Actress hopes lucky break in 'Ray' brings more work

Screen dreams: The story of how Sharon Warren came to play Ray Charles' mother in the hit biopic "Ray" offers hope for all actors with dreams bigger than their resumes. During a wardrobe fitting for a role with an Atlanta theater company, Warren heard about open auditions for a movie across the street. She ran over knowing nothing about the film and was so green that when director Taylor Hackford started taping her, she turned her back to the camera.

Still, Hackford could tell that Warren possessed many qualities Charles had described in his mother, a physically frail but emotionally fierce woman who prepared him to take on the world despite his blindness.

"Taylor said he'd phone in two weeks, and two weeks to the day, he did," recalled Warren, who was staffing the theater's ticket booth when the momentous call came. Hackford told her that he hadn't hired anyone cold like this in 30 years but that star Jamie Foxx "liked your tape as much as I did. You came in and knocked the ball out of the park."

To get a sense of what life was like for Aretha Charles, who supported her son by taking in laundry, Warren conferred with her 87-year-old grandmother, another native of the rural South. "She prepared me for that role in ways that no one could have. She really made me understand the economics at the end of the Depression and what was possible for a black woman. The last conversation I had with my grandmother before she died was about this film."

Warren never got to speak with Charles. But she heard that he loved her voice and that a scene where she instills confidence in a young Ray moved Charles to talk back to the screen, saying, "That's the truth."

The ending of Warren's Cinderella story has yet to be written. She moved to Los Angeles under the impression that she would be participating in the publicity junket for "Ray," only to be told at the last minute that her services weren't needed. "I was devastated," she told me.

The studio will never give me a straight answer on why Warren was left out. But I can guess it's related to strong performances from Kerry Washington as Charles' wife and Regina King as his mistress, both of whom will probably be pushed for Oscar nominations as best supporting actress. Three would be a crowd and, as the unknown, Warren was more dispensable.

As resourceful as the woman she portrays, Warren has slept on the floor of her empty Los Angeles apartment and signed on with a temp agency to pay the rent until she sees whether "Ray" results in more film work. "I'm not above busing tables if it comes to it, but it is taking its toll on me," she said.

"Taylor tells me I'm just going to have to wait it out."

Early inheritance: Speaking of Hackford, he's convinced that Ray Charles knew he was dying of cancer long before it became public knowledge. This explains why he assembled his 12 children from numerous relationships to give them part of their inheritance early. "He handed them each a million bucks," said Hackford, who became Charles' confidant during the 15 years it took to make the film. "Three or four of his kids were French, and some met one another for the first time at that gathering."

Love from beyond: By eerie if not exactly supernatural coincidence, two movies opened almost simultaneously that are about women who are convinced that their dead lovers have turned up in a reincarnated form. In "P.S.," Laura Linney beds a graduate school applicant 15 years her junior because he's the image of her dearly departed high school boyfriend and even has the same offbeat name, F. Scott Feinstadt. At least F. Scott is of age. In "Birth," Nicole Kidman believes her dead husband has come back in the body of a 10-year- old boy.

Thanks for the chips: Paula Prentiss and hubby Richard Benjamin spoke at the Academy of Art University as a favor to pal Diane Baker, who runs the school's acting program. Benjamin recalled how an MGM talent scout came hunting at Northwestern University's drama department in the late '50s when he and Prentiss were students. He convinced his then-girlfriend to perform with him for the scout, although her ambition was to go onstage. When the studio summoned Prentiss to L.A. for a screen test, he pleaded with her to go "because I thought there might be something in it for me," Benjamin told the crowd with a laugh.

Prentiss tested with Jim Hutton (Timothy's father) for "Where the Boys Are." Since she'd been told it was a bar scene, she brought along pretzels, nuts and beer as if she were auditioning for a small stage production. The MGM staff told her, "You know, that is really sweet, but we've been doing this for a long time, and we have our own chips and pretzels. In fact, we have the whole set."

P.S.: Prentiss got the part.