Nancy Travis Embraces a Bold New Role in ‘Grosse Pointe Garden Society’ And Looks Back on Her Journey

She loves her role on the soapy “Grosse Pointe Garden Society.” She plays Patty, an overbearing mother and a nightmare mother-in-law. Nancy, 63, adds, “I’ve had a career of being the woman who is eye candy for the man. This is a woman on a mission.”

Her first acting jobs were on commercials in the 1980s. “It was the heyday of commercials,” says the actress. “They were very lucrative!” She especially remembers one campaign for Levi’s 501 jeans. “They wanted real people as they looked in their lives. For somebody like me who has this crazy curly hair that is untamable, it was a door that opened.”

She’s recognized the most for her first film — “Three Men and a Baby.” The biggest box-office hit of 1987, it changed her life, she says. Travis says she would do another with the stars, Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg and Ted Danson, but “at this rate we’re going to be ‘Three Men and a Lady at the Retirement Home.'”

Her time with Tim Allen on “Last Man Standing” was special. “We have a great rapport, a nice, relaxed thing,” says Nancy, mom to two grown sons Benjamin, 27, and Jeremy, 24, with husband Robert Fried.

She loves nature. Nancy was delighted to get a call to be in the movie “Ride,” a Hallmark Channel flick. It was shot on a working cattle ranch in Calgary, Alberta. “I love to shop for houses in my imagination,” says Nancy. “I was fantasizing about having a ranch, maybe 50 dogs and a couple horses.”