Blythe Danner: Classy Lady

Blythe Danner says she has never been especially ambitious, has no roles she is dying to play, and employs no strategies in selecting her parts. Certain elements come together and she's interested. Tackling Violet Venable in Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer is a case in point. The Roundabout Theatre Company production opened Off-Broadway at the Laura Pels Theatre on Nov. 15.

"I've always been passionate about Williams," notes the patrician-looking yet unassuming Danner. "And it's a natural progression for me. Years ago I played Laura in The Glass Menagerie -- got my Equity card from that. I then did Eccentricities of a Nightingale for PBS, and 18 years ago I played Blanche [in A Streetcar Named Desire] on Broadway.

"One of the things that drew me to this play is the language. Williams wrote it when he was in analysis and told not to have sex -- and not to write, either. This was a pouring out of his frustrations -- very intense, very beautiful," continues the 63-year-old Philadelphia native, perhaps best known for her comic stints on Will & Grace and in Meet the Parents and its sequel, Meet the Fockers. "I was also very interested in doing this role because [director] Mark Brokaw wanted to make Mrs. Venable more human and understandable. It's all too easy to play her as a monster."

Set in New Orleans, Suddenly Last Summer recounts the unraveling of an upper-crust family. Mrs. Venable is the doomed family's tormented matriarch, a woman determined to protect her late son's memory by praising his poetic talents and, more important, keeping secret the gruesome way he died. The problem is that her niece Catharine (Carla Gugino) witnessed the death and won't stop talking about it. Indeed, Mrs. Venable believes Catharine is responsible for her son's demise. Committed to silencing the girl, Mrs. Venable cajoles, demands, even attempts to bribe an affable doctor (Gale Harold) into performing a lobotomy on the young woman. It is a daunting role on many fronts, not least because Katharine Hepburn played the part in the 1959 film and, indeed, received an Academy Award nomination for best actress.

"I never saw the film," Danner says. "After the play completes its run, I would like to, but I did not want to be influenced by her performance. Williams loathed the movie. He said it did not fulfill his vision and that it was Hollywoodized. What we are trying to do here is blaze a new trail, take a fresh look at this character. She is a typical Southern woman with all the innate charm, flirtation, and seduction. Amanda has some of that and so does Blanche. Violet is more maniacal and overbearing, but I don't really think she understands what a lobotomy is. She believes her niece will be quieted down, pacified, more peaceful. The idea of a lobotomy isn't that repellent to her."

Danner's performance has met with mixed response. Ben Brantley of The New York Times, for example, said her interpretation was fascinating, but in the end he felt she was miscast. "I don't read critics, and I don't care what they say," Danner asserts. "You can't let them steal your soul. You do what the director and production is committed to doing. I just think it's terrible that critics have the power to keep people away from a good production."

Family Came First

Brokaw maintains Danner has scored brilliantly in a play that is particularly difficult. It's a "high-stakes game," he insists, with each character believing he or she sees the truth and the audience feeling sympathy for each character at various points. "I think our allegiance constantly shifts as the story unfolds," Brokaw writes in an email. "Blythe...brings great compassion, intelligence, and a fierce motherly devotion to the role -- as well as being very sexy and a sly seductress. It's a great mix and gives great dimension to the part."

Todd Haimes, artistic director of Roundabout, echoes that view: "I am thrilled to have Blythe back at Roundabout following her last role here, in Follies. She is a dear friend of the theatre and an invaluable asset to any production…. Blythe is a naturally elegant, beautiful, and commanding actress. Of course, I always felt the role of Mrs. Venable should be played by a woman who is commanding and strong but who also has a certain sexiness and seductiveness about her. After all, Mrs. Venable spends a majority of the play maneuvering the young doctor to meet her wishes. Blythe brings both of those essential qualities to Mrs. Venable -- an unrelenting power and an irresistible softness -- as only an outstanding actress could."

Danner's natural talents aside, she did her research. Mrs. Venable has suffered a mild stroke, and Danner talked with a doctor about "how that kind of stroke would manifest itself." She also studied with a dialect coach to capture a New Orleans accent, which is not a generic Southern accent, Danner points out. "It's Southern, but it has a Brooklyn element. 'Work' is pronounced 'woik' and 'turtle' is pronounced 'toitle.' But Mrs. Venable is an upper-class woman, so the accent is not going to be that thick. There is also a challenge in speaking language that lush. There's the danger of overplaying it. If anything, I have to hold back.

"But the biggest challenge for me -- and maybe that's why this is the most challenging play I've done -- is learning all the lines," Danner continues. "And the older I get, the more terrified I become. I could easily take fewer chances, but I just decided to jump in and do it. I started studying the lines one month before rehearsal. But there was one preview when I forgot the words and had to call, 'Line.' There is one section where I am talking 32 minutes almost nonstop." The previous role that most prepared her for this one was Izzy on Huff, a dark family comedy that had a two-season run on Showtime. "With her myriad colors and layers, Izzy was very much like Mrs. Venable," Danner notes. "Izzy could also be very vulnerable and thin-skinned and then the next minute overbearing and insensitive."

Danner has an impressive résumé in all media. Her film credits include The Last Kiss, The Prince of Tides, The Great Santini, and Sylvia, which starred her Oscar-winning daughter, Gwyneth Paltrow. Danner's even done a movie musical, 1776, singing and dancing as Martha Jefferson. Among her television credits are We Were the Mulvaneys (Emmy nomination), Back When We Were Grownups (Golden Globe nomination), St. Elsewhere, and Tattingers, the last created by her late husband, Bruce Paltrow. For her role on Will & Grace, she was tapped for two Emmy nominations, and she won two Emmys for her role on Huff.

Suddenly Last Summer marks Danner's fourth Roundabout production, having previously appeared in Moonlight, The Deep Blue Sea, and Follies, earning a Tony nomination for the latter. She has appeared in 11 Broadway productions, including 1969's Butterflies Are Free, her breakthrough role, for which she won a Tony Award; the original Broadway production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal in 1980; and the 1988 revival of A Streetcar Named Desire at Circle in the Square, both of which garnered her Tony nominations.

Perhaps she'd approach her career differently if she were starting out now, Danner suspects. "You have to be more ambitious today. There are more pressures and fewer chances to get started. When I was beginning, a young actor could go from repertory company to repertory company. I did that and loved it. I was also lucky. I got to Broadway a year after I came to New York. I starred in Butterflies Are Free and got a Tony for it. Right out of the gate. Maybe that's why I wasn't very gracious about it." She adds, "I wasn't driven. And right after Butterflies Are Free, I got married and then started a family. I always wanted that."

And for the next 20 years, Danner was committed to her family more than her career, though she'd take an occasional part in a film or on stage and performed every summer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where she and her family summered. In addition to Gwyneth, Danner is the mother of Jake Paltrow, a director. She has no regrets about the family-centered choices she has made. "Yet when I got the Emmy Award, I was thrilled," she admits. "There's a lot to be said for being recognized, especially after you've been in the business 40 years." Danner is also a committed environmentalist and an impassioned spokesperson on behalf of oral cancer research. Bruce Paltrow died of oral cancer in 2002.

Winning Early

Performing is in Danner's blood. Although her father was a banker, he and her mother were "glorious singers," Danner recalls. "In addition to performing at PTA shows, they sang with the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra, among other places." Danner's schoolmates at the Quaker school she attended included Mary Martin's daughter and Oscar Hammerstein's granddaughter, she says. "I always wanted to act. I always loved to inhabit another person's character to work out my own insanity."

Danner majored in theatre at Bard College, a "great experience," she says. "I really don't know anything about acting training today. I have no frame of reference. Formal training is good, but far more important, I believe, is just getting up on stage and doing it. That's one of the reasons the loss of repertory companies is so unfortunate."

When Danner graduated from college, she launched her career at the Theatre of Boston, a now-defunct repertory company where such notables as Jon Voight, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert Duvall got their starts. Acting in Boston served Danner well, not simply as a place to hone her craft but also as a steppingstone, landing her her first agent. He subsequently died, and she's had many agents since that time, but never a manager, though her daughter did for a while. "Truthfully, I don't know why anyone would need a manager if an agent is doing his job," Danner says. "But again, managers are outside of my frame of reference."

By contrast, one subject very much within her ken is the plight of women who want to maintain their careers and have families. Danner is the first to acknowledge that she is among the more fortunate: There was plenty of emotional support and no shortage of money, allowing her to be a stay-at-home mom and take acting jobs that excited her, without ever having to worry about bringing in a salary.

"Bruce used to say to me, 'I'll worry about the commerce. You do the art,' " she recalls. "No, I don't find it patronizing. The truth is he did the art as well. But he always said, 'Fulfill your soul.' While a lot of husbands would not have allowed their wives to come to New York to do three months of Betrayal, for example, Bruce made it possible for me to do that. When the kids were small, I took them with me.

"I know for most women this is a very difficult balancing act," she continues. "They're trying so hard to get everything right, and that's just not possible. You cannot be the perfect wife, the perfect mother, and the perfect actor all at the same time."

Danner concedes that, unlike other women, she was able to come back to her career full-time when she chose to do so: "In part that's because I was never fully out of it." Asked if her producer husband helped (or hindered) her career in Hollywood, Danner contends he had "no bearing on any of it. Until I got Will & Grace and Huff, I was only doing a small thing here and there. In Hollywood it's always catch as catch can." Danner is currently in the process of putting her California home on the market in order to move back to New York.

Acting with Gwyneth

But her years in Hollywood were not without their compensations. Playing Will's mother on Will & Grace was special fun, she says. "In some ways she was a comic version of Mrs. Venable, a ball-busting older lady with great humor." But playing the unstable, philandering Izzy on Huff was "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," she says. "I can't say I'll never do a television series again, but after that one it would be hard. It was like working in a repertory company." The critically praised program went off the air "because, outside of the major cities, there just weren't enough people watching it," Danner says. "I think the show eluded many people."

Still, she is grateful to cable television for many reasons, including "giving a tremendous boost to older women." Danner says she has gotten the best roles of her career over the last few years, "since I hit my late 50s."

One of the high points of her career was performing with her daughter in the film Sylvia, based on the life of poet Sylvia Plath. Gwyneth had the title role, and Danner played her mother. "We shot the film right after Bruce died," Danner remembers. "It was an escape and a cathartic experience for both of us. It was a particularly intense time, and I'm glad we were going through it together." Danner says she never had qualms about acting with her daughter and would do it again if the right material came along. She praises her daughter's talents, going so far as to say, "I learned a lot from Gwyneth. She has tremendous focus, concentration, and confidence. She is an instinctive actor."

Gwyneth is now a mom and Danner a grandmother, a role she relishes, pointing proudly to a photograph on her dressing-room wall featuring the grandchildren. "It's nice to be in a situation where I'm open to any project that might come my way -- as long as I can see my grandchildren," Danner says.

At the moment, however, Danner's thoughts are on the mother-son relationship in Suddenly Last Summer. She is convinced that the overly involved bond between the two has currency today. And so does the heightened theatrical aesthetic. "I hope audiences leave the theatre stunned, uplifted, and exhilarated by the language, the intensity, and the humor. I hope they'll feel they've had a complete theatrical experience. I think they hunger for this kind of work that they're usually denied." Beyond that, she emphasizes, "This play continues to have the power to shock."