NANCY TRAVIS is one of those actresses whose face and voice you know, even if the name doesn’t always ring a bell. She has carved out a remarkably consistent and multi-pronged career that began on the New York stage, shifted to the big screen with a key role in the blockbuster hit “Three Men and a Baby,” and finally transported her to television with star turns in the CBS comedies “Almost Perfect” and “Becker” and, currently, as the wife on TBS’s “The Bill Engvall Show.” Travis also makes time for the occasional made-for-TV movie, starring opposite Treat Williams in the Hallmark Channel Original Movie “Safe Harbor,” premiering Saturday, May 30 (9/8c). The following item is available for all press uses, with photos, from Crown Features Syndicate™.
NANCY TRAVIS: ‘HERE’S YOUR HUSBAND, NICE TO MEET YOU, GOOD LUCK!’
Crown Features Syndicate ™
Nancy Travis admits it: When she started out as an actress back in the early 1980s, her goal was to have it all. Fame. Fortune. The husband and kids. The whole nine yards. She worked toward that end for the better part of a decade. Then the realization hit her that maybe she ought to downsize her ambitions just a tad – particularly if she wanted the marriage and children part to come to fruition.
“It was important to me to be around for the family, that I didn’t miss out on that,” Travis, 47, admits. “It became clear that I just couldn’t really do the career and the family full-force at the same time. But I’ve found a way to be happy as an actor and also have great balance with a stable family life. I have to say, TV is what makes that possible. And if I had to give up a little bit in reaching for the top, it’s been more than worth it.”
Indeed, Travis has found the ultimate full-time job for an actress, keeping something close to bankers hours (at least, what bankers hours used to be) while co-starring on the TBS comedy series “The Bill Engvall Show.” It allows her to do the family thing big time with her husband of 15 years and two kids.
“When we’re shooting, I go to work at 10 and come home at three,” Travis says. “And we shoot in L.A. You can’t do better than that as a performer in television.”
So what does Travis do? She screws up her impeccably stable existence by taking a starring role opposite Treat Williams in the Hallmark Channel Original Movie “Safe Harbor” that premieres Saturday, May 30 (9/8c) – a gig that obliged Travis to spend six weeks or so freezing her buns off on the water in Long Beach, CA in January.
So much for a “Safe” Harbor. This was more like “Chill Out.”
“It was unseasonably cold, really really cold,” Travis recalls, “and we were having to stand
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around in shorts and T-shirts because it was supposed to be Florida in the summertime. Of course, the young people in our cast had to wear bathing suits, so this was one of the few times in my life I’ve been glad to play an elder. But meanwhile, it’s all 14-hour or 16-hour days. It was the kind of renegade shooting schedule I’m not really used to.”
“Safe Harbor” tells the real-life story of Doug and Robbie Smith, a couple who is about to embark on their dream of sailing around the world when they reluctantly agree to take in some troubled teen boys and help turn around their lives. It would be the humble beginnings of the Safe Harbor Boys Home in Jacksonville, FL. Williams portrays Doug Smith, with Travis playing his wife Robbie.
Travis stresses that her participation in the Hallmark film came about quickly. One day, she’s on a sitcom. The next, she’s the wife of Treat Williams, an actor she had never before met.
“He and I both just kind of got tossed into this together, and it was fortunate how well we instantly struck up this great rapport and connected as performers,” Travis recalls. “We didn’t even have a week between getting cast and the start of shooting. Treat only got there the day before we got started. It was like, ‘Nice to meet you, here’s your husband, good luck’.”
But pro that Travis is, she made it work just fine. Here, after all, is an actress who has been part of a stunning number of memorable projects, from a national tour of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs to the Broadway run of the award-winning play I’m Not Rappaport to the movies “3 Men and a Baby” (1987), “Married to the Mob” (1988), “Eight Men Out” (1988), “3 Men and a Little Lady” (1990), “Air America” (1990) and “So I Married an Axe Murderer” (1993).
Since marrying studio exec Robert Fried in 1994, her career has been more about series TV, much of it memorable. Travis portrayed three of the voices in the wildly creative USA Network animated series “Duckman” opposite Jason Alexander and starred with Kevin Kilner in the much-praised CBS sitcom “Almost Perfect,” which ran from 1995-97. That was followed by a regular role in another CBS comedy, the Ted Danson-starrer “Becker” (2002-04) and, finally, “Bill Engvall.”
The hallmarks of Travis’ acting life have been an uncanny consistency and adaptability in working with equal success on stage and screens big and small. People recognize her face and distinctive voice, if not always her name. And at this stage of her life, that’s just fine with her.
“I feel nothing but lucky that I’ve been able to do this acting thing for as long as I have in as many places as I have,” Travis offers. “Plays are probably my favorite thing to do. They just tend to be the richest experience, giving you instant gratification. But they’re also a huge time commitment, and that’s what guides my choices now.”
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Working on “The Bill Engvall Show” is something Travis calls “less a job than being on vacation. It’s just so much fun. I love the people I get to work with. I often shake my head and think, ‘My God, I can’t believe I’m actually getting paid for this!’”
Travis also relished the work she did on “Safe Harbor,” even if it wasn’t anything she’d ever mistake for vacation time. “There was one scene where I had to get into the water, and it was cold ,” she remembers. “I was putting on this wet suit that covered me from head to toe. But whenever I’d complain, someone would point out, ‘Look at those little kids playing over there in bathing suits and babies with diapers. They seem to be doing it.’ So I had to shut up.”
What helped her overcome the frigid conditions was the inspiring story behind the film.
“If it wasn’t for people like the Smiths, who do so much for others before they do for themselves, where would we be as people?” Travis asks. “It was really an honor to portray a person like that. It reminds me that we can all do something, even if it isn’t as grand as setting up a huge charity. We can all do something to make the world a little bit better.”
CONTACT: Pam Slay, 818-755-2480
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