Judith Ivey’s remarkable acting career almost didn’t happen.

So crippled by timidity, she auditioned for her first high school play, “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” in a storage closet.

Returning to Marion, her drama teacher reminded her how “terrified” she had been at that first tryout.

“She thought I was very good, so she cast me. She said, ‘I thought I’d figure out later how to get you out of the closet.’”

But when Ivey conjured laughter from her audience, “I was hooked.”

She might have chucked it after three months without a nibble in Chicago, but she learned from taking her LSAT that she was even less cut out for law school.

Yes, she only lived here on Orchard Street 3 1/2 years, from 1965 to 1968, when her father was charter president of Southwestern Michigan College, but they were formative years Judy remembers fondly.

“You can’t blame him for all of this because there’s so much more here than when he was here,” she said. “I found (SMC) unrecognizable. I couldn’t get over how much more you’ve added on, and it’s beautiful. My mom and dad (who have been married for 60 years) would be very excited.”

The artist resisted moving to Marion, Ill., where she discovered theater, and returned until her class graduated in 1970 to partake in prom and Homecoming with her boyfriend, Chuck Sarabyn, her hair piled upon her head like a “bird’s nest. I loved that dress, though.”

“I did not want to leave Dowagiac” after 10th grade, she said.

At the culmination of her homecoming week Friday night on the campus which brought her family, including a brother and a sister, to Dowagiac, surrounded by proud schoolmates, Ivey revealed what an evening with her entails.

A couple of clip reels of her amazing body of work, including a cheeky scene with Jeff Daniels.

A candid question-and-answer segment in which 1970 Miss Dowagiac Toysa True Little finally pinned her down into kissing and telling on the pucker prowess of her leading men.

“William Hurt runs neck and neck with probably Don Johnson,” she said.

Recalling that in her first movie, Harry and Son, her job was to seduce Paul Newman, Ivey admitted her lips were swollen, but not from the steamy make-out scene with Newman which appeared on the screen. It was actually a sodium reaction to all the popcorn and soda she gobbled on set to calm her nerves.

The summer before Judy did a play with his wife, Joanne Woodward, playing her daughter. “Paul was around all the time, so I knew them socially. They were great mentors to many of us in the profession. He taught me how to boil corn and the dressing that you can buy now. He hadn’t done that yet. He invited 12 or 13 of us over all the time for dinner.

“Paul and my boyfriend had the same birthday and I could see them look at each other and then we were off and running on an elaborate snipe hunt” in a cemetery complete with paper bags containing sour cream and pecans made to resemble bird droppings, as if their catch had escaped.

Then it was suggested using window screens to round up the elusive prey.

She packed her week with not only renewing old acquaintances, but lunch at Lindy’s with art teacher Margaret Hunter, dinner at Wood Fire Thursday night, a sculpture tour — Nina Akamu’s 2005 Mount ’n’ View outside Dogwood Fine Arts Festival headquarters being her favorite — a guest instructor to SMC students and an event at Beckwith Theatre Wednesday night for supporters and area community theater participants.

Mayor Don Lyons presented her a key to Dowagiac and County Commissioner Ed Goodman gave her a Cass County pin.

Ivey acknowledged the Bob Dylan concert at Western Michigan University and didn’t know if she would make the same decision and processed why there should be an evening devoted to her with the theme gifts she has been given by pivotal people who helped and inspired her along her journey, from Miss Hunter to her champion, Marion Weaver, whose family underwrote the evening along with Herb and Eve Phillipson, Jim Keech, Beckwith Theatre Company, SMC and Dowagiac District Library.

“To those of you who know my parents, they send their hellos,” she said. “They wish they could be here as well because they’re my biggest fans who cheer me on wherever I go.”

“You have given me a gift,” Ivey said.

“I decided that was the theme, the gifts I have been given. I don’t think about what I’ve done. I think about what I’m going to do. Consequently, a lot of what has gone on in my career is not in my consciousness, so in going back and pulling together how I got here and find some funny stories,” like snipe hunting with Paul Newman, “I realized I have been given an awful lot of gifts, so I thought I would show you some of those and the givers who gave those opportunities and I shared great fun with. I thought this quote by Henry Ward Beecher pertained to an evening like this: ‘It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of the voyage.’ In high school, I not only did plays, I did speech contests that were judged. They were professors at universities in the area.”

One who proved pivotal, from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, judged Judy for two years. “She pulled me aside and said, ‘Where are you going to college?’ I knew she knew my father, so I said I was going to John A. Logan, my dad’s (community) college. She said, ‘Oh, no, you’re not.’ Unbeknownst to me, she called my father and said, ‘Your daughter should be a professional actress, for which she needs professional training,” so Ivey got accepted to Illinois State University.

Instead of going to New York City, the thought of which “terrified” her, Ivey headed for Chicago for five years and 25 productions, “which ended up possibly being the smartest thing I’ve ever done. That same year, my parents moved from Marion to South Holland, so I got to live with them.”

Ivey appeared in about 50 commercials while in Chicago, including for bologna.

“I became known as the woman to hire if you’ve got kids in it because I got along with kids,” she explained. “I was the Gerber mom, the Red Lobster girl and the Greyhound girl, like a flight attendant on the bus.”

In 1978, Ivey finally struck out for the Big Apple and an understudy in “Bedroom Farce.” In “Piaf,” she got to play the part once a week.

“My great big break was ‘Steaming,’ another British production” which opened the door to feature films.

Besides being a Broadway actress and director with two Tonys as “Best Featured Actress in a Play” for Steaming in 1983 and “Hurley Burley” in 1985 (directed by Mike Nichols, with William Hurt, Christopher Walken, Jerry Stiller, Sigourney Weaver and Cynthia Nixon, “who turned 18 while we were doing it”) — Christine Baranski of “The Good Wife” won in between — the daughter of Dorothy and Dr. Nathan Ivey also recounted experiences in “Park Your Car in the Harvard Yard” with her other “dad,” Jason Robards, “Blithe Spirit” “Voices in the Dark,” “Follies” and as Ann Landers in the one-woman show “The Lady with All the Answers.”

Motion picture credits also include “Brighton Beach Memoirs” “The Lonely Guy,” “The Woman in Red,” “The Devil’s Advocate,” “Mystery, Alaska,” Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Compromising Positions” with pregnant Susan Sarandon.

Television credits include “Down Home,” “The Five Mrs. Buchanans,” “The Critic,” “Will and Grace,” “Nurse Jackie” and the mini-series “The Long Hot Summer” with another of her gift-givers, Don Johnson of “Miami Vice.”

Ivey credits Ted Danson, then still playing bartender Sam Malone on “Cheers” with helping her make the transition to TV.

She is often associated with her role as B.J. Poteet in the final season of the situation comedy “Designing Women” — a character modeled after fellow Texan, feisty columnist Molly Ivins.

For the past seven years, Ivey has also immersed herself in directing, though she just recently wrapped up in Los Angeles to rave reviews the role of Amanda Wingfield in “The Glass Menagerie,” which also ran in New York and New Haven.

She showed why, and also acted up with a British woman in her next show and as Audrey, one of 12 women she played at once in one production.

She has also portrayed Martha Mitchell, worked with Dave Chapelle and sliced Richard Chamberlain’s birthday cake with a sword.

She and her husband, former HBO executive Tim Braine — they met at a celebrity bowling fundraiser — have two children, Maggie and Tom.

She calls them her “two greatest productions.”

Maggie, 21, attends Vanderbilt and e-mailed her mother a photo of “her first legal drink — a Budweiser.”

Tom plays football and, contrary to his mom, enjoys the outdoors.

Her family lives in a brownstone in New York where her husband has offices for his production company on the lower level.

She lived in California for nine years.

Ivey was born in El Paso, Texas, and lived in Odessa for 10 years; in 1961, when she was in fourth grade, East Lansing, so her dad could finish his doctorate at Michigan State University; 1962, Denver, his first job after graduate school with the Colorado Department of Education; and 1963, Rangeley, Colo., his first presidency.

“She will begin rehearsals next week,” Max Sala said in her introduction, “for a new play in which she is starring and will continue with plans for a play she will be directing this winter. As always, she will continue networking with producers, playwrights and actors to insure that quality theater remains a constant component of this country’s artistic landscape.”

“This week,” Sala said, “Judith Ivey found time to return to a place she once called home … to the very campus which brought her father and her family here years ago … she let all of us know that Judith Ivey, the successful actress, and Judy Ivey the school girl were still one and the same person.”