fun at the Irish mentality, mind you. When she was making her mark in New York, she would meet acquaintances on Main Street whenever she returned home. “They’d be saying, `Oh, you’re on Broadway and you’re doing this and that…but you have no children.’ So when I brought Reilly home for the first time, I had a lovely frock on her and a wee hat and I thought finally, I’m a mother. I’d run into the same women and they’d say `Ah, your little girl is lovely but you just have the one?'” She would, in fact, like more children but “I’d need a fella for that.”

Following the devastating breakup of her three-year marriage to director David Anspaugh (Hoosiers, Rudy) last March, she is in no rush to marry again. It was not a pretty divorce and rumors were flying that Downey had left him when he was in a hospital suffering from depression. “It’s hard enough to have to go through a divorce and the pain of a divorce and the sadness of a divorce,” she says quietly. “But to have to go through with it all so publicly and so misrepresented by the tabloids was very hard; it was quite an education. I guess it comes with the price of fame but the liberties they take playing with people’s lives really angers me.

“I’m happy to talk about the show or the potential for peace but is my heart breaking’? I really, frankly think that’s my business. I refused to speak about it because I didn’t want to see my life played out in the tabloids.” When her co-star Della Reese began talking to the press, people assumed that she was the star’s mouthpiece but Downey dismisses the notion “Not at all. She just took it upon herself. At the time she was very upset because she loves me, but I felt it was just adding fuel to the flame so I went to her and asked her not to speak. If you don’t give them a story, ultimately they run out of it. The best I can hope is that my friends or even my fans know what kind of person I really am.”

The gossip mill was churning so quickly that the press has even linked her with co-star John Dye. “There’s no truth to that. They even printed a photograph of us that wasn’t even one of us taken together. It’ s just silly. You have to remember that we play angels and they’ve been salivating so they can write that really clichéd headline `She’s no Angel’ or `Fallen Angel.’ They came to our set in disguise, they offered our crew money. It’s shameless really. God knows, if I wanted to date my co-star I’d be perfectly free to do so but I don’t happen to be dating him. John and I had a few laughs about it on the set.”

Though last year was terrific professionally but tough personally, it was daughter Reilly who put everything in perspective for Downey.

“Regardless of who did what or who said what, there can be no regrets because we have this lovely little baby. She’s really the light of my life.” Reilly, who often goes to the set with her mother, is fawned over by the cast (Della Reese is her godmother). A nursery has been built for her and she has “pretty much taken over my trailer.” And it’s Reilly who has finally given Downey the mother/daughter relationship she had been seeking her whole life.

Though Downey is involved with several charities including Project Children and Save the Children, she tries not to take on any appearances on the weekends so she can devote herself to her daughter. “I’m not part of the Hollywood scene. I might have missed it ten years ago but I’m at a different place in my life. Motherhood is more important. I’m also aware that success is very fleeting. A part of me thinks I’ll just kick back in Ireland during my off-months but in a few years I could probably spend the whole year there if I wanted to. This is my time and I’m enjoying the success.” You get the sense that no matter what Roma Downey does she’ll be triumphant. She truly is blessed.