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| photo by Gary Leonard |
When I was starting up
Back Stage West back in late 1993/early 1994, I remember someone suggesting that we do something like
Interview magazine—i.e., have one celebrity interview another. Hence was Actors' Dialogue born, though the emphasis wasn't so much on celebrities per se as colleagues who happened to be well known, and most often had a single project to promote together (though we also did our share of matchmaking: Our very first dialogue, between
Marion Ross and Charlotte Rae, wasn't tied to any project at all but was put together as a kind of dream date). I've posted a few of these recent years and plan to do more (i.e.,
Sam Jackson & LaTanya Richardson Jackson,
Rupert Everett and Richard E. Grant).
These were always very lightly hosted and coaxed along by a reporter, which is how one memorable day I found myself in the presence of Jean Smart and Mary Steenburgen, who were both appearing in the West Coast premiere of Scott McPherson's Marvin's Room. The brackets in their exchanges below show a few traces of my nudging (I'm sure I asked them to compare notes on their training, for instance), but I think the results hold up well as a time capsule of these two, and of the industry they were part of, in the mid-'90s.
Back Stage West
Oct. 13, 1994
ACTORS' DIALOGUE: MARY STEENBURGEN AND JEAN SMART
On Confidence, Training, and the Intangible
Two actors best known for film and TV roles met recently at the home of a friend to talk about their return to the stage, in Marvin's Room at the Tiffany Theatre.
Mary Steenburgen's first film role was in Jack Nicholson's Goin’ South, and she won an Oscar in 1980 for Melvin and Howard. Since then, she's appeared in such films as Time After Time, Ragtime, Parenthood, Cross Creek, and What's Eating Gilbert Grape? Jean Smart is best known for her role as sensible Charlene on the long-running CBS series Designing Women. She also played a retarded woman in the TV movie The Yarn Princess, and appeared in the films Mistress and The Incredible Journey: Homeward Bound.
