STARCHIVES
Julianna Margulies
Article - What's Cooking
by Paul Fischer in Los Angeles.

NURSING HER WAY TO A NEW CAREER

She turned down an estimated $25m to continue on TV’s ER, but Julianna Marguiles, the former Nurse Carol Hathaway, is happy that ER is behind her, and loves playing a lesbian in a new independent movie for little money, which finally hits Australia in May. Margulies talked to Paul Fischer.
The wintry Sundance Film Festival may appear the least likely place to find Julianna Margulies, as she was taking a brief break from the heat of the Warner Bros studios, where she was about to shooting her final season of ER.. As one of the high-profile stars of that now legendary hit series, the 34-year old Margulies could have had the choice of the big movies, but instead has been drawn to more character-driven pieces, the smaller films such as Australia’s Paradise Road, The Newton Boys, and the film that brought her to Sundance: What’s Cooking, in which she plays a Lesbian, brought home by her Jewish lover on Thanksgiving. The film is a far cry from the Hathaway character, the actress says, and that working outside the mainstream “is a cross between great scripts that seem to be mostly independent, and directors that I want to work with, not to mention luck. I wouldn’t turn down a big Hollywood movie if it had a great part for a woman, but there simply aren’t a lot of great woman parts out there in the Hollywood arena. When there ARE great parts, they usually go to the A-list actors, so that leaves the next tier of actors in MY group that I’m fortunate enough to be in.” It was ER, on which Margulies was initially due to appear only in the pilot, that still enabled her to at least be given some interesting opportunities. “I was lucky enough to have ER as my day job, so I didn’t have to take the big films that weren’t so interesting, to pay my rent. I got to work with Bruce Beresford on Paradise Rd, or Gurinder Chadha on this latest film, What’s Cooking.”

It was equally important for the actress to steer away from Hathaway-type roles, which was relatively easy. “The beauty of my career so far, is that the characters I’ve gone out for, have been those that are removed from the Hathaway-type character, but really all that’s saying, is that I’m staying away from hospitals.” Margulies still sees Hathaway “as a strong character, and if you look at the characters I’ve played in the few films that I’ve done since ER, they’re all pretty strong women, but just different. That’s what makes doing a television series for six years so great, is that now I get to go off and explore as an actor, knowing that my mortgage is paid off for a while. That’s why I started doing this in the first place.”

Margulies knew 18 months before that last year was to be her last season on E.R, and turned down the big bucks, a reported $30m, well before the details were released to the press, “but somehow it just slipped out, and when that happened, suddenly people thought it [the money] mattered, but before, they seemed more supportive.” The actress knew that she could take Hathaway no further, but also admits there was more to her decision to leave than that. “I have so much respect for Noah Wylie, Eriq La Salle and Anthony Edwards for the fact that they’re going to continue. For an actor, to play the same character for 6 years is the biggest challenge I’ll ever have in my life. Coming in to do What’s Cooking, for instance, I had a beginning, middle and end, but with television it’s one road and you’re constantly on that train.” She further feels that it’s hard to make series television interesting. “It’s not hard if you don’t care, and there are times when I’ve seen myself phone in a performance, and THAT’S when I made my decision: I promised myself that I’d never be that actor.”

The youngest of three daughters born to a former American Ballet Theatre dancer, Margulies spent her early childhood as the perpetual new kid on the block. A child of divorced parents, the actress spent her infant years in London and Paris with her mother and elder siblings; the family eventually settling in Spring Valley, New York, when she was five. Her high school years were spent in New York’s the arty and prestigious Sarah Lawrence College. As an undergraduate at the academically rigorous private college, Margulies gravitated to the drama department as a means to escape the pressures of dealing with her fellow classmates, whom she found rather elitist and unkind. She further distanced herself by studying Dante in Italy during her junior year, and then by completing her art history degree with off-campus research at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Following graduation, Margulies moved to Florida, where she got serious about her flirtation with drama by making regular appearances in local theatre productions. She soon headed to Hollywood. A short stint as Lieutenant Mendoza on the TV drama Law and Order led to her role in Steven Seagal’s Out for Justice film, which the actress recalls “was a career low point”. This early experience as an action-flick cliché made Margulies appreciate the subtlety and complexity of her ER character all the more, and she continues to condemn all attempts to define Nurse Hathaway through her relationships with male characters.

The road to her career-making ER gig was paved with many trials. For starters, her character, Nurse Carol Hathaway, wasn't even scripted to survive the pilot episode, which had her attempting suicide by swallowing a handful of pills after she was ditched at the altar. Fully expecting that this dramatic gesture marked the end of her ER career, Julianna walked away from the pilot and rejoined the crush of job-seeking actors. But things changed when she received a fateful voice-mail message from ER co-star George Clooney. He told her not to accept another role, because her character had "tested through the roof" with the screening audience, and the show's producers wanted her to become a regular member of the cast.

Margulies once credited the realism she brings to her ER characterisation and the facility with which she spouts off medical jargon to “the many hours I spent studying at the elbows of two real-life emergency-room nurses”. Her hard work on the series paid off having remained the only cast member of the series to receive an Emmy Award.

Margulies is romantically linked with sometime ER co-star Ron Eldard, whom she has known since the aspiring thespians met in a 1991 acting class. Otherwise, details of the actress's personal life are limited to her reported passions for rollerblading in her Santa Monica neighbourhood and knitting. Margulies has thus far managed to avoid being blinded by the glare of the Hollywood limelight, and she wouldn't have it any other way.

Her latest big screen role, which had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival a few years ago, is far removed from standard Hollywood fare. In What’s Cooking, an ensemble piece about three different ethnic families coping with the parochial American holiday Thanksgiving, Margulies is the lesbian lover of Jewish Kyra Sedgwick, whose conservative Jewish family can’t quite cope with it all. For Julianna, she says she loved playing a Lesbian character. “What was fun, was that Kyra and I, in our research of it, had so much fun in New York going to all these lesbian clubs. All my lesbian friends were naturally thrilled that I was playing a gay character, that they’d take us to all their favourite haunts.” In addition, she adds, “it was comfortable and natural for us, and made me realise that as long as you look like you’re doing your job, people will believe that can happen, and I don’t care what the outcome will be.”

It’s clear that for Margulies, there’s well and truly life after E.R and has much to look forward to. “It’s so exciting, I can’t tell you, I get goose bumps, because it’s the first time in six years I don’t have a schedule in front of me, yet there are all these beautiful things happening, some I can’t talk about because I’m so close to the deal I’m afraid I’ll mess it up. I will be doing a new play with Jason Robards which I’m excited about.”

For this actress, what fuels her now is the work, but says she has no regrets. “I had a blessed experience on E.R, and am so grateful for it, but it’s a rigorous schedule, so the idea that I can actually say ‘yes’ to a project, is wonderful.” There was no bitterness about her departure, and talking to her, it is clear that this Emmy Award winner is genuinely happy. “I am, because I left on really good terms, I felt like I’m bringing the character to a full arc and I respect her, the writers and what they’ve done for her. I also feel it was a really empowering choice, because I was able to go with my heart, rather than my business heart.” It paid off, from What’s Cooking Margulies will be back on the small screen in the Arthurian miniseries The Mists of Avalon and her first love, the stage.

What’s Cooking, is being released through New Vision Films, and opens in Australia on May 17.

Starchives - Julianna Margulies - Interview - What's Cooking - by Paul Fischer
STARCHIVES