Ask American Profile

Doris Roberts, E.D. Hill, Mark Wills

I love Doris Roberts. What can you tell me about her?
—Sandy S., Maine

A New York native, Doris Roberts knew she would become an actress early on. “I had one line in a play in kindergarten in which I said, ‘I am Patrick Potato and this is my cousin, Mrs. Tomato,’” the actress recalls. “There was laughter in the room and I loved the sound of that. It made me feel very important and that’s what I wanted to do from that moment on.” And so she did. She just won her third Emmy for her work as pushy mother Marie Barone on the comedy Everybody Loves Raymond. But her long career includes plenty of drama, including an Emmy for her work as a bag lady on the medical drama St. Elsewhere in 1983. She’s appeared on Broadway and made more than 30 films, including The Rose, Hester Street and The Grass Harp. Her next project, the Hallmark Channel movie A Time To Remember that airs Nov. 23, brings her back to drama. Roberts, 73, plays a very wealthy, proper woman who has a strained relationship with her artist daughter and is in the first stages of Alzheimer’s disease. She believes Raymond fans will be quite surprised to see her play such a different type of mother than Marie. As excited as she is about the strong dramatic part, Roberts, a widow who lives in Los Angeles, is still thrilled by the effect of her work on Raymond. “What I love and will never get jaded by is that people come to me with great big smiles on their faces. I make them laugh, which is wonderful, because if you can laugh at my character, you can laugh at your mother or mother-in-law and we need to do that.”

I love Fox and Friends anchor E.D. Hill. What can you tell me about her?
—Stephen D., Tennessee

E.D. Hill joined the Fox News Channel in 1998 after spending three years covering family issues for ABC’s Good Morning America. “The best part of my job is interviewing people and getting answers to things that don’t make sense,” she says. “My job is to make sure people are more informed as they start their day.” Before joining the television network ranks, she served as an anchor for WABC-TV in New York and WHDH-TV in Providence, R.I. Earlier jobs include business anchor for CBS Morning News and CBS Radio Network and anchor for WPXI-TV in Pittsburgh. “I became a journalist because I was frustrated when I watched the news,” she says. “Too often when guests didn’t answer the questions they were asked or their answers didn’t make sense, the news anchor would drop the topic.” A graduate of the University of Texas, Hill is completing a master’s degree in liberal arts at Harvard University. “When not at work, my husband Joe and I are with our seven children,” she says. “We love to garden, fish, and ski. We are expecting another child at the beginning of next year.”

Is it true that country singer Mark Wills was one of the first people to see rescued soldier Jessica Lynch?
—Jason B., California

Yes, but it wasn’t planned. In May, Mark Wills, 30, was visiting other soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital when he had a few hours off from touring. “When we got there, they told us that she had heard we were coming and asked for us to come by and say hello,” he says. “From what I understand, I was only the second civilian to be allowed to meet her. She was pretty banged up. The thing that took me off guard was how small she is.” It turns out that Lynch was a fan of such Wills’ songs as Don’t Laugh at Me, I Do (Cherish You) and 19 Something. Wills, born in Cleveland, Tenn. (pop. 37,192), has been singing in northeast Georgia honkytonks longer than he’s been driving. During his teen years, he won several talent contests that landed him gigs in clubs in Atlanta and Marietta, Ga. He began making trips to Nashville, Tenn., which led to a record deal. Wills, who recently released his new CD, And the Crowd Goes Wild, lives in Kennesaw, Ga. (pop. 21,675), with his wife, Kelly, and their two daughters, Mally, 5, and Macie, nearly 1.

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