Downey keeps learning new moves
She’s best known for being an angel. And in “Come Dance At My Wedding,” premiering at 9 p. m. Saturday on the Hallmark Channel, she’ll be strutting her stuff in a line dance. But most of the time these days Roma Downey has a different full-time role—she’s starring as a Malibu mom to three: her own daughter, and the two boys she stepparents with her husband, reality show producer Mark Burnett.
“I’m queen of the carpool now,” she laughs, but it’s a part she couldn’t be happier to hold.
“I worked very hard to earn the right to stay home,” says Downey of her home on the beach in Malibu, Calif. “In a blink of an eye, the children will be gone. That was one of the hardest things about going off and doing this job.”
“This job” means her “Come Dance At My Wedding” role, which was the first on-camera acting appearance Downey has made in five years. The choice not to work was hers—but the “Wedding” script, she says, “had such a real sweetness to it” that she was inspired. “I have a credo that if I wouldn’t want to see it, I wouldn’t want to be in it,” she says.
So the Irish-born, American-naturalized actress— whose gentle, soft-spoken lilt is both firm and ethereal—left the perfect Malibu beach for the somewhat more damp regions of the Vancouverian north. There, she reteamed with John Schneider, who appeared in three episodes of “Angel,” to film “Wedding.”
“They were laughing at me because while filming on that first day with John we were dripping and dodging the rain,” she recalls. “I was laughing, thinking, ‘I chose to come here and leave the beach and run in the rain—I must have lost my mind!’ ”
Fortunately Downey is in full possession of her faculties. But life hasn’t always been as easy as dodging raindrops and choosing between Vancouver and Malibu. The actress was raised in Northern Ireland during the religious/social conflicts known as The Troubles. “During my childhood it was one big car park, because everything had been burnt or blown up,” she recalls. “I knew I had to get out of there.”
An early interest in painting got swallowed up by a passion for acting, and a road tour of a play she appeared in made the jump from Dublin to America. She’s never really left since. “I thought, what’s the worst thing that could happen? I’ll go back again,” she says. “You can’t allow the fear of something to stop you from moving forward— but you should have an exit plan.”
Success with a 1991 Emmy-winning miniseries called “A Woman Named Jackie” eventually led to an audition for “Touched By an Angel.” Downey landed the role and stayed with it for its full run, from 1994-2003. During breaks in the show’s filming, she took on more work executive producing TV movies—and the experience changed her life and made her career. Still, the show’s ending was bittersweet.
“There’s always a little pain with letting go of something that’s become such a part of your everyday life, but I really had not had a break. I was glad to move into a more re-energizing time and to move into really parenting.”
And so she has. After “Angel” ended, she began dating her longtime Malibu neighbor Burnett (both have been married previously).
For now, when she’s not shuttling the kids to their school—a 40-minute drive in each direction that earned her the carpooling crown— Downey is broadening her horizons. She’s returned to painting, and is partway through a masters program in “spiritual psychology” from the University of Santa Monica.
Taking classes has been an eye-opening experience. “It’s like the peeling of an onion, layer upon layer of behavior, and learning why we do what we do and how we can potentially change our negative patterning,” she says.
Ultimately, a Masters Degree will qualify her to be a therapist—though she’s not quite sure she intends to go down that road. No matter what, though, she’s always out there chasing the next thing that will inspire her.
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