BEACH BABY
Australian TV Week
January 18, 1992
by Jenny Cooney
Marg’s role as a mother has taken over since her TV show was cancelled.
Since she starred in the Vietnam War series ‘China Beach,’ Marg Helgenberger’s life has changed drastically. When the series took off in 1988, it earned Marg stardom as the hooker K.C. and an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a TV series. But, more important, it was during this time that she bumped into a former cast-mate from the soap Ryan’s Hope, Alan Rosenberg, in a bank where Marg was opening an account after moving from New York to Los Angeles.
They have been married two and a half years and have a son, Hugh. “I opened an account and a relationship,” Marg jokes. The pair eloped in 1989, when ‘China Beach’ – now back on the Nine Network – was one of the hottest shows on TV. Now, as Marg talks to ‘TV WEEK’ on her car phone in L.A. between auditions for movie roles, her husband is on his way to New York to take over the lead role of the Broadway production of Neil Simon’s Lost In Yonkers.
Alan’s career has taken an upward swing and Marg is temporarily unemployed. “We’re very supportive of each other,” Marg says. “A lot of that attitude I attribute to Alan. He is a very generous guy and always said that my success was his success, so now I think the same way and it just hasn’t been a problem. “I’d like to be in New York with him but I’ll be going back and forth because most of the work is here in Los Angeles.”
Although Marg is in demand for TV projects, her roles as wife and mother now dictate her choices. “I did 10 days work on a project in Canada earlier this year and I went without the baby but spent the whole time questioning why I did it and had a terrible time missing Hugh (named after her late father),” she says. “My baby puts everything into perspective. He’s the cutest baby in the world and the most precious thing to me is his well-being and happiness. I have this great desire to go skydiving but if there’s a chance that the chute won’t open, I won’t take that risk because I’m also his mother and need to be there for him for a long time.”
Although ‘China Beach’ was the show which launched Marg to stardom, she also admits she was somewhat relieved when it was cancelled. “I was burned out and ready to say goodbye to that character and show,” she confesses. “The last season was really tough for me because I was pregnant, and they wrote that into the show with my character. Then I took a month off to have the baby but had to return to the schedule of a weekly series. “I didn’t want to leave the baby to go to work but I had no choice at that point. I felt I suffered, the baby suffered and my work suffered.”
Although Marg won critical acclaim in ‘China Beach,’ she’s refreshingly honest about the problems she’d had getting into movies. She had a small role in 1989 in Steven Spielberg’s ‘Always’ but has not had a film role since. “I’ve turned down lots of things that I didn’t want to do on TV,” she admits. “But making the move into features has not been easy. “People think I’ve played one character too long and I’ll be too identifiable with her on the big screen. But it’s also a game and, regardless of whether you’re good or not, you have to pay your dues and be on certain lists and work your way up.”
The two TV roles Marg has landed since ‘China Beach’ folded last year and were the telemovie Death Dreams, with Christopher Reeve, and the upcoming telemovie ‘In Sickness And In Health,’ with Lesley Ann Warren and Tom Skerrit.
*Special thanks to Kelly Willows for transcribing this article. A scan of it can also be found here.