Pam Dawber Once Shared Why She Decided to Just Be a Wife After Marrying Mark Harmon
Mark Harmon and his wife Pam Dawber both have had respectable acting careers in the entertainment industry. But after marrying Harmon, Dawber felt it would work better if she was the one who parted ways with her career.
Pam Dawber walked away from her career for her family
Like Harmon, Dawber already built up a high-profile career for herself in both film and television. Perhaps she’s most known for starring in the 1970s sitcom Mork & Mindy. But the actor has several other credits to her name such as The Twilight Zone and movies like Stay Tuned. Dawber even appeared on her husband’s show NCIS for a few episodes.
Her film career might’ve grown even further, but acting wasn’t her number one priority anymore after marrying Harmon. The two would later share two children together, and Dawber wanted to put all of her focus on them.
“I wanted to drive my kids to school. I wanted to be there for their birthdays and bring cupcakes and donuts and do the school festivals and all that, and I did,” Dawber once told Entertainment Tonight. “I got to teach in their art class and so it was a different life then and I was very happy to do it.”
Dawber’s decision to leave the spotlight also helped maintain her family’s privacy. So many celebrities’ families are constantly bombarded with attention due to their fame. Dawber and Harmon’s family, however, didn’t have to deal with that side of superstardom.
“I’m just their mom,” she said. “They don’t care about what I did. They care about what they are doing. They want their parents to care about what they are doing. Their father is already iconic enough for two boys. I am just the mom.”
Dawber also already accomplished what she set out to do in the film industry, which made leaving it behind easier.
“I was in a number one show. I had my own deal. I got to do Broadway. I got to do musical theater. I got to do cartoon voices,” she said. “I did everything you can do in this business, and then I had children and it’s like, ‘I’m not going to chase this fame thing.'”
Pam Dawber had huge anxiety issues appearing in Mark Harmon’s ‘NCIS’
Dawber didn’t completely bow out of the limelight, however. She starred in a couple of projects while balancing motherhood, with NCIS being one of them. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Dawber revealed she’d been asked to appear on the show several times before making her NCIS debut.
“The show has been on for a hundred years, and they have come at me a few times. Either I just didn’t want to do it or I didn’t appreciate what it was they wanted me to do. Or it was near Christmas and it was like, ‘I can’t do this. I’ve got my parents coming into town.’ I just haven’t been interested in, you know, chasing the business. At this age, that’s what you do. You’d have to really want it,” she said.
But NCIS finally created Marcie, who was a character for the show that Dawber was interested in portraying. After signing on to the series, however, Dawber admitted that she was riddled with nerves.
“The character is so good. I just fell in love with what they wrote,” Dawber remembered. “And then I had anxiety like, ‘Oh my God, am I going to do this?’”
But Dawber received tremendous help from her husband, who she seemed to enjoy working with.
“My husband is so supportive of me. He’s just a giving, great guy. He just gives me attagirls, you know? It’s fun because Gibbs grunts out a lot of lines. He doesn’t give a lot. So they go toe-to-toe. He frustrates the hell out of Marcie. So they’ve got this oddball relationship where they’re checking each other out. She doesn’t understand whether is he a truth-teller. Is this guy for real? And he’s thinking sort of the same thing about her,” she said.
‘NCIS’ wasn’t the only time Mark Harmon worked with Pam Dawber
Dawber was already accustomed to working alongside her husband before. The pair already collaborated years prior in the 1999 feature I’ll Remember April. They portrayed a real-life husband and wife in the drama. But in an interview with AV Club, Harmon hinted that it might’ve been a challenging role for both of them. He asserted that they had a good time, but working with his wife was a different experience.
“No, ‘different’ just ’cause you know each other so well. We played husband and wife in that, and it was a period piece, but… It was fun. And we’d worked onstage opposite each other before, but doing it in a movie was… well, what else can I say? It was different,” he said.
