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Features
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A Forgotten Oscar Winner
Even though actress Mary Steenburgen may slip the minds of all but the most devoted Academy Award trivia hounds, she has absolutely no complaints.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006 at 5:30 PM
By Brent Simon
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Steve Granitz/Wireimage.com
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An emotional outlook on life
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Some actors and actresses are synonymous with the Academy Awards, even in loss, while others are anonymous, even in victory. Mary Steenburgen is the latter category.
Many forget, for instance, that after making her debut opposite Jack Nicholson in his directorial debut, 1978’s Goin’ South, Steenburgen picked up the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1980’s Melvin and Howard, filmmaker Jonathan Demme’s story of a hard-luck good Samaritan who, after helping an eccentric older man in the wake of a motorcycle accident in the desert, receives a will in the mail that he believes bequeaths him part of the estate of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. Steenburgen plays Lynda Dummar, the overwhelmed and excitable wife of Paul Le Mat’s character.
In her latest film, she’s nowhere near as demonstrative or voluble. In writer-director Randall Miller’s offbeat ensemble Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School, she plays Marienne, the very restrained and proper daughter of the titular Pasadena adult dance club who carries on her mother’s legacy long after her passing.
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Samuel Goldwyn Films
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As Marienne Hotchkiss
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“I don’t recall knowing who was going to be in it,” says Steenburgen in a recent one-on-one interview with FilmStew. “I got it from my agent late one night, and it was just this long title, which struck me. I started thumbing through it, and by the time I was a third of the way into it I knew I was going to do it, just on the strength of the writing. Each character, no matter how tiny, was compelling and very specific. They jumped off the page and I knew they would attract good actors.”
Indeed, rounding out the film’s cast are Robert Carlyle, Marisa Tomei, John Goodman, Donnie Wahlberg, Sean Astin, Sonia Braga, Ernie Hudson and David Paymer; Danny De Vito and Camryn Manheim also have single-scene cameos. The story centers on a humble baker, Frank Keane (Carlyle), who’s been consumed by his wife’s suicide. After pulling over to assist a dying man involved in a single-car accident, Frank fulfills a promise the latter made 40 years prior to meet his childhood sweetheart at the namesake dance school. There Frank instead encounters his own destiny when he meets an assortment of interesting characters, including the sweet Meredith Morrison (Tomei), and his heart opens up to the world of dance.
“I was one of the last people cast, which was fine except that I was supposed to be the teacher,” notes Steenburgen. “And then I had a big problem, in that I was stuck in Little Rock, Arkansas on a project. I only had a week to learn the dances and get good enough to play the instructor.”
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Gregg DeGuire/Wireimage.com
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First husband Malcolm McDowell
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Steenburgen had a little bit of experience (“When I was a little girl I took tap, and I remembered some of that, and then my parents dragged me to one of these charm schools when I was 13,” she says”), but she was also aided by the fact that the film - unlike the recent Antonio Banderas vehicle Take the Lead - doesn’t spend a lot of time trying to showcase the flash and pizzazz of its dance steps. “The woman who produced Take the Lead was producing something with my husband [Ted Danson] in Canada, and I’ve known Antonio [Banderas] since we were both in Philadelphia,” says Steenburgen. “And so we went to say hello to both of them and I got to watch this very steamy tango sequence. And they were both gorgeous and so sexy I said, ‘Oh no, my poor little dance movie, where we’re all so very real!’”
Extended from a short film he completed years before while at AFI, Miller’s movie is suffused with sincerity and authenticity, where everything has its proper place. Says Steenburgen of Marienne: “She’s in this dusty little nothing ballroom; she’s not in New York City, she’s in a world that’s mostly forgotten.”
“I think her mother probably had her always there as a part of that world and when she was little it was probably beautiful and glamorous,” she continues. “Then, when she got a little older, it was probably embarrassing and then when she got a little older still it was probably boring. But she never broke away. Her mother was the grand dame of this world, and so I think that Marienne was just an echo of her mother.”
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Steve Granitz/Wireimage.com
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Current "darling heart" Danson
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That echo comes with a particular sing-song cadence, too; Steenburgen affects a saintly, slightly chirpy but nonetheless even-keeled tone that many a viewer will likely associate with teachers from their own youth. “That [voice] just came,” she says. “It was weird, and all very nerve-racking, because I’d never met Randy until first day of shooting, and when someone doesn’t know you and how you work, it’s always hard to talk about external things.”
“There’s something vaguely embarrassing about going, ‘Well, I hear this voice in my head,’” admits Steenburgen with a laugh. “Literally, I think the first time he heard was when I opened the curtain and did it [in her first scene]. And he was grinning from ear to ear. The other actors came in — they’d already been shooting some other stuff — and it was like I really took charge of the dance studio.”
Steenburgen is also taking charge of her career. While the 53-year-old actress has a natural Southern belle’s charm and easygoing demeanor that have translated into plenty of success in roles exhibiting sugary yet earnest kindness and/or infinite patience (Parenthood, The Grass Harp, Casa de los Babys), she’s also played tough (Miss Firecracker, Ragtime, Philadelphia).
Steenburgen maintains she’s not worried about the future or hung up on what might have been. “I got to be a leading lady some, those first four or five years,” says Steenburgen. “My first six films… I was the definite leading lady in all of them. I kind of walked away from it.”
“I had children,” she explains. “I also had a marriage with someone [first husband Malcolm McDowell] who’s now very much my friend, but it was very tumultuous. I was young and I couldn’t handle everything that was in my life. And I sort of walked away and moved up to Ojai, California and checked out a little bit.”
Here Steenburgen pauses, tilting her head slightly as she reflects. “I made life really hard for my publicist,” she continues. “I basically had a publicist so I wouldn’t do publicity, and eventually that does hurt you. People do forget about you. And I think if I were looking at it from a strategic point-of-view, I probably did some harm in those years.”
“But looking at it the way I look at life - which is not strategic but much more emotional - I wouldn’t change one moment of that, not for any film,” insists the 53-year-old Arkansas native. “First of all, there’s not a single film that I wish I would’ve done that I didn’t do — not one. And there’s not a single film that I did that I wished I wouldn’t have done, although some of them are pieces of crap.”
| “But I met somebody on it, or I had some experience or it led to something else. And I wouldn’t change anything because I wouldn’t have met my husband [Ted Danson], who’s just my best friend in the universe and my darling heart, I adore him. I wouldn’t have my two stepdaughters, I wouldn’t have been the mom I was to my kids… So in a weird way, I feel like I’m a late bloomer, because now this is really more about my time.”
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Indeed, with Steenburgen’s kids now ages 21 through 26, the actress can jump into a David Mamet Atlantic Theater play that much more easily and, who knows, perhaps one more Oscar-caliber supporting role. “I’ve pretty much defied most of the boxes,” she muses. “If I’m in a box, I don’t know what the name of it is.”
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