Belle of the bowl

Sela Ward is striding toward the front door of Don Carter's Cityview Lanes wearing a camel-colored coat, an impeccably tailored black suit and sky-high heels. The two-time Emmy winner looks flawless.

And all I can think is: What have I done?

Bowling With Sela Ward, which once seemed like an inspired idea, now seems like the journalistic equivalent of drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa. She is simply too beautiful on this day, a gloomy Friday in Fort Worth, to be in a bowling alley.

I knew it, the guy behind the counter knew it and, though she didn't say so, I think Sela Ward knew it, too.

Bowling alleys are loud and kinetic and endearingly rough around the edges. Sela Ward is none of those things. She is polished and polite. Refined and regal. Soft-spoken and smart -- and any other number of effusive alliterating adjectives.

She's also been up since 5 a.m., doing interviews and signing copies of her new book, Homesick: A Memoir, and has a full slate of commitments lined up into the evening. Now, smack in the middle of a full-throttle day, I'm asking her what size bowling shoe she wears (8 1/2).

Politely, she asks: "Are we actually going to bowl?"

What have I done?

In hindsight, it was probably too much to ask: mingling my favorite pastime with one of my favorite actresses. But when her publishers said she was coming to town and offered an interview, I had to take my shot.

I've been a Sela Ward fan since I first saw her lighting up the screen as the rebellious Teddy Reed on the NBC drama Sisters (1991). Later, in a memorable series of Sprint long-distance ads and ABC's critically acclaimed drama Once and Again (1999), Ward solidified her role in my recurring fantasies. As Lily Manning, a divorced mom embarking on a new chapter in life and love, she was as sexy in jeans and a T-shirt as she was in a slinky black dress or a rumpled bedsheet.

But beyond her beauty, Ward projects an air of confidence and dignity, qualities that make her equally popular with women. She is fortysomething and fabulous.

"Like Gloria Steinem said, 'This is what 46 looks like,' " she jokes, volunteering that she hasn't had plastic surgery but won't rule it out. Sure, she stays out of the sun, and yes, she exercises and takes care of herself, but otherwise there is no fountain of youth she drinks from to keep her skin so smooth or her raven hair so shiny.

She's a natural beauty -- who seems out of place in a bowling alley.

Despite the cloud of awkwardness hanging over the start of our interview, we plow ahead. Ward poses for pictures and then plucks a red 10-pound ball from the rack and rolls an opening frame 7. (She has bowled twice in the past year with her children, Austin, 8, and Anabella, 4.)

A few shots later, the bowling gods smile on me as Ward misfires and nearly kneecaps our photographer in the right-hand gutter. She screams, he smiles and the near-disaster punctures the tension.

Ward confides she'd "rather spend the afternoon bowling," but has more interviews and another signing in Plano. In fact, she says, the family of her best friend in high school owned a bowling alley "and we hung out there all the time and listened to '70s music. I love '70s music."

Now we're getting somewhere.

When I remark on the coincidence of Ward citing Bowling Alone, a 1999 bestseller by Robert D. Putnam, as an inspiration in her book, I strike pay dirt.

"It's a wonderful comment on our society," Ward says of Bowling Alone, in which Putnam uses the decline in bowling league membership to point to the larger social disconnect in our communities. "Which is what I was trying to point out in the book," adds Ward. "Gone are so many things that connected us. We're all so fragmented now."

Somehow, bowling was beginning to forge a connection for us.

Homesick (ReganBooks, $24.95) is a "love letter to the South and a time gone by," Ward says, particularly the years she spent growing up in the small town of Meridian, Miss. "It is a place that really feeds my soul. And I think everyone needs a place like that."

Now, more than ever, Ward says she feels the pull of Meridian. She goes there to escape the chaos of LA and relax on her 500-acre farm with her husband, Howard Sherman (a venture capitalist whom she met on a blind date) and with their children and her extended family.

The book, which took a year to write, also chronicles Ward's journey from the oldest of four children with a strong Southern upbringing to award-winning actress. It takes us to the University of Alabama, where she was a cheerleader who worshipped coach "Bear" Bryant; to New York, where she became a successful model; to LA, where, after playing Nurse Bunny Cahill on One Life to Live for two days, she toiled in small parts in films like Rustlers' Rhapsody, Nothing in Common and Hello Again before landing the role on Sisters.

Nearly 10 years and two Emmys later, Ward has mixed emotions following the cancellation of the highly respected but ratings-poor Once and Again.

"It was sad creatively, because I loved the character, loved the producers and cast. And it's very hard to find great material. And that was great material," she says. "But you know my kids are too young for me to be away from them that long. It's 12-14 hours a day for 10 months of the year. And I'd leave before they were up and get home after they'd gone to bed, so it was very difficult on me emotionally."

Loyal viewers even went so far as to pay $10,000 for billboards trying to save the show. "Amazing," Ward says. "But networks don't stay with shows any longer," she adds. "They're all run by big corporations now and it's all about the immediate bottom line. . . . We also had five time slots in three years. I couldn't remember what night the show was on."

I could feel the oranges and yellows of Don Carter's fading to black and white, as our conversation began to take on the tone of a Once and Again confessional.

"Some things just speak to you," Ward says of the Lily character. "On the first page of the script, the dialogue is 'All I ever wanted was to feel safe,' and that so resonates with me. I could so understand what she was talking about. And I knew from the first page I had to play that part."

Unafraid to share her vulnerabilities, Ward talks of "unproductive relationships" earlier in her career (with Emerald Point N.A.S. co-star Richard Dean Anderson and Peter Weller), of making "safe choices," and of her trepidation about writing a book.

"I was so terrified [when the publisher approached me]. But that's why I knew I had to do it," she says. "That's just how I am. If I pick up a script and go, 'God, that scares me to death,' I know I have to do it. It's the only way you grow."

On the lanes, her confidence is growing. After picking up a spare in the fourth frame, she flashes a smile and a double thumbs-up that could launch an ad campaign to fill bowling alleys with bearded, big-bellied men hoping to meet Sela.

Hey, it worked for Sprint.

Ward actually made long distance sexy a few years back in a sophisticated series of billowy, beautiful ads.

"I thought they were so clever," Ward says of the creative team that came up with the Sprint campaign. "I'd been doing voice-overs for years. So I had my agent call them and ask, 'Is Candice Bergen through with that?' because I would really love to work with this creative team. And I ended up going on camera. They were so fresh and fun."

Ward seems to be having fun on the lanes now, too. And she looks more comfortable bowling than most celebrities, even if the red-and-blue shoes clash unmercifully with her jet-black power suit.

When Ward asks for a couple of bowling pointers, I'm smitten all over again. I suggest a lighter ball (a pink 8-pounder) and a slight move to the right to account for her baby hook. While it didn't have a big impact on her final score (71), she did pick up a spare in the 10th frame and followed that with a nine that should have been a strike.

I bowled, too, but don't remember much about it. I was firmly enveloped in Sela's spell by then.

As we talked about her future projects, which include an action-adventure movie with Dennis Quaid that begins filming this month, I thought: So what if Bowling With Sela Ward made as much sense as taking Queen Elizabeth II to a biker bar or inviting Carrot Top to a Harvard graduation? We'd made it work.

One final question: Can we expect to see you back on TV soon?

Flipping her hair as only Sela can, she says, "A half-hour [comedy] would be great. But then I'd have to go prove that I'm funny."

After bowling with me, Sela, you don't have to prove a thing.

Final score
Sela - 71
Rick - 176

Rick Press is a former junior champion bowler and the Star-Telegram's features editor. Reach him at (817)390-7701 or rpress@star-telegram.com.