Stockard Channing Reflects on Her Unintended Life as an Actor

Stockard Channing Reflects on Her Unintended Life as an Actor By Simi Horwitz October 26, 2011 Photo by Sebastien Piras Stockard Channing An acting career was not part of Stockard Channing's well-heeled Upper East Side world. She attended posh boarding schools and majored in history and literature at Radcliffe College with her sights set on being an educated wife and mother.She performed a bit in high school and college but largely accepted her family's notion that acting was, well, not exactly respectable as a profession and surely an insecure way to live. But when Channing found herself starring as Jenny in a Harvard University production of "The Threepenny Opera," the experience was revelatory. "It was opening a Pandora's box," she says, recalling her joy in discovering a creative purpose, audience reciprocity, and the heady sense of empowerment. "I found I could do things I didn't know I could do. It all came together."Since that time, and more than a bit of struggle in between, she has received a Tony Award and five nominations, three Emmy Awards and 11 more nominations, an Oscar nomination, and three Golden Globe nominations, among other honors. Perhaps best known as the highly accomplished thoracic surgeoncumfirst lady Abbey Bartlet on "The West Wing," she has also tackled the imperious socialite Ouisa Kittredge in "Six Degrees of Separation" (film and play); the multilayered, anguished Judy Shepard in the TV movie "The Matthew Shepard Story" and the sophisticated, world-weary Vera Simpson in "Pal Joey" in the 200809 Broadway revival. Currently she stars on Broadway in Jon Robin Baitz's "Other Desert Cities," playing the brittle and hard-edged Palm Springs matriarch Polly, heading a family whose tenuous ties begin to disintegrate when grown daughter Brooke (Rachel Griffiths) announces her intention to publish an "honest" memoir. Compassion versus truth-telling, family loyalty, and the corrosive nature of secrets are motifs. The cast includes Stacy Keach as the staunchly conservative patriarch, Thomas Sadoski as the man-child son, and Judith Light as Polly's insightful and formerly inebriated sister. A Lincoln Center Theater production, the play opened last year Off-Broadway at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater to rave reviews and is now playing at the Booth Theatre. Good-humored, straightforward, and refreshingly devoid of pretension, Channing says frankly that she wasn't sure she could pull Polly off, mostly because the tastefully coiffed lady in question is so unappealing. "You don't want to play a character you can't inhabit or commit to fully," Channing says. "I had to find my way into this person without commenting on her, while still allowing her to be who she is. Initially, I didn't see her depth or the depth of this family's journey. At the end they are naked emotionally. There are no heroes and no villains and no one to blame. There is so much that's unspoken. Polly is tough, and she is a mother in every sense of the word. She is a lioness and protects her family."Channing's acting method is largely "rptition," she asserts in a well-executed French accent. Inspiration comes from a costume or hairstyle or a suggestion made by the director. Capturing Polly's hint of a Texan drawl was an early hook into the woman's psyche, she says. Working from the outside in and the inside out, she maintains, the key is to make sure nothing is forced. Channing also welcomes the special chemistry among the actors that adds yet another layer of interpretation. "It's a collaborative process when you have the luxury of working with great people," she notes. "We are a quintet. I didn't realize the level of love and connection in that family until the actors came in. It's belied by the dialogue, but there is a massive amount of love in that room. It will be interesting to have two new actors come in." (Off-Broadway, the recovering-alcoholic aunt and wayward daughter were played by Linda Lavin and Elizabeth Marvel, respectively. At the time of this interview, rehearsals for Broadway had not begun.)The admiration is mutual. "I've known Stockard for many years," says her co-star Keach. "I fell in love with her when she did '[A Day in the Death of] Joe Egg,' and 'Grease.' What she brings to every role is originality, unpredictability, charm, and great humor. She's like champagne and strawberries. Jon Robin Baitz gives Polly a wonderful acerbic wit that Stockard delivers. She's also a deeply emotional actress. She calls on her own feelings to express grief, anger, and the more serious aspects of Polly's character. The balance between humor and pathosno one can do it better than Stockard." Playwright Baitz adds, "With Stockard you get the very valuable willingness to start rehearsal at a pretty high level of commitment. She takes a run at a character, and it's the run of a NY actor who has been around the block and can make fast decisions. Then there is her innate intelligence and levelheadedness. These qualities make her so right for my play. I heard her when I was writing. I used her template and sort of 'rented' her in my head, the workshop in my head. When I teach playwriting, I spend a lot of time talking about the emotional intelligence of the characters, and Stockard has this high quotient of emotional EQ. It does not hurt that she has something old-fashioned about her, not coolly detached, but instead passionate and knowing, curious and dignified. Not to mention she recognizes the physics of being funny, the way a frog can spot a fly."Stockard Channing in "Other Desert Cities" (Photo by Joan Marcus) A Bohemian World, No Red Carpets Looking back, Channing says she came of age in a universe that's galaxies away from the actor's world today. It was the late 1960s, and the possibility of working in community and regional theaters was part of the cultural landscape. Local Boston theaters gave her the place to hone her acting skills in a range of styles. At the same time, she had the opportunity to perform Dylan Thomas in theater programs in the public schools. "The situation that allowed me to discover I loved acting doesn't exist now," she says. Economics were different, and so was the actor's sensibility. Bohemianism was in the air and appealing to young artists, she says. Being a celebrity and walking the red carpet were not her ambitions nor those of her contemporaries. Channing was also married at the time and living the life of a Harvard business wife in addition to being an actor. "Unfortunately the marriage ended, and that's when I moved to New York and threw myself into the breach," she says. One of her early lessons was the value of "focus and discipline," she recalls. "When I was younger I thought I was an artist and inspiration would just come to me." Channing continues to be free-spirited. Although she studied some of the more technical aspects of singing with "Pal Joey" music director Paul Gemignani when she starred in the Rodgers and Hart musical, she felt "it would all work if I just went out and did it," she acknowledges with a chuckle. "I'm a bit of a 'wing it.' " Perhaps not surprisingly, Channing never trained formally as an actor. Early in her NY career, she audited a few acting classes but found them "terrifying, with bullying teachers."Her first few years as an actor were "catch as catch can," she recalls. Acting jobs were in short supply, and others did not reach fruition. One production in which she had a role never got the necessary funding; from another, she was fired. Indeed, Channing was close to throwing in the towel when she reluctantly accepted a gig in the chorus of Joe Papp's "Two Gentlemen of Verona." "I felt like an overage idiot," she says. "I was 27 or 28 at the time. Everyone else in the chorus was fresh out of high school." Taking that stint turned out to be a major door opener, thus proving her contention, "You never know what will lead to what." She marvels at the element of serendipity, even in retrospect. Channing moved up the food chain, understudying the female lead and finally playing the role on the national tour, which brought her to the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. Industry insiders saw Channing, and word spread. The starring role in Joan Rivers' TV movie "The Girl Most Likely To" followed, and in short order she was co-starring opposite Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty in Mike Nichols' "The Fortune." But, for some, Channing is still strongly identified as the tough-talking Rizzo in the 1978 blockbuster "Grease," starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, and she continues to feel ambivalent about her part in the film and the reactions it generated. "Unfortunately the movie was despised by the artistic community in part because it made all that money," she says. "John and Olivia had opportunities, but for the rest of us, it was a step backwards. It became an uphill battle, and it was hard to even meet people professionally. I had done Rizzo too well, perhaps."If Channing had her druthers, she'd maintain a balance between film and stage roles, but it's not simply a matter of choice. "They're not writing that many parts for women my age," Channing comments about the film industry, without any rancor. "We don't want stories about people who have lived. We want stories about young people starting out, or maybe people getting second chances. But not third chances. It's not ageism. It's the way of the world. There was 'The Golden Girls,' but you can't hang your hat on what's not likely." Wretched Auditions and the Luck of the Draw Channing no longer auditions, and as she tells it, it's not a moment too soon. She was never especially good at it, she says, recalling auditioning eight times during an eight-week period for "Pippin" and then not booking it. "All auditions are awful, but this one was the worst. By the end when it was between myself and another girl, I was a beaten-up, twisted thing, while the other girl was fresh as a daisy." Preparation and being on top of the material helps, but it's so often the luck of the draw, she says. "Auditioning is a flawed process. I've sat in on casting sessions and been completely disgusted by them," she says. "At one audition a young actor sent in a tape of himself, and I thought, 'Jesus Christ, is that great or what?' It was passed over. I'm not going to say who he was, but today he is one of the most famous young actors around. Casting can be heartbreaking. Dealing with the disappointment is the hardest part."There is often no way of knowing why you didn't book a part, she continues. Sometimes you agonize over an audition for years, completely misinterpreting and misconstruing what happened. Many decades after one such audition, Channing ran into a director who had rejected her. She was introduced to him at a party, assuming he had long since forgotten her. "He leaned over and whispered, 'We made a mistake,' " she remembers. "He didn't have to do it. He had no idea I had been obsessing." She pauses to emphasize, "We never know the reason for anything. You just put a good face on it and keep going."At the moment, she has no roles she's dying to play. "As Frank Langella once said to me, 'It's always where and with whom?' " Channing also refuses to speculate on what she'd do differently if she could redo her career. "Those are evil thoughts," she insists. "I can't think that way."Channing, however, offers struggling actors a bit of advice: "Acting is such a bizarre way of life. Unless you're really passionate about it, you should give it up. Don't beat yourself up. Put one foot in front of the other. If you keep hitting the wall, the worst thing is stay in it too long. There's a whole world out there.""Other Desert Cities" is slated to run at the Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45th St., N.Y., through Jan. 8, 2012. (212) 239-6200. www.lct.org. Outtakes - Appeared on Broadway in such plays as "The House of Blue Leaves," "Four Baboons Adoring the Sun," "The Little Foxes," and "The Lion in Winter"- Starred in her own sitcoms"Stockard Channing in Just Friends" and "The Stockard Channing Show"- Has two films in the hopperthe TV movie "17th Precinct" and "A Fonder Heart" Stockard Channing Reflects on Her Unintended Life as an Actor By Simi Horwitz October 26, 2011 Stockard Channing PHOTO CREDIT Sebastien Piras An acting career was not part of Stockard Channing's well-heeled Upper East Side world. She attended posh boarding schools and majored in history and literature at Radcliffe College with her sights set on being an educated wife and mother.She performed a bit in high school and college but largely accepted her family's notion that acting was, well, not exactly respectable as a profession and surely an insecure way to live. But when Channing found herself starring as Jenny in a Harvard University production of "The Threepenny Opera," the experience was revelatory. "It was opening a Pandora's box," she says, recalling her joy in discovering a creative purpose, audience reciprocity, and the heady sense of empowerment. "I found I could do things I didn't know I could do. It all came together."Since that time, and more than a bit of struggle in between, she has received a Tony Award and five nominations, three Emmy Awards and 11 more nominations, an Oscar nomination, and three Golden Globe nominations, among other honors. Perhaps best known as the highly accomplished thoracic surgeoncumfirst lady Abbey Bartlet on "The West Wing," she has also tackled the imperious socialite Ouisa Kittredge in "Six Degrees of Separation" (film and play); the multilayered, anguished Judy Shepard in the TV movie "The Matthew Shepard Story" and the sophisticated, world-weary Vera Simpson in "Pal Joey" in the 200809 Broadway revival. Currently she stars on Broadway in Jon Robin Baitz's "Other Desert Cities," playing the brittle and hard-edged Palm Springs matriarch Polly, heading a family whose tenuous ties begin to disintegrate when grown daughter Brooke (Rachel Griffiths) announces her intention to publish an "honest" memoir. Compassion versus truth-telling, family loyalty, and the corrosive nature of secrets are motifs. The cast includes Stacy Keach as the staunchly conservative patriarch, Thomas Sadoski as the man-child son, and Judith Light as Polly's insightful and formerly inebriated sister. A Lincoln Center Theater production, the play opened last year Off-Broadway at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater to rave reviews and is now playing at the Booth Theatre. Good-humored, straightforward, and refreshingly devoid of pretension, Channing says frankly that she wasn't sure she could pull Polly off, mostly because the tastefully coiffed lady in question is so unappealing. "You don't want to play a character you can't inhabit or commit to fully," Channing says. "I had to find my way into this person without commenting on her, while still allowing her to be who she is. Initially, I didn't see her depth or the depth of this family's journey. At the end they are naked emotionally. There are no heroes and no villains and no one to blame. There is so much that's unspoken. Polly is tough, and she is a mother in every sense of the word. She is a lioness and protects her family."Channing's acting method is largely "rptition," she asserts in a well-executed French accent. Inspiration comes from a costume or hairstyle or a suggestion made by the director. Capturing Polly's hint of a Texan drawl was an early hook into the woman's psyche, she says. Working from the outside in and the inside out, she maintains, the key is to make sure nothing is forced. Channing also welcomes the special chemistry among the actors that adds yet another layer of interpretation. "It's a collaborative process when you have the luxury of working with great people," she notes. "We are a quintet. I didn't realize the level of love and connection in that family until the actors came in. It's belied by the dialogue, but there is a massive amount of love in that room. It will be interesting to have two new actors come in." (Off-Broadway, the recovering-alcoholic aunt and wayward daughter were played by Linda Lavin and Elizabeth Marvel, respectively. At the time of this interview, rehearsals for Broadway had not begun.)The admiration is mutual. "I've known Stockard for many years," says her co-star Keach. "I fell in love with her when she did '[A Day in the Death of] Joe Egg,' and 'Grease.' What she brings to every role is originality, unpredictability, charm, and great humor. She's like champagne and strawberries. Jon Robin Baitz gives Polly a wonderful acerbic wit that Stockard delivers. She's also a deeply emotional actress. She calls on her own feelings to express grief, anger, and the more serious aspects of Polly's character. The balance between humor and pathosno one can do it better than Stockard." Playwright Baitz adds, "With Stockard you get the very valuable willingness to start rehearsal at a pretty high level of commitment. She takes a run at a character, and it's the run of a NY actor who has been around the block and can make fast decisions. Then there is her innate intelligence and levelheadedness. These qualities make her so right for my play. I heard her when I was writing. I used her template and sort of 'rented' her in my head, the workshop in my head. When I teach playwriting, I spend a lot of time talking about the emotional intelligence of the characters, and Stockard has this high quotient of emotional EQ. It does not hurt that she has something old-fashioned about her, not coolly detached, but instead passionate and knowing, curious and dignified. Not to mention she recognizes the physics of being funny, the way a frog can spot a fly."Stockard Channing in "Other Desert Cities" (Photo by Joan Marcus) A Bohemian World, No Red Carpets Looking back, Channing says she came of age in a universe that's galaxies away from the actor's world today. It was the late 1960s, and the possibility of working in community and regional theaters was part of the cultural landscape. Local Boston theaters gave her the place to hone her acting skills in a range of styles. At the same time, she had the opportunity to perform Dylan Thomas in theater programs in the public schools. "The situation that allowed me to discover I loved acting doesn't exist now," she says. Economics were different, and so was the actor's sensibility. Bohemianism was in the air and appealing to young artists, she says. Being a celebrity and walking the red carpet were not her ambitions nor those of her contemporaries. Channing was also married at the time and living the life of a Harvard business wife in addition to being an actor. "Unfortunately the marriage ended, and that's when I moved to NY and threw myself into the breach," she says. One of her early lessons was the value of "focus and discipline," she recalls. "When I was younger I thought I was an artist and inspiration would just come to me." Channing continues to be free-spirited. Although she studied some of the more technical aspects of singing with "Pal Joey" music director Paul Gemignani when she starred in the Rodgers and Hart musical, she felt "it would all work if I just went out and did it," she acknowledges with a chuckle. "I'm a bit of a 'wing it.' " Perhaps not surprisingly, Channing never trained formally as an actor. Early in her NY career, she audited a few acting classes but found them "terrifying, with bullying teachers."Her first few years as an actor were "catch as catch can," she recalls. Acting jobs were in short supply, and others did not reach fruition. One production in which she had a role never got the necessary funding; from another, she was fired. Indeed, Channing was close to throwing in the towel when she reluctantly accepted a gig in the chorus of Joe Papp's "Two Gentlemen of Verona." "I felt like an overage idiot," she says. "I was 27 or 28 at the time. Everyone else in the chorus was fresh out of high school." Taking that stint turned out to be a major door opener, thus proving her contention, "You never know what will lead to what." She marvels at the element of serendipity, even in retrospect. Channing moved up the food chain, understudying the female lead and finally playing the role on the national tour, which brought her to the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. Industry insiders saw Channing, and word spread. The starring role in Joan Rivers' TV movie "The Girl Most Likely To" followed, and in short order she was co-starring opposite Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty in Mike Nichols' "The Fortune." But, for some, Channing is still strongly identified as the tough-talking Rizzo in the 1978 blockbuster "Grease," starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, and she continues to feel ambivalent about her part in the film and the reactions it generated. "Unfortunately the movie was despised by the artistic community in part because it made all that money," she says. "John and Olivia had opportunities, but for the rest of us, it was a step backwards. It became an uphill battle, and it was hard to even meet people professionally. I had done Rizzo too well, perhaps."If Channing had her druthers, she'd maintain a balance between film and stage roles, but it's not simply a matter of choice. "They're not writing that many parts for women my age," Channing comments about the film industry, without any rancor. "We don't want stories about people who have lived. We want stories about young people starting out, or maybe people getting second chances. But not third chances. It's not ageism. It's the way of the world. There was 'The Golden Girls,' but you can't hang your hat on what's not likely." Wretched Auditions and the Luck of the Draw Channing no longer auditions, and as she tells it, it's not a moment too soon. She was never especially good at it, she says, recalling auditioning eight times during an eight-week period for "Pippin" and then not booking it. "All auditions are awful, but this one was the worst. By the end when it was between myself and another girl, I was a beaten-up, twisted thing, while the other girl was fresh as a daisy." Preparation and being on top of the material helps, but it's so often the luck of the draw, she says. "Auditioning is a flawed process. I've sat in on casting sessions and been completely disgusted by them," she says. "At one audition a young actor sent in a tape of himself, and I thought, 'Jesus Christ, is that great or what?' It was passed over. I'm not going to say who he was, but today he is one of the most famous young actors around. Casting can be heartbreaking. Dealing with the disappointment is the hardest part."There is often no way of knowing why you didn't book a part, she continues. Sometimes you agonize over an audition for years, completely misinterpreting and misconstruing what happened. Many decades after one such audition, Channing ran into a director who had rejected her. She was introduced to him at a party, assuming he had long since forgotten her. "He leaned over and whispered, 'We made a mistake,' " she remembers. "He didn't have to do it. He had no idea I had been obsessing." She pauses to emphasize, "We never know the reason for anything. You just put a good face on it and keep going."At the moment, she has no roles she's dying to play. "As Frank Langella once said to me, 'It's always where and with whom?' " Channing also refuses to speculate on what she'd do differently if she could redo her career. "Those are evil thoughts," she insists. "I can't think that way."Channing, however, offers struggling actors a bit of advice: "Acting is such a bizarre way of life. Unless you're really passionate about it, you should give it up. Don't beat yourself up. Put one foot in front of the other. If you keep hitting the wall, the worst thing is stay in it too long. There's a whole world out there.""Other Desert Cities" is slated to run at the Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45th St., N.Y., through Jan. 8, 2012. (212) 239-6200. www.lct.org. Outtakes - Appeared on Broadway in such plays as "The House of Blue Leaves," "Four Baboons Adoring the Sun," "The Little Foxes," and "The Lion in Winter"- Starred in her own sitcoms"Stockard Channing in Just Friends" and "The Stockard Channing Show"- Has two films in the hopperthe TV movie "17th Precinct" and "A Fonder Heart"