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Doris Roberts won't be silenced

By Amy Wilson awilson1@herald-leader.com

Doris Roberts has, more than once, remarked that she would like to have been born in the South. The actress and St. Louis native loves the food, the sass and the straightforward pluck of the Southern-gal mentality.

Like?

"Like when you're asked, 'How are you?' and the response is, 'Above ground.'

"That attitude, I love."

Roberts, who comes to Kentucky for the first time for In the Interest of Women: A Forum for the Women of Kentucky, is all about attitude. Her four Emmys for her work as Marie Barone in TV's Everybody Loves Raymond are simply the latest in a long line of steady roles that began in 1952, when she was just 22.

She isn't 22 anymore — she's 78 — and she is not complaining about that. What irks her is that "I can't find a magazine that talks to a woman over 20." And that "no one in Hollywood is writing for older women." And that "when they do write for older women, there should be more sex — why are we being dismissed?"

Older men get that short shrift, too, but with women, "it's so much more obvious," she says.

She acknowledges that her recent years have been some of her most successful and busy. But she is the exception, and it will not silence her.

In 2002, she spoke to a congressional committee on age discrimination, asking that such obvious disparity be treated, under the law, the same as racial and gender discrimination.

It's something she would like taken seriously.

Which is, maybe, a little surprising for the Marie-philes among us.

She gives a familiar little Marie-ish chortle at that notion, then she calls you "dear," and she is not for one minute condescending.

Marie, she explains, is a real woman. A woman she knows very well, who "is obsolete without her children. I am not that woman."

Roberts is a mother of one and a grandmother of three. She is the widow of writer William Goyen, who died in 1983.

"It's OK to look back; just don't stare. I learned that when my husband died. I would go on talk shows and talk about his writing. He was a wonderful writer, and I soon realized I was still mourning. It was my way of keeping him alive. I had to get back to life."

She says she decided that it would always be different from that point on, and that she would embrace that difference.

"It's an attitude. I will live longer. I will take better care of myself. I will exercise. I will live my life to the fullest. If I wake up with a new pain, I will overlook it. I had that wonderful life. I have this one now."

This one now includes giving talks, such as the one she will give later this month.

"The talk will be about me, what I've learned."

A long talk?

She laughed that familiar laugh again and in that familiar voice said, "Yeah."