ALEXANDER THE GREAT: ACTRESS AND NOW PRODUCER

Jane Alexander: Her very name conjures the image of woman as heroine.

--The mother in “Testament” in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, talking to her adolescent daughter about the meaning of love, wrapping one of her children in a shroud, seeking to retain a measure of dignity even as she tries to survive.

--The good Republican bookkeeper in “All the President’s Men” who must own up to what her campaign bosses at CREEP (Committee to Re-elect the President) are doing.

--As Eleanor Roosevelt, the quintessential Eleanor Roosevelt in manner and bearing, in the three-part television drama aired in successive years, “Eleanor and Franklin” and “The White House Years.”

Tonight on NBC (9-11 p.m.) in “In Love and War, “ she portrays Sybil Stockdale, the POW wife whose husband, Navy Cmdr. James Stockdale (played by James Woods) was shot down over North Vietnam in 1965. While he endured torture for 7 1/2 years at the hands of his captors, she became the leader of a movement to denounce the treatment of American prisoners. In focusing international attention on their plight, she helped save her husband’s life.

The TV movie is based on “In Love and War: The Story of a Family’s Ordeal and Sacrifice During the Vietnam War,” co-written by the Stockdales and published in 1984.

“Their story is just so powerful,” Alexander said Friday morning from Chicago where she’s making another television movie. “How these two people kept their great love alive over seven years with very few exchanges of letters. She wrote extensively but he could write maybe a half dozen letters.”

Alexander met the Stockdales while they were filming. They had lunch. “She’s just delightful. When I was preparing for the role, going through all the news photos, Sybil always seemed to be smiling. She’s a very upbeat kind of person.

“I asked her about it,” the actress added, breaking into laughter. “She said, ‘Dancing school.’ ”

Nowadays, Alexander also can be seen in the movie “Square Dance” in which she plays Juanelle, a West Texas mother who gives up her daughter (Winona Ryder) to the child’s grandfather (Jason Robard) to raise.

The role might seem out of character for Alexander. The first glimpse of her is of a woman in high-heeled sandals, a mini-jeans skirt, a low-cut blouse--topped off with a frizz of flaming-red hair.

But look again. Jane Alexander is co-executive producer of the movie, her first theatrical feature as a producer, and that role, behind the camera, is something the 47-year-old Alexander intends to continue. She previously co-produced the 1985 CBS movie, “Calamity Jane, Diary of a Frontier Woman” in which she had the title role.

On the “Square Dance” project, her producing partner was Charles Haid (Sgt. Andy Renko on “Hill Street Blues”). Old friends, they acted together at the Stratford Shakespeare Theatre in Connecticut.

“It’s really what I want to do,” she said recently in her Santa Monica home, settling into the soft cushions on a white tweed couch. Depending on where their work takes them, she and her husband, director Edwin Sherin, live in their Santa Monica condominium overlooking the Pacific or in their house in Westchester County, N.Y. Alexander’s son Jace Alexander, by her first marriage to director Bob Alexander, is in his mid-20s and an actor in New York.

“When I can make my living producing, I think I’ll phase out the acting for awhile. Then,” she paused, smiling, “I’d like to come back in about 20 years as a grande dame. Play all those old-woman roles, Dame Sybil Thorndike, that type of thing. It’ll be fun as hell.”

“I didn’t like it very much in the beginning,” she allowed. “What I wanted to do was tell stories, some books I’ve read, some films, and I did talk to people, and then they said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a good idea,’ and nobody would do anything about that . . .

“ ‘Square Dance’ alone had 53 rejections. What I don’t like about producing is the time expended in the business end of it, but that’s really what it is. I love the artistic side, the developing of a script, I love working with writers. . . . “

By most counts, it would seem she has had a spectacular career as an actress. She parlayed a role in a Washington Arena Stage production of “The Great White Hope” onto Broadway, then into a starring role in the movie. She received a Tony Award as best supporting actress for the stage role and her first Oscar nomination for the (1970) movie as best actress. Sherin was the play’s director.

Other Oscar nominations as best supporting actress came with “All the President’s Men” (1976) and “Kramer vs. Kramer” (1979). She got another best actress nomination for “Testament” (1983). She won an Emmy playing a concentration camp victim in “Playing for Time,” while receiving Emmy nominations for her role as Eleanor Roosevelt in 1976 and 1977.

“I’ve been fortunate,” Alexander said. “I never, since my early 20s, had a dry period. It’s just been amazing. I’ve been able to go to theater, film, television. I sort of bounce among the three of them.”

Despite all that, Alexander worries about the dearth of feature-film roles for women in their middle years. “There seem to be more and more wonderful roles for women on TV. In the feature market they don’t exist. Meryl Streep does the real good ones, the really big ones, but there just aren’t opportunities to do the kinds of things I can do.”

And so--like Goldie Hawn, Sally Field, Jessica Lange and Jane Fonda--on to producing, where she can help create the opportunities.

Her major project--”the one that is really close to my heart,” she notes--is the Georgia O’Keeffe-Alfred Stieglitz story. Her company, Altion Productions, is in partnership with “American Playhouse,” which helped fund “Testament.” Alexander intends to play O’Keeffe. The role of her husband has not yet been cast, though she talks about Maximilian Schell or Klaus Maria Brandauer.

It was Alexander’s idea to do O’Keeffe, after the artist’s death. “In the early ‘80s, I was simply obsessed with Georgia,” she said. “I went to New Mexico and I sat there and waited to have an audience with her. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not to see her. She was not going out, she was not well, and she wasn’t seeing anybody.

“Then the day before I was to leave, I got a call at 8 o’clock in the morning (from O’Keeffe’s friend Juan Hamilton). He said, ‘Jane, be at the gas station in Abiquiu at 3 o’clock. Come alone. You have one hour.’

“Well,” the actress continued, “I couldn’t come alone because all I had access to was a big four-wheel truck, and I didn’t know how to drive it. So a friend had to come with me and he disappeared into the general store and didn’t show his face until Juan drove up at 3, and we went up and there she was, in this little adobe house.

“I knew so much about her, her work. I read everything I could read about her, and all I wanted to do was pay homage. I certainly wasn’t thinking about making a film. I stayed with her until about 7 that night, and by the time 6:30 p.m. rolled around, we were drinking beer together out of Budweiser cans . . . “

Did they talk about Alexander’s work?

“She didn’t know my work. I asked her, ‘Who was the last person you saw on stage?’

“She said, ‘Oh I liked Lunt and Fontanne . . . ‘ “

With that Alexander burst into hearty, throaty--and affectionate--laughter.