Growing up, SELA WARD often saw herself as an outsider -- a feeling she would later relive during a "dark time" in her career. Now, at 44, the star of "Once and Again" says...
"I Have Never Felt More Secure"
By Ellen Hawkes ON THE SURFACE, I was an all-American teenager, a rah-rah cheerleader type," Sela Ward told me over breakfast at a Beverly Hills hotel. "But deep down I was a shy and lonely outsider. It took some long years of self-reflection to break through my old fears and come into my own."
Sela had transferred to a new junior high school at 13, and she felt excluded from the already-estabhshed friendships and social cliques. Although she soon won a place on the cheerleading squad, a local modeling competition and prizes for her artwork, she felt rejected by her classmates. "When I was given a citizenship award, even my best childhood friend stopped speaking to me," Ward recalled. "I began to fear that, with any success, something bad would happen."
In sharp contrast, her earlier childhood had seemed idyllic. Born in 1956 in Meridian, Miss., Sela (pronounced "See-la") was the oldest of four children. Her father, Granberry Holland Ward, ran his own electrical engineering firm; her mother, Annie Kate, raised their two girls and two boys and helped in her husband's office. The family led a comfortable existence in a lakeside community. "I have tremendous nostalgia for those years," Ward said, recalling a passel of kids cane-pole fishing, swimming, playing ball and inventing their next caper. "It was all so free and uncomplicated, and we were always looking for now adventures."
That appetite for adventure reasserted itself when she graduated early from high school and enrolled at the University of Alabama to study art and advertising. She was again a cheerleader, and since she was dating one of the stars on the football team, the all-American story would have had her marrying her college sweetheart after graduation. Instead, she took a job in Memphis, then impulsively set off for New York City in 1978. "I've always had a risk-taking side," Ward explained. "So I took a lowly job at an ad agency just to move to New York and absorb as many exciting experiences as I could." But for all her anticipation of this brave new world, her shyness still plagued her. "At parties, I was surrounded by sophisticated people," she said. "I was a down-home-girt and too intimidated to open my mouth."
Still, her beauty attracted attention, and she was urged to try rnodeling. The Wilhelmina Agency agreed to represent her, then Maybelline signed her for a TV commercial. "First they sent me to voice and acting lessons," Ward said. "That's how I lost my accent and became comfortable in front of a camera."
In 1983, at age 27, Ward again took a risk and moved to L.A. to pursue a film career. She soon was given a small part in Burt Reynolds' "The Man Who Loved Women" (1983) and then was cast in the TV series "Emerald Point N.A.S." While other films and television roles followed, in the mid-'80s her career stalled, and she sensed that something inside was holding her back. "That's why I went into therapy," Ward acknowledged. "I grew up in a typical 50's family, and I didn't have much psychological awareness. So I didn't become conscious of certain patterns of behavior in myself until I examined who I was and what I wanted out of life."
Ward came to realize that she was haunted by her teenage fears. "Achievement seemed to be a double-edged sword for me." she said. "I had a subconscious feeling that triumph would always bring a loss. I recognized that what was limiting me was the residual pain associated with accomplishment."
Her ambivalence also shaped her personal life during this period. In the 1980s, she was involved in several long-term relationships with actors, including Richard Dean Anderson (TV's "MacGyver") and Peter Weller ("RoboCop"). Her therapy helped her understand that she allowed her own professional goals to play second fiddle. Part of the problem, she said, was a throwback to a traditional Southern way of thinking "that the man is the breadwinner and the woman's work is never as important as his."
"I realized I was using the demands of a relationship to mask my own fears," Ward added. In 1990, two months before she was to marry Weller, Ward broke the engagement, deciding that first she needed to deal with those fears. "That year I turned a comer," she told me. "At last, I could give myself permission to succeed without fearing rejection."
The following year, at age 35, Ward put her career back on track with her role as an artistic recovering alcoholic in the TV series "Sisters," and in 1994 she won both an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe nomination. She also appeared in several feature films, including "The Fugitive" (1993), but her major success was Lifetime TV's "Almost Golden: The Jessica Savitch Story" (1995), for which she earned a CableACE award as well as nominations for an Emmy and a Screen Actors Guild award.
At the same time, Ward also found happiness in her personal life. In 1991 a mutual friend had introduced her to Howard Sherman, a Los Angeles-based venture capitalist. "He was one of the few men I'd met who took me seriously," said Ward. "After a few months, I was hooked -- although we both thought it was funny for a Southerner to fall in love with a guy named Sherman," she added with a laugh. (The couple married in 1992 and have two children, Austin, 6, and Anabella, 2.)
In 1996, when "Sisters" ended its five-year run, Ward assumed that she would forge ahead to more challenging motion picture roles. "I thought, 'Now I'm ready for anything,"' she said. "At 40, I'd never felt as confident or attractive. Instead, I was told: 'Too bad, you're too old. We want the Sela Ward of 10 years ago.'"
The rejection plummeted her into what she candidly referred to as her "midlife crisis." "That was a dark time," she confessed. "I guess I'd been in denial, forgetting that I'd started acting late, at 27, and obviously hadn't pursued a Julia Roberts-ingenue stardom before. Suddenly I had to accept the fact that I was no longer commercialy viable for the 20-something female roles that are so prevalent in movies today."
During this period of rejection, Ward found strength by remembering her mother's stalwartness. "Because she had grown up poor in the Depression, she had an inner resolve," Ward said. "When I'd been so sad in high school, she'd told me, 'Don't wallow in your problems. Just pick yourself up and get on with it.' By understanding the value of that fortitude, I could proceed to a new phase of my life."
Ward went on to produce and narrate "The Changing Face of Beauty," a Lifetime documentary that aired earlier this year in which she explored the same is sues of aging in women that she herself had confronted. Then, after appearing in "54" (1998) and "Runaway Bride" (1999), she was pursued by Marshall Herskowitz and Ed Zwick, the producer-writers of thirtysomething, for the lead in their new series, "Once and Again." Ironically, they sought her out because of her age, wanting her to play Lily, a recently divorced, 40-something woman raising two children, retooling her career and falling in love again.
"Despite my reservations about doing another TV series, I was convinced when I read the pilot script," said Ward. "I felt that Lily resonated with so much that I'd lived through -- her strengths and fears, her courage and vulnerability." Just beginning its second season, "Once and Again" has received critical praise and drawn a large and faithful audience. Ward was nominated for a Golden Globe and won her second Emmy as Outstanding Actress.
But just as significant to her are the changes she has made in her life. She returned to her roots by buying a farm outside Meridian, Miss., so that, during summer months and holidays, she and her family can experience the same pleasures she remembers from her childhood. Ward also is glad to be near her parents, since both have been struggling with illness for several years.
"I have what I call my 'passion projects' as well," Ward told me, describing her hometown endeavors to build a permanent facility for abused children and to restore Meridian's 1890 opera house as a center and a school for the performing arts. "This kind of work will endure and give me the most sense of accomplishment, wherever my acting career takes me," she said.
"I used to cringe at the term 'late bloomer,"' Ward added with a wide grin. "Today I can relish it. After those fearful, dark passages in my life, I've never fell more happy or more secure than I do now"__Parade (October 29, 2000)
