Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Sharon Gless is dividing her time between her duties on USA cable's top-rated "Burn Notice" series that returns June 4, and keeping tabs on "Hannah Free." The indie feature is getting attention on the film festival circuit — including serving as the closing night offering of San Francisco's Frameline Film Festival, June 28, at the Castro Theatre.

"It turned out to be very timely," notes the actress of the feature in which she plays a free-spirited lesbian who has a life-long relationship with her closeted, married lover (Maureen Gallagher). "The woman my character has loved all her life, whose children she helped raise, is in a coma, and the family will not let her see this woman because gay couples could not be accepted."

Gless made the feature version of Chicago playwright Claudia Allen's "Hannah Free" drama "last November in Chicago in three weeks' time, with a budget of $200,000." She adds, "I hope it touches people. I would say 30 percent of the people who came to work on the movie came to do it for gratis — they were so passionate about her work."

The story is told in flashback, with Sharon playing her character from her 50s to 80-plus, with younger actresses handling her earlier years. Coincidentally enough, she notes, referring to Ash Adams's upcoming indie crime drama "Once Fallen," "I also play an old lesbian in Ed Harris's next movie. I guess now if they need an old lesbian in a wheelchair, they say, 'Get Gless,'" she cracks.

For the gay-themed Frameline fest, "They gave me a choice of nights, and I chose closing night. I was honored," she tells us. "My good pal Rosie O'Donnell is coming to do the introduction."

Sharon's lesbian and gay following grew with her five-year portrayal of the accepting mom of a gay son on "Queer as Folk" — but it dates back to "Cagney & Lacey," she points out. The '80s female cop show in which she starred with Tyne Daly has received a fresh round of attention of late, thanks to its Season 2 and 3 digital release. "C&L" producer Barney Rosenzweig — aka Sharon's husband — has also been prepping their four TV movies made in the '90s for DVD release in August.

The Rosenzweigs celebrated their 18th wedding anniversary this month.

THE VIDEOLAND VIEW: Peter Facinelli, who plays an emergency room doctor with some strange quirks in Edie Falco's June 8-debuting "Nurse Jackie" series, can't say enough about the star. "She's so real, it was hard to tell sometimes when she was acting and when she wasn't. We had one scene where I ask her something, and her line was, 'Excuse me?' I thought she didn't hear me, so I repeated it, and she goes, 'Excuse me?' And we did it again. Finally she said, 'No, that's my line.' I said, 'You know, you're so terribly talented, I literally thought you didn't hear me.' It was like a comedy routine."

The Showtime series is not for those looking for G-rated fare, what with "Jackie's" pill-popping and sexual adventures. Of his Dr. Cooper, Facinelli says, "I never quite knew what my character was going to do next. People ask me, 'Is he a good doctor?' It depends what day of the week it is. I find him a very sympathetic character. For me, I played him as kind of a puppy dog who wags his tail and wants everyone to like him — but is stuck in a room full of people who hate dogs."

INSIDE ASIDE: Virginia Madsen says part of her maturation as an actress has been learning how to put herself into character without going all the way into the depths. "I don't really do that anymore. When you're much, much younger, you make yourself bleed, you know? You destroy yourself doing scenes where you're being destroyed. After so many years, these feelings of grief, fear and anguish — those are easily accessed now. It's not like a trick," stresses the beauty who earned an Oscar nomination for "Sideways" a few years back. "But I know how to get there faster, just because I have a lot of experience."

REALITY GAVE THEM A ROLE: Now it's divorce upon which reality show cameras will soon be training their peeping lenses. Casting forces have been at work rounding up divorced or divorcing men and women for a forthcoming offering called "The Divorce Project." The producers specify, per casting notices, that they want outgoing, charismatic couples in their mid-twenties to forties who are willing to share their personal stories honestly and compellingly — to show "there is life after divorce." For $20,000.

With reports by Emily Feimster.

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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