Actors/Actresses: May 2008 Archives

Elizabeth Pena had been on a non-stop, multi-city publicity blitz for her new movie "How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer Vacation" when she called from Miami recently for a chat. If she was fatigued, you wouldn't have known it except that her naturally throaty voice is just a tad throatier than usual.

This gifted actress, best known for TV's "Resurrection Blvd" (on which she played the mother of a gay son) and such films as "Lone Star," "Jacob's Ladder" and "La Bamba," is on a mission to spread the word about the movie which finally opened in theaters last Friday - three years after it first screened at the Sundance Film Festival.

"I've had a total of maybe nine hours sleep in the past three days," she said. "But I believe in this movie and I believe in (director) Georgina Garcia Riedel. She's a great talent. It stayed with me, this movie. Georgina is a very daring woman."

Elizabeth was eager to be in the low-budget film because she saw a terrific role for herself as a lonely despressed single mom running a butcher shop raising a daughter (played by America Ferrera). Also key to the film is her 70-year-old mother, played by Lucy Gallardo.
"I'm lonely and frustrated on so many levels," the actress said if her character. "We all in this movie, in this long, hot Arizona summer, discover our sexuality."

What was it like working with a pre-"Ugly Betty" America?

"I had only seen her in 'Real Women Have Curves' but I had never met her," she said. "Working with her and Lucy was a complete joy. America is a very solid person, obviously well-guided by her real-life mom. She's intellectual and a very good actress."

Elizabeth is a woman who speaks her mind and that's what makes her such an interesting interview. I wondered about what it's like, at 48, to try and land good roles in film and on television: "There are no roles for women in America, lead roles, that are written for women over the age of 30. A co-starring role has maybe a 35-year-old playing 42. The reason I was drawn to ("Garcia Girls") is because it's a women-driven piece with wonderful roles that explores female sexuality beyond a certain age. In the movies, women don't have sex after 40. If they do, they get raped. But you can see a 72-year-old man going at it (with a much younger female) and it's accepted."

I had heard that Elizabeth was set to be cast in the 1993 film "The House of Spirits" which starred Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, Wynona Ryder and others all playing hispanic people.

"I had read the the novel and I loved it," she remembered. "Now it comes time, they
are casting it. They offered me a wonderful role, a whore. I was ecstatic! That's a great
role. I was fine. But then I find out the only female hispanic in the movie is Catherine the
whore! I'm sorry, but aren't all the characters hispanic?"

She turned the role down and the movie was a major flop despite the A-list talent involved: "I like to make money as much as the next person but I also didn't want to be an artistic whore."

Not that she's overly picky. If she didn't take on roles in bigger commercial hits like "Rush Hour" and "The Incredibles" and do various TV guest spots and voiceover work, "I'd be in my house doing laundry all day."

Online extra: "Resurrection Blvd" lasted only three seasons on Showtime from 2000-2002 but fans of the show will never forget it. Elizabeth had a meaty role as Beatrice "Bibi" Corrales, sister-in-law to Tony Plana's ex-boxer character who had a large brood of adult children, two of whom were boxers. The family dealt with all kinds of drama including when Bibi's son turns out to be gay.

"I'm the one who posed that my son should come out and be gay," she said. "We were in a household of testosterone boxers and what would happen if my son was gay? In Elzabeth Pena's world, that means nothing but you have to see yourself through Bibi's world and that would be something she has no information about."

Sara Ramirez was on "The View" this morning and looked absolutely gorgeous. She wrapped up the fourth season of "Grey's Anatomy" last weekened then flew to New York to announce the Tony Award nominations yesterday. She, of course, is a Tony winner herself for "Spamalot" and the threater-loving women of "The View" started heaping compliments her way the minute she sat down:

Whoopi Goldberg: "Your voice. You are brilliantly funny and fabulously talented."
Joy Behar :You basically stopped that show ("Spamalot").
Sara recalled what it was like the moment she won her Tony: It felt amazing. I had my mother and my best friend next to me and I was not prepared to walk up there in that dress! (pictured, right) James Earl Jones is saying my name and he's saying it right! (It's pronounced Sada)

OK, didn't mean to bury the lede: Sara also talked about the possibility that her character of Callie Flores on "Grey's Anatomy" might enter into a lesbian relationship with
Brooke Smith's surgeon character. Callie has taken up with Dr. McSteamy (Eric Dane) and a clip shown on "The View" shows Callie teasingly saying to him: "We're lovers didn't uou know?... Look me in the eye and tell me you're not thinking about a threesome.You're not thinking of her and me and you and a video camera."

Ha! I love it!

Sara said Wednesday of the lesbian possibility: "It's so interesting because nothing has really happened yet there is a lot of buzz and speculation and perhaps some assumptions ... It's a revolutionary show with universal truths about relationships. If (creator and head writer) Chandra Rhimes decdes she wants to expand that further and expand our homophobic horizons, I think it's great."

So do we!

For those of us who have been big fans of Jean Smart since she was on "Designing Women," it's been absolutely fantastic to have her back on TV each week in a situation comedy.

Her role as Regina, Christina Applegate's mom on ABC's "Samantha Who?" is a riot and light years away from her most famous role as the sweet Charlene on "Women."

"When I read the pilot, I thought it was so, so funny," Jean said a few days ago. "Here's a woman who videotapes her daughter coming out of coma so she can go on 'Extreme Makeover.'"

The series has its season finale Monday night and will return in the fall for its second season. It revolves around Samantha (Applegate) who suffers from amnesia after an accident and doesn't remember that she and her mother are estranged.

"She's been given this second chance with her daughter, any parent's dream," Jean said of Regina. "She's not handling it very well. She's a little clumsy when it comes to mothering. She thinks she's doing the right thing but often, she's not at all. She refuses to do any self analysis. If anything's wrong, it's someone else's fault. It's funny to play someone who's not introspective when she's up against a daughter who is constantly picking apart every moment."

Jean is such a hoot on "Samantha" but her television resume is filled with many indelible characters. I asked about some of my favorites:

Charlene Frasier ("Designing Women") "I love that character, she took everything and everyone at face value. She saw the good in everyone. It was a great time and it was a special time in my life. I met my husband on the show and had my son on the show. And I worked with these great women."

Lana Gardner ("Frasier"), a recurring role that won Jean two Emmy Awards: "It was such a funny character. At the time, I had my nose in the air about guest spots. My agent said, 'I think you should read this. I read it and it was hilarious. It appealed to my sense of humor and I thought the show was brilliant and everyone on it was amazing. The first table read, we are all laughing so hard we could barely get through it. She was this perfectly lovely woman with an anger management problem. The audience knew Kelsey (Grammer) so well, that every time she did something crass - like putting a cigarette out in a glass of wine - they knew how Frasier was going to react."

First Lady Martha Logan ("24"): "She had the best written introduction. ... It was this woman in an expensive beaded silk suit and jewelry who dunks her head in the sink. It said everything: no impulse control. You never knew what to expect. She was volatile and had an odd sense of humor."

Martha was married to U.S. Pres. Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin) and Jean earned two Emmy nods for the role: "I never expected to go on past that fifth (season) but the characters turned out to be so popular that they felt they had to bring us back long enough for me to stab him in the neck with a fruit knife and kill him."

Elinore 'Ellie' Walker ("High Society") "I think CBS, at the time, found it a bit much. A few years later, they kind of thought, 'Oh gee, that might have worked really well. They said we are not doing (the British comedy 'Absolutely Fabulous') which I had never seen. But of course we were doing AbFab! It was great fun. I got to wear fabulous clothes, I got to lust after Mary (McDonnell's) teenaged son and be a pill popping, drunken romance novelist. I felt that if it wasn't over the top, it would be tasteless and not as funny."
Here are some funny scenes from that short-lived but fabulous show:

Sharon Stone stood on a short red carpet outside the Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood Saturday night and I was going to get a few minutes to talk to her. What fun! So many questions. What was her motivation in "Casino"? Does she regret doing that sequel to "Basic Instinct"? What was it like working with Russell Crowe in "The Quick and the Dead" or kicking Arnold Schwarzenegger's butt in "Total Recall"?

No dice.

Miss Stone, who turned 50 in March, wanted to talk about real life and her job as global fundraising chairman for The Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) -a big reason why was being honored by the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center during its annual Women's Night event.

I wanted to know what getting the center's Special Board of Directors Award meant to the actress, who owns an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award and been nominated for an Oscar.

"It's a proud and privledged moment for me," she said. "You know, it's a hard journey because sometimes you feel like you're really succeeding whebn you know that the grants that you've given to scientists have provided much of the life-extending drugs that are in the market. And then sometimes you feel like you're failing when you know there is not a cure and there is not a vaccine and there are almost 40 million people with AIDS worldwide and that number is growing, not diminishing. So you know that there is a child dying every minute of AIDS, you know that you have to keep it moving and stay with it. So we're doing everything that we can, we are working as hard as we can."

So how did this glamorous movie star and international sex symbol become such a committed AIDS activist?

"When I was asked to step in for Miss Elizabeth Taylor at the Cannes Film Festival one year when she couldn't go and take her position, I did that," she said. "And after that I was asked would I take a three-year position with amfAR and I took that three year position. At the end of those three years, we had not accomplished a cure or a vaccine and now I'm in my 13th year and we are now the global foundation for AIDS research so we have accomplished a great deal and I hope to continue to accomplish even more.

Online extra:
On risky sexual behavior: "Sometimes I feel very bad because I think young people are incredibly reckless and they have a wrong idea that it's not dangerous when it is more dangerous than ever before. I feel badly that people think that oral sex is not sex and that it's safe when it isn't and when young people think they can have sex without condums and they shouldn't. I think that parents are afraid to have safe sex talks with their children or embarassed and I feel that they really, really should."

Teaching lessons: "I think we need much more sex education, we need much more talk about condum use and STDs and AIDS. I think that people really need to think about it and talk about it so much more and that there is no cure for AIDS, that it's a death sentence and people really, really need to get that."

What she's learned: "I think what's happened to me is that I've really come to understand that it comes down not just to science and medicine, but to peace in the world. We have to really notice that people near to us and the people far to us and realize that we're all the same, we're all families, we're all parents and kids and we have to treat each other with a sense of respect and kindness both and far and realize that whether it's our backyard or backyards in the Middle East, we're just families.

What do Matt Damon, Daniel Craig and Robert Gant have in common? Besides being completely hot that is. All portray dashing spies courting danger in a movie franchise.

Okay, I know you're familiar with Jason Bourne who Damon has played in three "Bourne" movies and with James Bond, the suave spy now being portrayed by Craig. Gant's Jacob Keane is new to the movie game and made his debut in "Kiss Me Deadly" which premiered on the here!TV premium channel this weekend.

Gant is playing a gay spy in the adventure flick which co-stars Shannen Doherty and is the first of a planned series of Jacob Keane movies.

"if you think about (Jason) Bourne or superheroes or (James) Bond, their sexuality is just a given and that's the way it is," said Robert, who is an openly gay actor. "When I first mentioned the notion of a gay spy, people laughed and said it must be a comedy. But no, this is a guy who just happens to be gay, and can kick ass."

So what was it like to work with Shannen Doherty, the former "Charmed" and "Beverly Hills 90210" star who very publicly left both of her popular prime-time shows prematurely.

"I actually had a great time with her," Robert said. "I didn't know going in what to expect. She was great to work with, a diva in the best sense of the word. She's a strong, powerful woman who doesn't let herself get pushed around. That's something that a lot of gay people can relate to."

Here is a preview of the movie:

For years, the 39-year-old Gant was cast as "the boyfriend" on such shows as "Caroline in the City" and "Friends" and had a recurring role on the cult favorite "Popular"as the young high school principal who all the female students were in love with. He had no trouble being convincing in these straight roles then decided to take on the part of a gay college professor in the groundbreaking Showtime series "Queer as Folk."

Early on in the show's five-year run, Gant decided to come out publicly. several years before such young stars as T.R. Knight, Neil Patrick Harris, Lance Bass and Luke MacFarlane followed suit.

"We're starting to cross the frontier in lots of different ways with Neil Patrick Harris' (womanizing) character on 'How I Met Your Mother,' so we're able to go there comedically," Robert said. "We are moving toward it. It's exciting to see Neil play thatkind of a role. I see that as part of the frontier happening.

"I've been crossing many of my own frontiers in my life, now I'm encountering what I believe to be the last real frontier in Hollywood which is what it means of an openly gay leading man type actor playing a romantic straight role."

To that end, Robert has been cast as a straight man involved with a woman in He recently filmed the upcoming Lifetime movie, "Special Delivery," in which he is involved with a woman played by Lisa Edelstein of "House." The role involved an on-screen kiss.

Since straight actors who play gay sometimes have issues with a same-sex kiss, I wondered how Robert dealt with kissing a female.

"It was great," he said. "Personally, I think I'm a pretty damned good kisser and I enjoy it. Lisa asked, 'Have you kissed many women?'I said, 'I certainly have.' She said, 'Do we kiss different than guys?' it was kind of interesting to her. It was two actors kind of going there."

But he's not going to shy from gay parts. Robert is awaiting a final greenlight for a show that's in deep development at MTV's Logo channel, a comedy called "The Gayonic Man" that he would star in also produce.

"I think it's gonna be hilarious and awesome," he said. I think we'll actually be able to get some interesting message stuff across. I'm really grateful for everything that's going on."

Online extra:
In "Kiss Me Deadly," Robert has a few scenes, including one in his underwear, that reveal a very buff body: "I definitely made sure that I was in good form for the movie, I was prepared for that for sure. That is part and parcel with who this guy is. I was ready for it! I didn't know what kind of stuiff they were gonna do. I was prepared what might need to be done actionwise. I look forward to even more with the films going
forward when he has really become that spy."

The "Queer as Folk" cast appeared on "Larry King Live" and were asked in the pre-interview who was straight and who was not. Robert said it wasn't the forum where he wanted to talk about that and King presumed he was one of the straight actors.

"My plan was to come out but to come out on my terms," Robert said. "I really struggled with that particular interview. I had watched Larry King and knew going in that if i were to go there on this show, I would have no opportunity to talk about it and I had waited my whole life to. what I was going to do was write my own article and that's what we had pitched to The Advocate. I'm so grateful that I gave myself that opportunity rather than feeling thrust into a moment."

On the "Queer as Folk" relationship between Robert's character of Ben and Michael, played by Hal Sparks. The couple got married in Canada in one episode: "I think that it will always exist as one of the pivotal relationships in our long journey of having
ourselves portrayed through entertainment and media and television and film. I think Michael and Ben, like, the show in general, cut a new swath into the fabric that hadn't been cut before and definitely bridged new territory. It was the first time an HIV-positive
man was living such a full, strong, healthy life - sexually and otherwise, which is important and a reality."

It's pretty shameless for me to be posting this picture of me with Academy Award winner Javier Barden who I met at the Oscar nominees luncheon back in February. But I can be shameless at times, as we know.

But here's the real news and it really is disappointing: Javier has dropped out of the big-screen version of the musical "Nine" being directed by the gifted Rob Marshall ("Chicago"). He had the lead role of Guido Continim, a film director who experiences personal and creative crisis trying to balance all the women in his life.

Bardem, who won his Oscar for his scary performance in "No Country for Old Men," cited exhaustion not only from film work but also from a hectic awards-season schedule. Variety reports that the actor says he might need as much as a year off to recharge. He had previously dropped out of the Francis Ford Coppola-directed "Tetro." But he does have a film already wrapped: the Woody Allen-directed Vicky Christina Barcelona, which will debut at the Cannes Film Festival.

Get some rest Javier!