She's best known for being an angel. And in the upcoming Hallmark Channel Original Movie "Come Dance At My Wedding" (Saturday, June 6 at 9/8c), 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.
Well, even heavenly creatures return to Earth once in a while.
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, California. "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 re-teamed with John Schneider (who appeared on "Angel" in three episodes – the first one as Satan) to film "Wedding."
"They were laughing at me," she recalls, "because while filming on that first day with John we were dripping and dodging the rain. 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."
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Success with a 1991 Emmy®-winning miniseries called "A Woman Named Jackie" eventually led to an audition for "Touched By an Angel," but the part was written for an American voice – not an Irish one. Downey had been vocally-coached for her "Jackie" role, and kept the American voice for her audition – until the producer suggested she return to her normal cadences.
That made Downey nervous. "It has been my experience that once somebody knows you're foreign, that's all they hear," she recalls. "So I was afraid I was about to talk myself out of work. But he said, 'Let's hear it with an Irish accent,' and in that moment it really brought the material to life."
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," says Downey, "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). At that point, Downey had never seen Burnett's "Survivor" series – but says now, "You can be sure I've seen it since! I've also been on location and learned to scuba-dive and become the active adventure woman who was apparently inside me."
And, notes Downey, there is something to be said about the unification of a Northern Irish woman and a former British Army paratrooper. "It is interesting that we would have come from the same corner of the world – and met on the edge of a different continent," she says.
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 still broadening her horizons. She's returned to painting, and is partway through a masters program in "spiritual psychology" from the University of Santa Monica.
Could any university have been a better choice for the former "angel" 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.
And that would be? Well, who knows – but after working on "Wedding," there's a chance it might have something to do with line dancing.
"You thought 'Slumdog Millionaire' had a great dance finale – well, you need to see 'Wedding,'" she laughs. "We had so much fun shooting it. I challenge anybody, ever, if you're feeling in any way low-energy, down, depressed – you stand up and do a few dance moves, and I defy anybody to remain in that state. It's like that old line, 'If you want to change how you're feeling, change what you're doing.'"
Change, for Roma Downey, is a very good thing.
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