Public Personality
She moved to Los Angeles and earned an Emmy nomination for her starring role in the TV movie Marilyn: The Untold Story. Catherine can be seen every Tuesday night on the WB network’s most successful show 7th Heaven. A lifelong Catholic, Catherine is married and has a daughter.
BRN: 7th Heaven has been the most successful show for the WB Network. What do you think is its appeal for viewers today?
CH: With all of the wreckage of divorce-ridden households all around us, I think this family that stays together in good times and bad is very healing. For those who are in broken homes our 7th Heaven family is something hopeful to look at – a role model. Everyone is trying real hard these days to do family life right and people want their lives to be like 7th Heaven. The show projects a sense of normalcy, stability and faith. Secondly, over and over again I have heard from the fans the same comment. They always say that 7th Heaven is the one show that we can all sit down on the sofa and watch together as a family.
BRN: What is the best thing about starring on a hit TV series?
CH: Being on a primetime drama is very rigorous. It is an environment where I have been able to draw on all my years of hard work and training. It’s been very demanding, but in the middle of it all I have seen my kills as an actress blossom. I sort of know I'm good. (laughs) And I know I’m doing what I am supposed to be doing.
BRN: What is the biggest challenge of starring on a hit TV series?
CH: To keep doing my homework and not get lazy. To keep on truckin'. Because the work is so demanding, it's really hard at times being a Mom to my daughter, and at the same time being a daughter to my own Mom who is elderly and a widow. I get stressed and worn down. And when I do I can become petty, critical, and competitive with the other actors on the show.
On The Industry
BRN: Too many Christians have learned to look askance at the arts and have washed their hands of them. What gifts have you found through the arts?
CH: I can only speak in cinema. And it’s true that today I don't see a lot of beauty. What we call profound and beautiful in American cinema is not that. But I wouldn’t expect Catholics to take on an attitude of suspicion of the arts. That is really a fundamentalist attitude. We are smarter than that. There have been many films that I love because they have moved and inspired me like A Man for All Seasons. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Camelot. The Trouble With Angels. Apocalypse Now. If people don’t like what is out there now in entertainment there are a wealth of great old films they can rent and enjoy and grow from.
BRN: What would you say to young people who are thinking of careers in the arts?
CH: Don’t be afraid. If you stay close to God your faith will help you on what may be a very lonely path of pursuing a career. It’s one thing to paint pictures on the side or be in community theater as a hobby. To make it in the real world is very difficult. But if that’s what you were made to do than you have to follow your heart. I know too many unhappy business people – doctors and lawyers and executives – who all have a closet talent and never thought they could do anything with it. They gave up their dream out of fear. When I was a student studying drama, I remember noting that creative people who were out there being creative were very free and happy people. I thought there must be something to that.
Private Faith
BRN: How do you handle those feelings?
CH: I try to count my blessings. I make myself stop and think of some of the real problems in the world, for example like the daily horrors endured by people in the Sudan. Compared to some people’s lives, my problems are very small. We all need to pray more. I pray daily. I go to morning Mass when I can. When I can I also go to a prayer group at my parish.
BRN: It must help to know that you are working on a show that brings so many people so much encouragement and inspiration?
CH: Definitely. It also helps me to recall why I am working and the miraculous way I got this job. I don't need to work to survive, but I do need to work to take care of my Mom. The show has allowed me to pay for a little house for her and to have someone come in and help her out. Just before I got the show things were getting very desperate. I prayed very hard for a job so that I wouldn’t have to sell her little house. The odds weren’t good for me. No actress works like this in Hollywood after a certain age, and I had been out of the loop and hadn't worked in two years. Then one day the phone rings and its Aaron Spelling offering me the job on 7th Heaven. It was a miracle.
BRN: What role did your faith play in your upbringing?
CH: My father was Jesuit trained, and not only an intelligent Catholic but prayerful. I have beautiful memories of him taking me outside when I was little and showing me the beautiful sunsets and saying that they reminded him of the prayer, “Glory to God in the highest.” He also set an example for me of Scripture reading, which not many Catholics were doing back then. I remember as a child going to many novenas. We would pray the rosary together as a family sometimes too.
BRN: BRN: In the Scriptures, Jesus gives us many images to express who he is. He called himself the Bread of Life, the Good Shepherd, the Light of the World, the Lamb of God – what image most speaks to you and why?
CH: Christ the healer. The people that He healed first touched him by their faith, when so many didn't believe in Him. I have reflected often on the loneliness of the Savior. He was there in the Temple day after day loving and teaching people and yet no one knew who he was. No one was getting it. He must have felt very isolated and alone.
BRN: Who are your heroes of faith and why?
CH: St. Thomas More. I like him because he tried not to die. He didn’t pursue persecution, but when it found him he showed himself to be a man of courage and convictions. He shows us not to be afraid to talk about God in a nation that doesn't believe. I also love St. Therese of the Little Flower. I have read her Story of a Soul. I love the mystic tradition in the Church. Holiness is a sign that our faith works. Wherever there is genuine holiness and mysticism, God must be present. I have a real friendship with St. Anthony. I've always been scatterbrained. At least two times a day I lose something and turn to him for help and he comes through for me.
Barbara Nicolosi teaches screenwriting to aspiring Catholic writers at the acclaimed Act One: Writing for Hollywood. You may email her at [email protected].
(Originally published in LIGUORIAN Magazine, One Liguori Drive, Liguori, MO, 63057.)
