KATHLEEN QUINLAN / ACTRESS

First Kathleen Quinlan gets a supporting actress Oscar nomination as the wife of a space-stranded astronaut in “Apollo 13.” Now, she and Kurt Russell co-star in “Breakdown” as desert-stranded motorists. But around the Malibu Hills home she shares with husband Bruce Abbot and two sons, Quinlan, 42, is so handy you figure that with proper tools she could have taken care of either predicament.

HOMEBODY: “I just finished working for four months in London on ‘Event Horizon,’ a science-fiction film. Now I’m back at my other job, full-time mother. Making movies is easier.”

HOME IMPROVEMENT: “There’s the Do It Yourself Center in Calabasas, and I love to go to the Malibu Hardware Store. I have a friend named Ralph who’s an ex-woodshop teacher and he’ll help me build anything I want.”

WISH LIST: “I’m hoping to get a band saw for Christmas. Along with a Shop Vac--I want a Shop Vac for Mother’s Day.”

PHYS ED: “I’m not a soccer mom yet. Now I’m a karate mom. For myself, I’m aiming at more horseback riding and swimming, as soon as I get caught up on the four months I was gone.”

MOVIES: “I really loved ‘Looking for Richard,’ the documentary that Al [Pacino] did on . . . making ‘Richard III.’ ”

TV: “I let [the boys] sit and relax with TV for an hour, but we monitor everything. The new ratings system is better than nothing. But I find that often I have to watch even everything the Disney Channel puts on.”

KIDS’ TUNES: “My kids always want to listen to Jimi Hendrix! Isn’t that wild? My husband really loves and knows a lot about rock, so I guess they just inherited that.”

LOCAL CULTURE: “One place I really love here is the Malibu Museum. It contains original of what they called at the time Malibu tile, some of the most beautiful tile. No one ever thinks Malibu has a museum, including the people who live here.”

PAGE TURNING: “Recently I read [Stephen Hawking’s] ‘A Brief History of Time.’ I like to read a book like that every now and then to keep my mind tuned up.”

NIGHT OUT: “Our favorite restaurant is Tra Di Noi, an Italian restaurant in Malibu. They completely welcome children. It’s one of the few nice restaurants out here that does.”

BIG NIGHT OUT: “Jirayr Zorthian’s party. He’s a great artist who lives in Altadena on 50 acres. Really bohemian and wild. And he has a big party every summer. Everybody brings an old piece of junk that they’re getting ready to throw away, and he makes it into a big composition on the wall.”