Kelly Rowan worked seven days a week last November, shuttling back and forth from California's The O.C. stages to the Vancouver set of her new television movie.

Eight Days to Live, which has already aired in the U.S. on the Lifetime, debuts Sunday night. (CTV, 9 p.m.)

That wasn't the only moonlighting Rowan did during the season. In April she shuttled back to Toronto on weekends to film a Canadian indie movie called Mount Pleasant, about a drug-and-prostitution affected Vancouver community.

"I'm insane, basically," explains the Ottawa native over the phone. "Why? Well, you only live once, right? ... Sometimes it's worth it to do those things. And I like to work."

Eight Days to Live is loosely based on the true-life story of a teen who went missing in B.C.'s interior in 2001 only to be found alive in his crashed car after more than a week. Rowan plays the boy's determined mother, who pushes authorities to find him, beating the odds and the region's unpopulated, needle-in-a-haystack wilderness.

"She had all these obstacles and all these people saying no," said Rowan. "And I thought it was really rather a heroic journey."

Though Rowan is content in her role playing blue-blood matriarch Kirsten Cohen on The O.C., which wrapped up its third season last week, most of the time she likes to have a hand in the action.

She served as an executive producer on Eight Days; she's getting ready to shoot In God's Country, a polygamy-driven story she brought to camera with producing partner Graham Ludlow. And there are several other projects in the works, including an adaptation of Canadian author Genni Gunn's novel Tracing Iris. It's not just the creative control she's after, either.

"I think as you get older, maybe it's just me, I find the more I'm involved with the whole process it's more interesting to me,"she said.

Rowan is comfortable in the "mom" role. She has three teenagers in Eight Days and five kids in In God's Country. Her two "kids" on The O.C. are in reality just a decade younger than her.

"It's Hollywood," she says laughing. "So you know, that's the way it goes."

Her O.C. character has suffered recent dramas including a rehab stint, the loss of her father, and a near affair.

Rowan has no idea what is in store for her when she goes back to the set in July to shoot the fourth season, but there will be one notable absence. A main cast member -- Mischa Barton's Marissa -- was killed in a car accident during the season finale.

Barton has said she was ready to leave the show.

"It's always difficult to lose a main cast member because those four teenagers were so loved and they were such a unit," says Rowan. "So it will be interesting to see what comes out of that event and what the writers can do with it."


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