|
Page 1 of 3 The Will & Grace Star Opens up About the Love of Her Life
The roles actress Shelley Morrison is best known for -- Karen’s sardonically surly maid Rosario on “Will & Grace” or impressionable novice nun Sister Sixto on “The Flying Nun,” – are characters steeped in single-dom (Rosario’s green-card marriage to “Just Jack” aside).
 But off-screen, Morrison has been happily married to director Walter Dominguez, who she calls, “remarkable, my rock.” In August of his year, the couple celebrated 35 years of wedded bliss and she talks exclusively to groomsonline about the secrets to a super relationship.
The couple are deep into a documentary they’re producing, “Weaving the Past,” which chronicles Dominguez’s grandfather’s involvement in the Mexican Revolution (which has its centennial in 2011). It’s a “labor of love,” explains Morrison. The couple have put up the money for the project which they are researching, shooting, and editing as well. “We’re doing it the way we want to,” she says, and calls the process, “tiring, challenging, exciting.”
Their love story began in a producer’s office on Highland Blvd. in Hollywood in February of 1973, where Dominguez was the assistant director and Morrison was auditioning for the lead. The then 36-year-old won the part, which found the production deep in the snow of Lake Arrowhead, Calif.
“I was 11 years older and he was dating someone else, so my thing was hands off,” she recalls. She was smitten, but kept it to herself, and her best friend, Eloise, who she’d “call up constantly,” describing Dominguez as “dear and kind and cute,” but resigning her fate to her “hands-off policy.”
Two months after the production ended, Dominguez began to call Morrison and revealed he’d broken off his prior attachment. Within two weeks of actually dating they realized they were soul mates.
In August, the couple took a camping trip on the California coast. “We were taking a trip to Cambria and decided to go up to San Luis Obispo and he proposed and I said ‘yes.’ In my heart we were already married.
They stopped off in San Francisco to visit Dominguez’s sister, so Morrison could “borrow a clean shirt” for the wedding ceremony. “I had camping clothes with me,” explains Morrison, “I had my schmatas, sweatshirts, Indian import shirts, t-shirts and Levis.”
They ended up spending the night there and stayed at the classically elegant Fairmont hotel, where they were able to stay in the bridal suite. “I even remember the name of it – the Dansig suite.”
The next morning, they headed to Reno. “We chose Reno instead of Vegas because Vegas was just too glitzy for us and we were already driving north anyway.” But on this Saturday night, the justice of the peace they chose had to watch his favorite show. In the days before Tivo, DVR and even VCRs, you had to watch a show when it aired.
“So we had to sit and watch ‘All in the Family’ with him,” says Morrison with a laugh.
She may have borrowed a clean shirt from her sister-in-law, but she “was still wearing Levis and boots – and we didn’t have a ring!”
They were married in the civil ceremony and then headed to Yosemite where they “were so tired, we just literally threw our sleeping bags on the ground. [Later] a bear even walked over us. That was my wedding night.”
The couple didn’t get rings until 12 years later: “we got plain gold bands. We’re very low maintenance. And the rings were on sale!”
|
