A Director, 2 Actresses - And A Film On Working Moms -- Savoca Enlists Jean-Baptiste, Perez For `24 Hour Woman'

For her performance as Brenda Blethyn's unexpected British daughter in Mike Leigh's "Secrets and Lies," Marianne Jean-Baptiste earned a supporting-actress Oscar nomination.

Since then, this London native has played a number of American parts, most notably in last year's Eric Stoltz comedy, "Mr. Jealousy," and in Nancy Savoca's "The 24 Hour Woman," in which she co-stars with another recent supporting-actress Oscar nominee, Rosie Perez ("Fearless").

In Savoca's movie, which opens here today, the actresses play mothers who co-produce a New York television talk show while trying to satisfy their husbands and babies.

Jean-Baptiste, who followed up her acting job in "Secrets and Lies" by composing the jazz score for Leigh's "Career Girls," thinks she has so little trouble with changing nationalities because she's musically inclined.

"I think probably it's because I've got an ear for music, an ear for accents," she said by phone from a New York hotel. "People say there's a standard American accent, but is there?

"I like to be specific, to find what people in Queens and the Bronx sound like. It's sort of like a hobby, like a thrill. I went to Queens and talked to people. Shopping is the best place to do it. I talk to the sales staff, try stuff on. That's when you really hear what they're like."

A veteran of the independent film scene, Savoca hasn't been able to get a film financed since "Household Saints" (1993), but she did attract Perez and Jean-Baptiste, largely on the basis of her record as a director of strong women's pictures ("True Love," the filmed-in-Seattle "Dogfight").

"Seeing her films, and having the chance to work with Rosie, made me want to do it," said Jean-Baptiste. "And I hadn't seen a story like this, with parenthood shown from this perspective. It's kind of sending up things like `Three Men and a Baby' and `Baby Boom,' which are coming from a different place."

Jean-Baptiste was actually pregnant during the filming. Her daughter is now nine months old; she could be heard quite plainly in the background on the phone. From time to time, the actress interrupted the interview to take care of her. It could have been a scene from the movie, in which her character is constantly trying to balance career and motherhood.

"But I tried not to take pointers from the script," she laughed. The two mothers get pretty stressed-out during the course of the film.

"Characteristically I tend not to get frenzied," said Jean-Baptiste. "I tend to be quite sort of calm about things, though when I see my daughter with a piece of paper or tissue, or just about to swallow something, or just about to reach for a pair of scissors, I run as fast as I can. Sometimes I frighten her."

In the movie, there's a big contrast between Perez's character, Grace, who is pregnant with her first child, and Jean-Baptiste's Madeline, who has children and a husband, Roy (Wendell Pierce), who takes care of the kids. Grace's husband, Eddie (Diego Serrano), is too busy and ambitious to be much help.

"Madeline is there basically to serve and support Grace," said Jean-Baptiste. "I think the difference between the marriages is that Madeline and Roy's is a longer marriage, and they talk a lot. They talk more than Grace and Eddie. That's very important."

One reason Jean-Baptiste and her screen husband look so comfortable together: they got acquainted during the filming.

"We went out, had dinner, talked a lot," she said. "He'd done a lot of theater, and so had I." Although not much of the script was improvised, "some of it just came when Wendell and I started working together."

Not all of Jean-Baptiste's completed films have been given this kind of release. "How to Make the Cruelest Month" was screened at last year's Seattle International Film Festival ("it hasn't found a home yet," she said), and "Murder of Crows," co-starring Cuba Gooding Jr., made its debut on cable this month. "The Man" and "The Murder of Stephen Lawrence" could also turn up at any time.

She's starring next in "New Year's Day," a London-based film about a counselor who works with two men who have made a suicide pact.

All of Jean-Baptiste's film work has been very different from her movie debut in "Secrets and Lies," which, like all Leigh films, began without a script. Even a director as independent as Savoca begins to seem normal compared to his methods.

"Basically she works in a very conventional type of way, talking about character, rehearsing before shooting, etc.," said Jean-Baptiste. "We just got on with it. She's very sort of hands-on, asking how we felt about scenes, if we felt anything was wrong.

"She was very open to discussing and changing things. She'd say it's yours now, feel free to do your thing basically - which is really the sort of freedom you need to work."