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Show STABVIEW Successful actors can play young and old By RUTH THOMPSON Ability to play an age range of 20 years (10 years younger or older) is a trick all but a few of the most steadily employed performers pull off with ease most of the time. Some Robert Wagner, currently cur-rently of the "Hart to Hart" series all of the time. Part of it, as an acting teacher tells her classes, "Is the degree to which you are willing to forget yourself and project an attitude of what the character is supposed to be." Which is fine up to the point where the character must be also be notably more bulky (or less) and a couple of decades older. Then the attitudes need team work from costumers and makeup artists. When it comes to figure changes, imitation pregnancies pregnan-cies are the easiest to style. So that was no problem for 21-year-old Kathleen Roller by the time the storyline moved along to where she played a 30-year-old expectant mother in ABC's recent "Mother and Daughter: The Loving War." There were challenges all around earlier in the film, though, trying to pass Ms. Beller off as a 13-year-old. A ruffled dress helped, but not as much as the cameraman who angled carefully to de-emphasize de-emphasize Ms. Boiler's young figure and face. Frances Sternhagen. who played Ms. Bclier's mother, could teach courses in instant aging. because almost routinely she is cast as 20 or more years older than she is. This season, on stage in New-York, New-York, she is cast as the 70-ish wife in "On Golden Pond." It's a nice 70-ish ... maybe just a shade stiff in the joints is what comes across, but not overstated or decrepit. "A little stiffening of the joints" is also how Jan Miner has styled her starring role as the matriarch Fanny Farrelly in the Broadway revival of Lillian Hellman's "Watch on the Rhine." Except for her fine, high-riding high-riding cheekbones, Jan onstage is all but unrecognizable unrecogniz-able to televiewers the world over who know her best as Madge the Manicurist in the Paltnolive commercials. As Jan explained it: "There is nothing explicit that says Fanny should be at least 30 pounds heavier than I am, but in the dialogue other characters charac-ters imply that this woman is substantial in more ways than just financial." Jan continued, "This play is set in 1940 and those stiff corsets cor-sets women wore then help the line a lot. Then. too. in that time even older women wore high heels instead of the Cuban height that is easier to walk on. So as Fanny I wear high heels and move a little stiffly from the hip joint." And that's no affection, she added with a laugh. "I have to to keep my balance." There is somebody who has just signed a long-term contract con-tract who doesn't have to try to look older. She is Cathleen Nesbitt. who 15 years ago co-starred co-starred in "The Farmer's Daughter" series with William Wil-liam Windoni and the late Inger Stevens Ms. Nesbitt. who even on a bad day looks no more than a radiant 70. has just turned 91. She has signed for a tough tour inked in for the stage revival, upcoming, of "My Fair Lady." She will play the mother of Rex Harrison, who is 70 but expected to pass for 50 as Professor Higgns r' - . |