Everything Girl

Marsha Mason has been one of America’s favorite actors since she first came to national attention when she starred in The Goodbye Girl, in 1977. Since then, her appearances have included film, stage, and small screen, including an appearance last season in the hit Lifetime TV show Army Wives. She graciously gave me an hour of her time, and we talked about theatre, writing, herb farming in New Mexico, and other adventures, including her current piece: a role in the play Impressionism, currently running on Broadway.

You have a career that many people have been following since the 1970’s, but our readership is international, and spans many generations. How do you want people to know you?
I’ve always just thought of myself as a very good working actor. So, I’ve done television, and now I’m sort of concentrating more in theatre because the parts in theatre are more interesting, and they challenge me in a way that the material in television hasn’t. So, you kind of – when you’re a working actor you go to what really interests you, and what challenges you, and I guess, too, what scares you, you know, in terms of choices of material and everything. And so that’s pretty much who I am. I just think of myself as a working actor.

“And the best way to deal with your fear really is to face it and continue to move forward even though you’re scared to death. But it’s okay to be scared to death.”

You mentioned that you have to look at what scares you. Is that something that you’ve always done?
Yeah, I think so – well – not always, in the sense of when I was much younger, I just wanted to do everything, and so I do have, I suppose, a kind of reckless spirit if you will. By going off to New York and St. Louis, and wanting to be on a stage, which is a scary thing to do even if you want to do it…

And then I raced cars for seven years, I became a farmer for fifteen out in New Mexico, as well as continue to work as an actor. And then, along the way, a lot of therapy… And it’s in that period that I really realized that you can’t have your choices driven by fear. And the best way to deal with your fear really is to face it and continue to move forward even though you’re scared to death. But it’s okay to be scared to death.

I’ve always thought that reckless behavior can lead to really inspiring results.
Oh, I think so, too. And I think as you mature, and start to have some sense of yourself, some self-awareness, you realize how to face those things and do kind of awesome things, but at the same time not place yourself in harm’s way. That’s a big issue, too. You can’t just be reckless for the sake, you know, and not understand that there are always consequences to every action. So you do have to develop an intuitive or instinctual sense, and be able to take care of yourself at the same time.

Let’s backtrack a minute. One of the parts you are still most known for, all these years later, is The Goodbye Girl. Do you ever resent that this one part has had such strong recognition for so long?
Oh, I certainly never resent it at all. I’m very, very grateful that the movie touched so many people, and that it’s moved on from mother to daughter, and that it still holds up when it’s on television. I haven’t seen it for quite a while, but I can tell that, you know, from what people tell me, because they’ll watch it – I think it was on not too long ago – and so it holds up, and I think that that is in great response to the fact that it’s really a well-written movie.

I’ve heard a lot, about mothers and daughters passing on that film, watching it together. I think there’s something really wonderful about it, and I think that Neil [Simon] had the pulse of something, and, you know, when he wrote that.

It’s really a timeless film. Do you look for parts like that – with a universal quality that everyone can relate to, or do you just pick what interests you?
I mostly, I think, pick what interests me, because I’ve sort of found over the years that if it interests me then it tends to be something that will interest other people. I mean, not more esoteric choices like – I did Hecuba, a Greek tragedy, in Chicago a few seasons back – a new adaptation by Frank McGinnis, and it was hugely successful in London, and I wanted to approach that just from a personal challenge point of view because it was such a big part in a lot of ways, not just words, but in terms of the scale of the emotional life of the character and everything.
And I’m going to go to California to the California Shakespeare Theatre in August to do Happy Days, by Samuel Beckett, which is a play about existentialism in today’s world through the eyes of a single woman who is caught in a mound from her waist up in the first act, and from her neck up in the second, and it, too, is a very large part and rather challenging because it’s Samuel Beckett, which is a very different kind of writing – as well as the size – and then the limitations, the physical limitation is going to be really interesting to work with.

You mentioned that you’ve been doing more theatre lately because you haven’t been finding interesting roles in television. Do you think that’s the state of television in general, or the state of television roles for women of a certain age, or… ?
I think that there are a few actresses who, you know, probably work whenever they want to, like Meryl Streep, or something, but I do know that there – we do – women of a certain age do struggle to find material that challenges them.

Part of that is personal, in that if you’ve done really fabulous parts like Jane Fonda has or I have, or Susan Sarandon, or Meryl, or whatever, then you’re going to look for something – you’re going to need something as challenging or as interesting, or the people that you are going to work with need to be as interesting in order for you to feel good about what you’re doing. So it gets a little bit harder, as you put more experiences under your belt, to find the same kinds of challenges or the same kinds of complexity in your characters, and then other times you just have to work because it’s important to keep your instrument moving and knowing what you’re doing, and keeping your name out there, and your face out there, so that people know you’re still alive.

I mean, part of the interesting side-effect of moving to New Mexico was that people thought I more or less retired, but part of that was because the parts just didn’t interest me, and I didn’t just take anything just to keep my little face out there, which may or may not have been the right decision, but the theatre is a completely different experience. And that has a very different level of responsibility, and time consumption.

I was talking with Joan Allen, one of the stars of this piece that I’m doing on Broadway now, Impressionism, and we were discussing there’s been a lot of talk about all these really wonderful women on Broadway this season, including Harriet Walter, and Janet McTeer, and Marcia Gay Harden, and Hope Davis, and a whole slew of us, and so the issue comes up about that women of a certain age thing, and Joan and I were coming to the conclusion that it’s interesting to write these articles about it, but after a while you start to feel, “Well, wait a minute. Are we just perpetuating it by talking about it this way?”

Since you mentioned doing more theatre, we should talk about what you’re doing now. You’re currently in the play Impressionism. Tell me what brought you back to Broadway, and then tell me a little bit about the play itself?

Well, what brought me back to Broadway was actually the director, Jack O’Brien, because he sent me the play, and I read it, and I was so taken with the dialogue, with the conversation that takes place between the two lead characters played by Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen, and then, subsequently these smaller parts of these people that drop in on their lives and their gallery.

And the basic theme of the play intrigued me. This idea of “how do you view life?” Do you view it impressionistically or photo-realistically? And what do those things really mean? And what is it that we see? And what is it that we don’t see that’s right in front of us?

And ultimately what I loved about it, too was that it was hopeful about two wounded people finding one another, and when was the last time you saw a love story or a romance on Broadway? It’s been quite a while, you know?

So all of those elements intrigued me, and then when you put Jeremy Irons, Joan Allen, and Jack O’Brien into that mix, you have to go and do it. You cannot not do it, because it’s going to be too exciting of an experience.

“You are dealing with the vibrational aspect of the audience because the audience as a single entity has a vibration. You can tell if the audience is with you or if it isn’t. You can tell if they’re kind of unruly. You can tell if they’re not engaged. You can feel it.”

With film, theatre and television, is the acting process different?
Well, for me, it’s the same. But I know that there are classes out there that people can take, that are about film acting, and sometimes you will hear that a stage actor can’t make the adjustment to film. His work is maybe too busy, or too big. I’ve heard that. But for me, that’s not been my experience, basically, or maybe they just didn’t tell me. I just take the same basic process, but I do understand what distance the acting has to fly – whether it’s just through the camera lens or to the back of the theater. And the sides of the theater.

So the process and the way I approach a character is the same, but there’s something about theatre acting that I really like because it’s so immediate. You are dealing with the vibrational aspect of the audience because the audience as a single entity has a vibration. You can tell if the audience is with you or if it isn’t. You can tell if they’re kind of unruly. You can tell if they’re not engaged. You can feel it. And there’s this extraordinary wonderful dance that they’re in with you, and at the same time you can be fully engaged with the other actor on the stage with you. And I like that, too, because you can work off of them.

In film it’s a little bit different because they’ll go in for a close-up and it’s just you and the camera and maybe, hopefully, the other actor is on the side of the camera or directly below it or wherever the sight-line has to be, so that’s a little bit different, but the process –the internal, personal process, is the same.

Tell me a bit about the part you play in Impressionism.
I play a very wealthy Park Avenue art patron who comes into a Chelsea gallery to buy a painting for her daughter who is about to have her first child, and I have very conflicted feelings about becoming a grandmother.

And then, I also play the wife of a painter, and it’s just a single line, but it gives me a completely different character to approach, and she’s Sandra Wilson, and she’s… Jeremy wanted to use a kind of Southern kind of accent, so I decided I would, too, that we met in the Carolinas somewhere and we were early lovers – an early childhood sweethearts kind of thing – and now he’s struggling and wherever his garret is, is his position, and he’s a philanderer and a womanizer and all those things, and so that’s that character.

And then I’m just a volunteer in an African little compound where a medical team is helping the children and the villagers, and Jeremy’s character in the play is a photo-journalist from National Geographic. But there I’m just kind of filling the milieu, if you will. But again, I get to look like and be somebody else.

And then the original character comes back, towards the end, after the baby’s born and she buys the painting. And she’s been deeply affected by the birth of her first grandchild.

Does playing multiple parts make it more challenging, or more fun?
More fun. Much more fun. That’s really why I wanted to do it, too. I mean, if I had just done the one, I don’t know if it would have sustained my enthusiasm for very long. But this way I get to have more fun, except that my poor face – I have to make these quick changes, and I have to change the make-up dramatically from one character to the next, so I’m putting it on, and taking it off, and now my skin is starting to rebel.

How do you balance the need to take care of your body with the demands of your craft?
Well, you have to. Especially in the theatre, you really need the physical energy. First of all, I’ve got to climb four flights to my dressing room, and that sort of tells you – that’s the great barometer. I can tell now that I’m in better shape than when we started in this theater, because I can get up those steps a lot faster.

But you have to. So I work out, and I have trainers, and I eat well. I try to sleep well. I’ll often take a nap, sometimes between shows, even if it’s just for a half hour, and I’ll sometimes take a nap in the afternoon, depending on if I’ve had a full day. And often, for me, I do have a full day, because I am either taking care of publicity, like this, and then after this, I have a farm meeting for an hour, and then I’m going to go and work out for an hour, and then I’ll lay down for an hour, and then go to the theater. So that’s my day.

Impressionism runs through May 10th at the Gerald Schoenfield theater. For more information, or to buy tickets, visit the show’s website at ImpressionismThePlay. Don’t forget to check back in June for the second half of our interview with Marsha Mason, where we talk a bit more about craft, writing, racing cars, and about her life as a New Mexico herb farmer.

Melissa A. Bartell likes strong coffee, red wine, and dark chocolate. She earns her living writing web-copy for an Internet marketing firm & dabbles in fiction on the side. She lives near Dallas, TX with her husband, two dogs, and more computers than anyone really needs. She is the Managing Editor here at All Things Girl. Find out more about her on our About Page, or check out her blog at MissMeliss.com

Share This Article »