For these stars, a mom’s influence helped give rise to a stellar career

Luaine Lee | Tribune News Service

With Mothers’ Day arriving Sunday we often think about the women who raised us and the profound influence they had on us. And celebrities are no different. Some of their mothers were encouraging, others proved examples – still others left their offspring to their own devices.

Jay Hernandez, star of “Magnum P.I.,” recalls, “My mom was the one that pushed me toward acting. She knew I had an interest in it. And my dad was NOT into it. He’s like, ‘This is not a good career path you need.’ He didn’t shut it down, but he definitely let me know that it wasn’t a smart thing to do; it was kind of a waste of time. After high school in junior college I took my first drama class. I met a guy who was a manager and worked with talent at this small company. He said, ‘Have you ever done film or television? Are you interested in that kind of thing?’ He gave me his card.

“A couple weeks later my mom asked if I’d called him. I hadn’t. So she kind of pushed me to that and said, ‘Let’s have a meeting with this guy.’ That was the beginning of my career really.”

Rebecca Wisocky, who plays the Victorian specter on “Ghosts,” was adopted and her adoptive mom intuited her talent. “I was a really shy kid, and my mom had the great idea to take me to the local community theater and … I just got hooked and spent most of my childhood doing plays there and did a lot of scholarship programs in Pennsylvania. And it felt very natural that I would try to make a life in the arts, and I’ve been very lucky that has come true.”

Michael C. Hall, star of the “Dexter” series, says he didn’t let on that he had a yen to act until he was in college. “My mother wondered where it came from because no one in my family was a performer or in the arts or anything like that,” he says.

“My father passed away when I was 11, but my mother never forbade me from pursuing it, nor was she, in any way, a stage mother. She just said, ‘I want you to be happy. And I also want you to be able to pay your rent.’ So for a while there I think she got the sense that it did make me happy, but she worried about the rent side of things.”

Byron Allen started as a standup comedian but became a multimillionaire. Among other enterprises, he owns 36 network affiliate broadcast television stations.

“My mother, she got pregnant with me when she was 16 and had me when she was 17. And born to a teenage girl in Detroit, Michigan, in ’61, you would not have bet on that young, black teenage girl and that little, black baby that much would happen,” he says.

“But it’s just I’m an absolute testament to how great this country is. And my mother ended up going to UCLA and getting her master’s degree in cinema TV production. And because she was at UCLA she was able to get a job as a tour guide, first as an intern at NBC in the mid-‘70s. And that became my playground and my babysitter, and that’s where I was introduced and watched Johnny Carson standing in the wings.”

Gold Medal Olympian Jackie Joyner-Kersee remembers her mother: “I thought my mom was extremely strict. I had to read the newspaper so I would know what was going on in the community. She didn’t want me to think that I was immune to any of that, to understand that not everyone is your friend. ‘Don’t take anything from strangers and always earn your way.’ So by my freshman year my mother contracted the worst form of meningitis and died unexpectedly at the age of 37. So it was her teaching at a young age – I didn’t think I was listening, but I was. And it was what I had to rely on to move on.”

Dancer-Choreographer Twyla Tharp says, “My mother is responsible for my range of thinking — from the keyboard, which I began as a 2-year-old — going through baton, tap, gypsy, German, elocution, shorthand… . All of these things could be somehow valuable. And so you could shift from … the feeling of writing shorthand or what it did in the brain to a greater, larger open expanse. But all of my lessons have proved invaluable. Moms are just always right.”

Scott Foley, star of “The Big Leap,” “Scandal,” recalls, “My mom was the creative one. She was the one that took me to my first play. She was the singer. She was the creative one. I was 15 and lost my mom from cancer, and that was tough to see my father and my two younger brothers to lose his wife and their mother. … It’s amazing how the loss of a parent at a young age can influence a life going forward. … If it wasn’t for her death I definitely wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing.”

Regina King, star of “If Beale Street Could Talk” and “The Leftovers,” says her mom was a teacher. “More than anything — I don’t think she was even aware of it — just how strong of a woman she was and just being that example every day. I don’t think she was trying to be that example every day. I think she was just being a mom. ‘I’ve got girls and they are young women and they need to respect themselves and carry themselves as though they respect themselves.’ She is a great mom.”

Alan Tudyk, star of “Resident Alien,” says his parents put him through the first two years of college, and then he was on his own. “When I was at Juilliard, my mom would send me cans of chili. … She said, ‘I hope you’re eating.’ And I had this chili that I never ate because that stuff looks like dog food when it comes out of the can. But I never threw it away. So this play that I did called ‘Bunny, Bunny,’ we did it in Philadelphia where we had to do a tryout. And I had quit my waiting table job and I was trying to just make it as an actor. And while we were waiting to get a theater in New York, I lived on that chili, chili and Fritos.”

Much of Amy Tan’s (“The Good Luck Club”) writing is influenced by her mother. While they were often at odds, Tan says, “You know, my mother was a very funny person. And amidst all that she did that was dramatic and histrionic and sad; she also had a lot of humor… . I remember we used to get in arguments all the time. We were driving in the middle of the night in Spain. We didn’t know where we were. We were afraid that Guardias would come out and do something. So, my mother wanted to keep driving, and she said, ‘Let’s get in an argument so I can stay awake.’ And we both knew it was funny, that when we had arguments it would just go for hours. And that’s an example, I think, of her being able to take a portion out of that and apply it to the present situation and make it a funny truthism at the moment. I think we all need humor.”

Singer Sheryl Crow says she’s only partly responsible for her talent. “First and foremost, I would love to take total credit for that, but my mom is an incredible singer. And had she not been born when and where she was born, I think she would have been one of the greatest opera singers ever. And her voice — she’s 86 now, and she still sings. And her voice is richer than it ever has been. And she still has the high notes and she still has the low notes.”

Against his parents’ wishes, John Travolta left home at 16 to try his luck at acting. But he remembers when he was 5 he used to beg his mother to take him to New York and push him onto the stage. She’d tried that with his sister, Ellen, and nothing came of it. She wasn’t eager to try again. “I wanted her to be Mama Rose and she was tired and didn’t want to be Mama Rose. The best she could do was let me go,” he says.

Patricia Arquette, who starred in “Escape at Dannemora,” spent part of her childhood in a hippie commune. She describes her mom as a woman of strong convictions. “I grew up with certain hippie principles: stand up for yourself and be an activist. If the government is doing something wrong, do something about it… . One time a bus driver wouldn’t stop to take the time to let this handicapped man come on, it took too much time on his route. My mom laid down in front of the bus and wouldn’t move until he let this man on the bus. That’s the kind of person I grew up with.”

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