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Julianna Margulies
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Sunday, October 20, 2002
Margulies goes to sea in new film
By LOUIS B. HOBSON -- Calgary Sun
HOLLYWOOD -- The sandy beaches and azure-blue waters of Australia's Gold Coast attract millions of visitors each year. For Julianna Margulies, they held little allure.

Margulies was in Australia last year at this time filming Ghost Ship, a terror-at-sea thriller that opens Friday. She plays the leader of a salvage crew that stumbles on an abandoned Italian ocean liner that has been lost for more than 45 years.

When her crew begins repairing the leaks to tow the ship to shore and claim its riches, the vessel seems to come to life.

"I was so into water for that movie, there was no way I was going to go swimming or diving on my days off," Margulies says. "Most of my scenes required me to be waist deep, or deeper, in water."

It didn't help that there were daily shark scares.

"From our hotel balconies, we watched sharks feeding on schools of tuna. They had built huge shark nets around our sets, so there was no actual danger for us, but the thought of that being us instead of tuna was pretty chilling."

The biggest perk for Margulies in filming Ghost Ship wasn't Australia's natural beauty. Her longtime companion, Ron Eldard, plays one of her salvage mates.

"It was certainly not a condition of mine that Ron be part of the package, but it was a great incentive to say yes," she says. "The producers had actually talked to Ron separately. It was so pleasant having him in Australia. Just before that, I'd been in Ireland filming Evelyn with Pierce Brosnan, and he'd been in Morocco filming Black Hawk Down. We try never to be apart for more than three weeks, so that had proved a scheduling nightmare."

Margulies met Eldard when she was a struggling actress in New York, or as she puts it, "a struggling bartender because I was never a great bartender or waitress.

"Ron was already the toast of New York. He was starring in the off-Broadway play Servy 'n' Bernice Forever.

"The buzz was everywhere. Everyone was going out to see this handsome new actor. Madonna was going to the show four times a week, she was so smitten with Ron."

Eldard, it turned out, only had eyes for Margulies.

"I had an advantage. Ron and I had met in acting class in 1991. We were great friends. Ron has seen me at my worst and most dejected. He continued to do Broadway while I was off doing regional theatre plays."

That all changed in 1994 when Margulies was cast as Carol Hathaway, the nurse who eventually stole the heart of Dr. Doug Ross (George Clooney) on NBC's instant hit series, ER.

Eldard appeared on the series during the third season for a brief stint, playing Shep, a paramedic and temporary love interest for Hathaway.

"ER didn't change Ron and my personal dynamic but it did change our lives," Margulies says. "It made them simultaneously more comfortable and more hectic."

Margulies left ER in 2000 after six seasons. "It wasn't difficult creatively to leave ER, but it certainly was financially."

She declined an offer of $27 million U.S. to renew for two more seasons.

"I have no regrets. It was time for me to move on, and I've had incredible experiences these past two years. I've worked in five countries and was back on stage."

She says she and Eldard are looking for a play they can do together in New York. He starred in the 1999 revival of Death Of A Salesman.

"Doing movies together is a no-brainer, but the thought of acting opposite Ron on stage is intimidating," Margulies says. "He's so breathtaking on stage, but I want to give it a try. Ron says he wants to direct me in a play."

She says should this become a reality, she will take a cue from Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, another longtime couple who refuse to marry.

"Susan says when she and Tim work together, one of them moves out of the house and lives in a hotel," Margulies says. "It prevents the kind of strain that could damage a relationship."

Although audiences eventually learn that Eldard's character in Ghost Ship has a crush on Margulies, there is no overt romance.

"It gets tricky for me when I watch real-life couples playing couples on screen. I'm always thinking: 'So that's how they kiss. That's how they hold each other.' For this reason I'd rather not have Ron and myself play a couple on screen."

Margulies also has shied away from offers to star in a Clooney vehicle, for similar reasons.

"We were too much of a couple on ER, so we have to wait a while before we do something together on screen, but we really want to," she says.

"I just sent him a script I'd like to do with him, so maybe we'll be acting opposite each other again in two or three years, given how long it takes to get a movie from script to screen."

Margulies' first film was the 1991 actioner Out For Justice, which starred Steven Seagal -- someone who won't ever replace Eldard in Margulies' heart.

"I played Rica, the hooker with a heart of gold," she says.

"It was not a pleasant experience. Mr. Seagal is not the kind of person I'd ever keep in touch with."

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Friday, October 27, 2000
Jagger to play pimp in movie
Andy Garcia and "ER" alumnus Julianna Margulies will co-star in an upcoming film as a couple that becomes embroiled in trouble with a pimp played by Mick Jagger, Variety reports.

All three have signed on to star in "The Man From Elysian Fields," an indie film to be directed by "Big Brass Ring" helmer George Hickenlooper. Garcia plays a man whose financial troubles cause a break-up with his wife (played by Margulies), and goes to work at an escort service operated by Jagger's character.

Complications arise when Garcia's character falls for a wealthy woman married to a character played by Jason Robards, Variety said.

-- JAM! Movies

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Thursday, May 11, 2000
No. 1 nurse checks out
By BILL BRIOUX
Toronto Sun
Tonight on ER, nurse Carol Hathaway goes that-a-away.

Despite a multi-million-dollar offer to stick with the show, Julianna Margulies is walking away from TV's top-rated drama after six seasons.

The big question tonight is whether George Clooney's Dr. Ross, who left the show last year after fathering Hathaway's twins, will return to carry the raven-haired beauty off into the sunset.

Officials at NBC and Warner Bros. remain tight-lipped about tonight's storyline. The episode, titled, "Such Sweet Sorrow," finds Dr. Weaver (Laura Innes) on the warpath after Hathaway screws up several assignments and defies a direct order. There's no mention of Dr. Ross in the synopsis, and if Clooney does scrub up for a visit, it will be be a major surprise.

Last January, when he was promoting his live TV drama Fail Safe, Clooney told TV critics he still hadn't heard from the ER producers about a Hathaway close-out cameo.

"I don't know if it's necessarily smart for me to come back for one scene and, you know, scoop Julianna up and walk out," he said.

Executive producer John Wells confirmed that he had not spoken with Clooney about returning for a season finale, but he didn't rule it out either.

"Even if I had talked to him," says Wells, "I wouldn't be telling you guys."

Margulies is the latest in a series of defections on the hospital drama, which has been the No. 1 show for five years and is running neck-and-neck with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire for this season's title. Besides Clooney, Ontario-native Gloria Reuben (Jeanie Boulet) left last season and is currently touring as a back-up singer for Tina Turner. Sherry Stringfield (Dr. Susan Lewis) quietly bailed a few years back; Kellie Martin (Lucy Knight) was killed off a few months ago.

Last fall, the show was boosted by guest-star stints from the likes of Alan Alda and Rebecca DeMornay.

Clooney, for one, feels ER will miss Margulies most of all. "She's the real soul of the show," he says. "I think it's a big blow to that show when you lose Julianna Margulies, much more than myself."

Margulies disagreed at an emotional press conference last January on the set of ER. "I think it will benefit the show to get both Doug Ross and Nurse Hathaway out," she says.

Referring to the fact that Ross seemingly walked out on his newborn twins, Margulies says, "As long as I'm here, everyone will continue to think Doug's a bastard."

Ironically, Margulies' character wasn't supposed to survive past the ER pilot. A despondent Hathaway swallowed a bottle of pills after being ditched at the altar. However, after her character reportedly tested through the roof, Hathaway made a miraculous recovery.

Turned down $27M

The actress reportedly turned down $27 million to return for seasons seven and eight. Three other original cast mates, Anthony Edwards (Dr. Mark Greene), Noah Wyle (Dr. John Carter) and Eriq LaSalle (Dr. Peter Benton) all signed similar multi-million-dollar deals.

"The whole thing is surreal," she told about 100 TV columnists crowded into ER's operating room. "That kind of money just isn't real."

"Actually, it is," injected happy millionaire LaSalle, to much laughter on the set.

Still, the Emmy-winning actress insists that money had nothing to do with her decision to leave the series. She wants to do other projects and can be heard in Disney's upcoming computer-animated opus Dinosaur. She's currently shooting The Mists Of Avalon, a four-hour U.S. cable miniseries co-starring Anjelica Huston.

"Honestly, I just really need to spread my wings as an actor," she says, "although it would have been a smart business move for me to stay on."

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Friday, 12 November, 1999
'ER' actress turns down $27 million
The producers of "ER" made Julianna Margulies an offer she couldn't refuse -- but she turned it down anyway.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Warner Bros., which makes the hit medical drama, offered Margulies a two-year deal worth a staggering $27 million. And Variety reports the company even offered to sweeten the deal by giving the actress a movie development deal to help launch her post-"ER" career.

It was all for naught, however. Margulies still plans to leave the show at the end of this season.

-- JAM! TV

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Monday, April 13, 1998

Ignore protest, star urges
By BRUCE KIRKLAND
Toronto Sun
HOLLYWOOD -- ER star Julianna Margulies wants people to ignore the Hassidic Jewish protest against her new movie, A Price Above Rubies.

Margulies plays a support role to Renee Zellweger and Christopher Eccleston in the controversial drama, which opened this past weekend in Toronto.

The film explores the life of a woman, played by Zellweger, who rebels against the structure of her ultra-conservative religion and community.

"Not at all," says Margulies when asked if she is concerned about the protest, which erupted when the film was shot in New York and continues now that it is in release. Hassidic Jewish leaders wanted the filming stopped and the final movie repressed.

Characters in the film call into question the role of women in the Hassidic community.

Margulies, who was born Jewish and raised Catholic because of a mixed marriage, ironically plays a character in the movie who supports the religion. She says the Hassidic people would never be satisfied with the movie, no matter what it says.

"I've got to tell you, I think they're unhappy generally anyway. So this will just give them one more (thing to protest). Don't get me wrong, I think it's an amazing thing to be able to maintain that kind of religion in today's society. But everyone's always going to find fault with something. What are you going to do?

"Hopefully, they'll love my character because she's the one who says (to Zellweger's character): 'We have a beautiful, spiritual life here, Sonia, why do you want to leave it?'

"Maybe they'll see the light and see it for what it is (a movie drama, not the final word on their religion). But they probabably won't see the movie. So how can they complain about what they haven't seen?"

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Sunday, March 22, 1998

In the boys' club
By LOUIS B. HOBSON -- Calgary Sun
HOLLYWOOD -- Julianna Margulies is grateful she was such a tomboy growing up.

It stands her in great stead each week on ER, where she plays nurse Carol Hathaway to George Clooney's amorous surgeon Doug Ross.

Her former rough and tumble ways definitely came in handy last summer when she filmed the bank-robber saga The Newton Boys, playing the love interest of Matthew McConaughey.

"ER is a bit of a boys' club," explains Margulies. "There's never any shortage of testosterone. The same was true on the set of The Newton Boys. Between takes, we'd go to someone's trailer and there would be me with Matthew, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Skeet Ulrich and Dwight Yoakam.

"Some actresses would be distressed being so outnumbered all the time but it's never an issue for me. I was a real tomboy growing up.

"I never played with dolls and got footballs and baseball gloves for Christmas. All that changed when I reached puberty, but it's given me a better understanding of how guys think and bond."

Margulies says her male co-stars think of her as a buddy rather than a possible conquest.

"It means the guys don't hit on me. Either I scare them off or I put something out that tells them I'm not available and they respect that. They know the boundaries. I'll be their friend, but that's where it ends."

For the past six years, Margulies has been in a relationship with actor Ron (Men Behaving Badly) Eldard. They were living together in New York when Eldard moved to L.A.to work.

On one of her trips to visit Eldard, Margulies was cast in the pilot of ER. Her character committed suicide, but the audience responded so positively to Carol Hathaway that her desperation became an attempted suicide and Margulies has been a series regular ever since.

As serious as her relationship with Eldard may be, Margulies, 30, insists marriage and children are not in the couple's immediate future.

"I'm too young too think about marriage and I'm too selfish with my time right now to consider getting pregnant. I am literally married to ER."

Margulies was the youngest of three daughters born to a dance teacher and advertising executive.

"I was one year old when my parents split, but my mom followed my dad around the world, so we'd have two parents. He always lived in a different house, but he was an influence in our lives."

Margulies' sisters were both excellent classical dancers like their mother, but Julianna preferred riding horses to studying ballet.

"My mother was horrified. She said I walked like a truck driver, so she made me take jazz.

"I'm still very close to my mom. We're in our fourth year of ER, but she still calls me after she watches an episode. She's my biggest fan."

Though she admits ER has a gruelling schedule, Margulies jumped at the chance to spend her summer under the hot Texas sky filming The Newton Boys.

"I'm in hospital scrubs all year long, so it was a joy wearing the 1920 period costumes in The Newton Boys -- even if it was a bit like being in a sauna.

"With my big, broad 1940s face and kinky hair, I've always felt I was born in the wrong era. I felt so at home last summer."

It wasn't just the costumes. It helped that her co-stars proved to be "real Texan gentlemen. The guys were just so sweet. I felt like I had five big brothers."

Margulies is the envy of millions of women. Each week she kisses Clooney on the set of ER and in The Newton Boys, she has some hot and heavy necking scenes with McConaughey.

"They're both great kissers and great guys.

"Matthew is so Texan. He's an open, welcoming, sweet, guy's-guy. George is more of a city boy, which means he's a little more guarded, a little less spontaneous."

The Newton Boys opens Friday and next month she has a supporting role in the drama A Price Above Rubies.

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Tuesday, April 22, 1997

ER pumps life into film career
By BRUCE KIRKLAND
Toronto Sun
HOLLYWOOD -- For actress Julianna Margulies, the popular TV series ER was a ticket to ride a rocket that is now flying her into movie stardom.

Yet it's ironic: Who knew that fame, career and ambition would be fueled by playing a suicidal nurse who was supposed to quickly flame out on the two-hour pilot?

"It catapulted me ahead about 10 steps in my career, I think," the 31-year-old Margulies says, tossing aside an explosion of raven hair to unveil her piercing eyes.

"I was doing okay, I think. I was doing a lot of theatre and I was sort of on my way, but it was a slower process," she says. "All the casting directors and producers in New York knew me but no one out here did. The industry didn't know me.

Then came ER. Viewers instantly related to her tortured portrayal of nurse Carole Hathaway. They insisted that she survive, continue and become a major character who ends up romancing George Clooney's equally troubled character.

"Once ER became popular, suddenly it wasn't Julianna Who?. I became someone who was brought up in meetings."

Such as casting sessions for director Bruce Beresford's World War II women's concentration camp drama, Paradise Road, which opens in Toronto Friday. Margulies, as the only American in the true-life tale, plays a support role to star Glenn Close and easily got caught up in the scenario.

"I had no idea of this part of our history. I was kind of fascinated by it." So she auditioned -- twice -- for the demanding Beresford. It was an ordeal because her character, Topsy Merritt, has only a few lines scattered through the script.

"It was a very difficult film to audition for. My part in it is very supporting so it was difficult to do the audition and bring through the full character. The hardest part in acting is when you only have one line. I always feel bad for the guest stars on our show (ER). In order to be good, you have to throw it away. But, if it's only one line, you want to make a meal out of it."

Paradise Road, as awkward as it was to get, turned out to be a boon to Margulies' sanity on ER too. "The best thing that ever happened to Hathaway was going away to do Paradise Road. I realized how I love being an ensemble player. I have no problem with that. I think that's so much about what acting is about, being able to react to all of these other people."

However, her role needed meat and potatoes too, and Hathaway, in the second season, had become merely a nurse mired in other people's problems. "I really felt they were wasting my time. Offers were coming in and I was turning things down. But (on ER), I was walking down hallways."

Back from Paradise Road, Margulies insisted on either getting more focus or being let out of her six-year contract and become an occasional guest star herself. The ER writers and producers agreed with pumping up Hathaway's profile.

"I let it go and trusted it would happen," Margulies says happily, "and it did."

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Monday, April 21, 1997

Paradise found
By LOUIS B. HOBSON
Calgary Sun
BEVERLY HILLS -- If Julianna Margulies hasn't reached paradise she's certainly on the right road.

Four years ago, Margulies was an aspiring actress who snagged the occasional guest spot on such TV series as Law and Order and Homicide. She made her feature film debut opposite Steven Segal in Out for Justice.

Then came a guest spot on a pilot for ER.

Margulies was cast as Carole Hathaway, a nurse who tries to commit suicide.

"My character was meant to die and I only had about five minutes screen time in a two-hour show but audiences demanded she live," explains Margulies who holds the honor of being the only cast member of ER to win an Emmy.

Even with all the attention the show has brought her, it's been a rocky road.

"Because of her attempted suicide, Hathaway was in a really dark space for the first season.

"On the second season, it seemed that all Hathaway did was react to everyone else's life situations.

"I finally put my foot down," recalls Margulies.

"I told the writers and producers that I didn't want to spend another year walking down halls and supplying reaction shots.

"It worked. Hathaway is getting some great storylines this season."

And yes, the inevitable will eventually happen. Hathaway will once again get romantically involved with George Clooney's philandering Dr. Ross.

"Both Hathaway and Ross have to work things out in their own lives before they can get together again. George and I are adamant that their pairing not turn into a soap opera."

In the first season, Hathaway had a brief affair with paramedic Shep, played by Ron Eldard who now stars opposite Rob Schneider in Men Behaving Badly.

Life imitated art. Margulies and Eldard are now a couple.

"Ron and I refuse to talk about our relationship because we want it to be the one part of our lives that is sacred.

"It gets so crazy. There was a story in one of the supermarket publications over Christmas saying that we'd split up and here we were in New York having an absolutely marvelous time."

Margulies has a starring role opposite Glenn Close in Paradise Road, the Second World War drama that opens Friday. Margulies plays an American woman held prisoner for three years in a Japanese internment camp in Sumatra.

"I remember seeing Glenn in Fatal Attraction when I was 14. I was stunned by her performance then and it was awesome watching her work in Paradise Road."

Margulies has begun filming The Newton Boys for Richard Linklater. She plays Matthew McConaughey's girlfriend.

"Now that's a really tough gig and I just got finished playing Bill Paxton's girlfriend in Traveler. It's gruelling work making love to sexy men but somebody has to do it."

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