The Hired Heart

Romantic drama about a woman who spins an elaborate web of deception when she invents a boyfriend for herself. Garnet Hadley (Penelope Ann Miller) is quite prepared to live a widow’s mournful life, even now that her husband has been dead for two whole years. However, when the local townsfolk start to meddle in her affairs she decides to pretend to have a boyfriend in the hope that this news will satisfy them. Hiring a male escort named Bryan (Brett Cullen) for a week, Garnet sets about parading him in public, hoping that the locals will now back off. In the process, of course, her faked attraction to Bryan gradually becomes a real one…, Annoyed by people’s attempts to get her dating again, an attractive widow hires a male escort to keep the town quiet for a while. But her attempt to fake romance has an unexpected outcome., Rural Wyoming is the setting for this made-for-cable romantic drama with ribald comic overtones. It has been two years since the husband of young Dr. Garnet Hadley (Penelope Ann Miller) was killed by a wild bull, but Garnet is still in love with her deceased soulmate and has no intention of remarrying. This doesn’t stop Garnet’s overbearing father-in-law Mike (Barry Corbin) from trying to match her up with every eligible bachelor in the county–most of whom are textbook examples of the word “loser.” Finally, Mike resorts to extortion, using financial pressure to force Garnet to attend an upcoming country centennial fair with a male escort. Aided and abetted by her best friend Jill (Barbara Gates), Garnet tries to pull the wool over Mike’s eyes by hiring Jill’s brother, aspiring composer Bryan (Brett Cullen), to pose as her lover–even going so far as to stage a bedroom scene to convince Mike to mind his own business (nothing really happens, of course, but it sure looks convincing!) The fun really begins when Jenny (Allison Hossack), the long-distance girlfriend of Brett, shows up at the fair, just as Brett has begun to fall in love with his cardboard sweetie. Originally pitched as a theatrical feature (undoubtedly with bigger “names” in the cast), The Hired Heart made its Lifetime network bow on October 13, 1997., A young widow (Penelope Ann Miller) hires a man to pose as her boyfriend to put a stop to her father-in-law’s meddling in her personal life. Bryan: Brett Cullen. Mike Hadley: Barry Corbin. Keith: Graham Greene. Jill: Barbara Gates Wilson., Romantic drama in which a young widow hires an escort for a week in order to stop her neighbours interfering in her personal life, then finds herself genuinely attracted to him.