Actress Tyne Daly willing to confront aging head-on

Spokesman Review - December 5, 2000

By Kevin D. Thompson - Cox News Service

Four years ago, Tyne Daly turned 50. So, what did the veteran actress do to celebrate?

Why, she shaved her head, of course.

"I wanted to come as a naked babe into the second half of my life as I had in the first," Daly recalls with a smile. "So I shaved every hair on my body except my eyebrows."

Why not the eyebrows?

"I had to be on camera," she says.

Of course. I shudder to think what Daly will do for her 100th birthday.

I want to make one thing clear: Tyne Daly is a terrific actress. The five-time Emmy winner was wonderful as the no-nonsense Mary Beth Lacey on the cop series "Cagney & Lacey." She was downright chilling as an overbearing mother-in-law in the CBS movie "A Perfect Mother." And she's particularly effective as a bossy, yet caring mom on "Judging Amy," CBS' fine second-year courtroom drama that airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m.

But Tyne Daly scares me. Bald head aside, the hulking Daly has such an overbearing -- and often intimidating -- presence. If she were my mom, I'd snap to attention whenever she asked. At times, it looks as if Amy (Amy Brenneman), Daly's TV daughter, wants to do just that. Yet I admire Daly as well. Hollywood isn't kind to aging women. Once the figure goes and the wrinkles set in, work can be as hard to find as a Hyundai on Rodeo Drive.

Daly knows this, yet she agreed to gain weight and let her hair turn gray so she could play Maxine Gray on "Judging Amy."

"We marginalize kids and old people as jokes on TV," she points out. "So, although Maxine is difficult and prickly, she's a human being. And I'm there to kind of hold up that side for her as a person who still has vitality and something to contribute."


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