HOLLYWOOD Actress Cloris Leachman cherishes her many motherly roles

The actress said she doesn't mind supporting roles.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
Cloris Leachman could be your mother.
"I've been the mother to way over 40 actors," the legendary TV star says. "It's closer to 60."
In almost 50 years of television work, Leachman has run the gamut of motherhood -- from the homespun type ("Lassie") to the doting ("Phyllis") to the eerie ("Twilight Zone").
She has won eight Emmys for seven roles. Her latest one, from last year, came for playing the venomous Grandma Ida, mother of Lois (Jane Kaczmarek), on "Malcolm in the Middle."
Ida returns tonight during a two-part season finale, as Lois goes into labor.
"She [Ida] is so outrageous," Leachman said. "She does things no one would even imagine."
Like throwing a rock at her grandson, Malcolm.
Or stabbing another grandson, Francis, with her knitting needle.
"He starts screaming, and I stab him again and then twist it," Leachman says laughing. "He's such a wuss."
Of all the mothers and grandmothers that Leachman has played, Ida is among the most vicious.
"I don't think she has learned all the subtleties of interacting with people," Leachman says. "I think it's very elementary. I don't like you. I kill you. I don't like what you did. I bash you in the face.
"She's more like a caveman inside of herself."
Providing support
Mothers in television and film are often used in supporting roles, Leachman acknowledges. They rarely carry the stories or save the day. But it does not bother Leachman.
"I think about [the roles] as a person," Leachman says.
"I always find the deepest, fundamental passion in a mother is to save the family. ... That comes from the earliest dawning of civilization. It's a passion. It's what you give your life for."
And to each of those roles, she brings a sense of: "What am I to my friends? What am I to my family? What is her name?" Of her mother roles, Leachman can pinpoint a few that still touch her, such as the sacrificing field hand she played in the 1974 movie "The Migrants," when she was the mother of Ron Howard and Sissy Spacek. The power of that family's poverty and the mother's determination to keep them together resonate with her today.
"It was so tragic," she recalls, her voice breaking.
Real-life tragedy
In real life, Leachman has been a mother five times. All her children are actors. One son died after an accidental overdose of ulcer medication in 1986.
Leachman hopes to be a mother again in the fall. She has just completed a pilot for CBS titled "Crazy Love," in which she has been cast as the mother of Peter MacNicol.
The sitcom is about a couple (MacNicol and Valerie Bertinelli) who adopt a child from abroad, and the changes it brings into their lives.