BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. _ Actress Sara Botsford admits she harbors all the qualities attributed to redheads. "The cliche is that redheads are trouble anyway," she grins. "You're told that as a 3-year-old, 4-year-old, 5-year-old. So it gives you a bit of license to think you can get away with stuff. I had a pretty strong temper. I have all those cliche qualities of redheads _ stubborn!"
While she displayed a fiery temper as a kid, she's down to an ember now, she says. "I'm extremely slow to anger now, when I am angry that's a different story."
Botsford grew up in a mining village in northern Canada, as far away from the bright lights as you can get. Her dad was a mining engineer, her mom a homemaker who'd been a nurse and teacher. Though isolated, they were not averse to the arts.
And when a troupe of professional actors performed in town, they were thrilled. "I just got it in my head," she says, explaining her passion for acting.
"I did some plays in high school with a drama teacher who had come over from England. And I thought, 'I gotta do this.' Really the alternatives at that time were to be a teacher, a nurse, teach nursing, be a secretary, be a dental hygienist _ none of those were going to work for me," says Botsford, seated at a linen-clad table in a hotel meeting room.
She auditioned for a theater program in Toronto and was accepted. Her parents were cool with the idea. "Aside from, 'You're going to do WHAT?' Aside from that," she chuckles. "And I got the usual thing that anybody starting out in a field like this: 'Make sure you have something to fall back on. Make sure you get a teaching degree,' and all that. I thought from the very beginning that wasn't the right thing to do. If you have something to fall back on, you'll fall back on it."
Botsford has never fallen back. "I'm fortunate in the 44 years, I've never had a straight job in my life, not one. And I've always supported myself as an actor. And I've raised three kids as an actor," says Botsford.
Although she's co-starred in practically every serial drama on TV and is known for "The Chronicles of Lizzie Borden" and Canada's "E.N.G.," Botsford says it's still not easy to land a part.
She was told she was too pretty when she tried out for her latest role as the no-nonsense Marilla Cuthbert in "Anne of Green Gables _ The Good Stars," arriving Thursday on PBS.
"And I said, 'You know, I can be deeply PLAIN ... Trust me on this.'"
She's the mother of three sons, from two different fathers. The oldest sibling, Jonathan Scarfe, is an actor too. She says motherhood made her realize she could never be autonomous again. "I was responsible for somebody, and my kids were very spread out, so I was making school lunches for about 22 years ...
"You never see the world the same way again because there's always that person who needs you in the background, that person you're responsible for and responsible to. Which isn't to say that you hang up your skates and never have fun at all. But if you're going to have fun, you have to make sure that person's cared for during the time you're not available."
She's been with her partner, visual effects producer Christopher Brown, for 16 years and says sharing similar professions helps their relationship. "When you live in the same kind of world they completely understand, 'I won't be home until 11 o'clock on Christmas Eve and I have to be at work.' They understand all that, that's a big advantage."
Things rumbled along fairly smoothly for Botsford until personal tragedy struck in the early '90s. "I lost both parents nine days apart, my brother was diagnosed with M.S., a few other things happened _ all within a space of two weeks. I was in my 30s and have no idea how I coped with it and was doing a full-time acting job, had kids at home and was a single parent _ it was a load," says Botsford.
Looking back, she says she's not sure how she managed. "I don't know, I've always been a really strong person. I would be more uncomfortable not being able to handle it than handling it. There didn't seem to be a choice to me."
DIRECTOR INSPIRED BY HIS GRANDMOTHER
Netflix begins streaming a new series, "She's Gotta Have It," on Thursday. If that sounds familiar, it should. It's based on Spike Lee's hit movie of the same name that first manifested Lee's unique talent. How he landed where he is today is an inspirational story in itself. "I really got it from my grandmother," he says. "My grandmother lived to be 100 years old. Her grandmother was a slave, yet she was a college graduate. Spellman class of 1917, I think. She taught art for 50 years and, with her Social Security checks, which _ she saved them for her children _ children's education. Since I was the oldest, I had first dibs. So my grandmother put me through Morehouse College in Atlanta, also NYU graduate film school. Financed, gave me money for 'She's Gotta Have It' too, all from her Social Security checks. And in her later years when I would speak to her from Brooklyn, she'd be in Atlanta, I would say, 'I'll call you' _ I called her Mama _ 'Mama, I'll speak to you tomorrow night.' And she'd say, 'Spikey, if God is willing and the creek don't rise.'"
AMAZON REACHES FOR BRASS 'RINGS'
It seems like Middle Earth is getting crowded. Amazon has announced that it will present a series based on J.R.R. Tolkien's classic "The Lord of the Rings." Of course, Peter Jackson already did that with his three blockbuster movies: "The Fellowship of the Ring," "The Return of the King" and "The Two Towers." Those efforts pulled in $6 billion (that's with a B). Animator Ralph Bakshi created an animated version in 1978, and there have been video games in 1985, 1990 and 2007. Amazon says the new series will precede "The Fellowship of the Ring" plot. This is a multi-season deal, and could include spin-offs, they say.
SHOWTIME BRINGS HOME THE BACON
Showtime has corralled Kevin Bacon for a new series, executive produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. "City on the Hill" is about Boston in the '90s when it was infected by high crime and corruption. Bacon plays a crooked but highly respected FBI agent. The actor admits that performing on TV was on the bottom of his bucket list. "When I started out the last thing I wanted to do was be on a television series," he says. "There was a real difference between being a television actor and being a movie and stage actor. I did the soaps and then I'm, like, done. I had no interest in television. I would never audition for a television show. They did a television show of 'Diner' and of 'Animal House' both of which I got offered and both of which I turned down even though I didn't have a pot to piss in. It wasn't like I had some other great gig. I was probably a waiter when they did the show of 'Animal House' for television. But I was a real snob about it."
After he saw the success and quality of his wife, Kyra Sedgwick's "The Closer," he began to have second thoughts. "And also seeing how I was consuming television and the fact that so many of my friends would get together and that's what we were talking about _ was television shows. And I looked at someone like the great James Gandolfini and said, 'Wow, that's such an amazing character that he got a chance to explore and continue to explore.' So hand-in-hand with that, I started to see a real shift in the movie business ... So even though I was slightly reluctant ... I threw my hat into the television ring."
