Mary Kay Place could have made an entire career of playing country-quirky mothers.

Her big break came in 1976 as Loretta Haggers, a would-be country-western singer who yearned to be a mother, on the groundbreaking soap satire "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman." There was also the role of Reese Witherspoon's mother in "Sweet Home Alabama." Now on HBO's "Big Love," Place plays polygamist Adaleen Grant, mother of Nicolette (Chloe Sevigny). On IFC's "The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman," she has a recurring role as the mother of Jackie (Laura Kightlinger).

But Place has taken her career in other directions: She's been a Emmy-nominated writer ("MASH") a Grammy-nominated singer (for an album she recorded as "Loretta Haggers") and a prolific director ("Friends" and "The Minor Accomplishments").

As both a serious and comic actress, Place has appeared in 37 feature films ("The Big Chill," "Girl, Interrupted"). Recently, her schedule has filled with back-to-back projects, notably HBO's "12 Miles of Bad Road," in which she'll star along with Lily Tomlin as sisters in a large, rich, dysfunctional Dallas family.

Place, 59, said she's grateful for the recent boom in cable programming that has provided a surfeit of roles, many unusually cliche-free, for older actresses. "Right now, there seems to be this incredible variety of nicely written, nicely layered work that involves women our age," she said. "It's a blessing, I have to say."

"12 Miles of Bad Road" reconnects her with creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, her writing partner on "MASH." Shooting will begin later in August, yet Place said she doesn't even know what the plot is. "But it's a smart show," she said.

Place's screen mothers tend to be smarter and more complicated than the usual. Adaleen in "Big Love" is "an unemotional, detached, repressed person because of her circumstances" as the sixth wife of compound patriarch Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton), Place said.

In the current season of "Big Love," Adaleen's character has been given more layers, letting viewers see her humanity, she said. In one episode, Adaleen banished Nicki from the compound, disowning her. Then she destroyed a tape recording that would have ruined Nicki's family. "You get to see that she does care about her children."

On "The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman," a sardonic portrait of Hollywood C-listers, Place plays the mother of jaundiced screenwriter Jackie.

"She drives Jackie crazy, but she's got a sense of humor," she said. "All of our mothers may irritate us, even though we madly and dearly love them. I think she's based on Laura's real mother."