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Holland Taylor knows the punch in of woman shes been famous for playing for decades.
An elegant, high-powered bitch with a delicious sense of irony.
Usually rich, usually divorced, usually the smartest person in the room.
Acidic and authoritative, but unbelievably charming.
Thats what an acting teacher once said to me about character actors, particularly in movies.
How are you and where are you?Im in Los Angeles at the moment.
I dont know when Im going to see my property in New York again.
Its been five months.
Where are you in L.A.?
Where are you staying?I have a house here in the low hills.
I mean, Im an elder, so Im not supposed to be going out and about.
And it feels very, very strange after only four months.
Im afraid weve got a while to go.
So we go back and forth.
And of course, I wont be able to work until this is over.
Except for very unusual circumstances.
That sounds kind of like an ideal relationship scenario regardless.
Having time together and apart.I think it is.
Lets talk aboutLegally Blonde.
And that was a wonderful, wonderful experience.
And I was actually sick when I did it, which was a great life lesson.
The whole time you filmed?Well, the part was not that large.
I had thatbig scene in the classroom,which is my favorite scene.
One of my favorite scenes as an actor on film is that classroom scene.
It was so well directed and also well shot.
Tony Richmond was a great, great director of photography.
And that scene was … Yeah, I was really under it that day.
You cant tell at all.
What did you love about that scene?First of all, it was very well structured.
Ive been very lucky and for whatever reason, I get to play a lot of professional women.
Its always in relationship to the man.
Thats our unconscious image of the world because those are womens places.
So Ive had a couple of best friend roles.
It was very, very exciting.
But then she had to bring down the iron fist of what she was trying to teach her.
[Professor Stromwell] toys with them, in a way.
Which is the thing, of course.
Im a stage-trained actress, not a movie-trained actress.
I didnt do films and stuff until I was in my late 30s.
I dont have a natural feel for it.
So I moved all around as I would on stage.
It was really a stage performance that was very well filmed.
And Reese is just remarkable.
And it was just a classic case of playing a professional person who had real resonance with the audience.
And so that was an iconic moment for me.
Its more than 20 years.
!pic.twitter.com/Zj7ZMwIX5I
Nineteen, I think!
What do you remember about working with Reese?You poor reporters.[Laughs.
]You always have to ask us for fun stories.
Ive seen Reese a couple of times socially since.
Shes just a great girl.
And for that,the Johnny Cash movie,she is so versatile.
And you wouldnt think she necessarily would be.
And yet have very little sense of all the other people in the movie.
Victor Garber and I are friends, but we never had anything to do together in that movie.
Do you consider yourself primarily a character actor?Well, perforce I have become one.
I never was an ingenue.
So I could never be like the young leading lady.
There wouldnt be stories about women just living.
And it was an existential story.
It was sort of thewhyof his life.
And the subject of the play was just him, what it was to be alive as him.
I played his wife.
And the answer was no.
You couldnt just have a story about a woman and what it was for her to be alive.
It could only be a man.
Only a man could be a hero of such a story, or the protagonist of such a story.
So I got to play, loosely, the professional.
So I think that turns out to be character roles.
Not the mother or the wife or the girlfriend.
Also, when I was younger, I seemed older.
Much older than I was.
And now Im playing a lot of roles younger than I am.
OnHollywood,Ellen was meant to be something in her 60s.
And I remember Ryan Murphy said, Oh, you might play 50.
I said, Youve lost your mind, Ryan.
Wont be the first time.
But, yeah, I dont generally play 77, which is what I am.
This character was marvelous to play.
You want a larger role.
You want more ground.
And it had to go through a very narrow neck of the bottle.
The analogy was perfect.
You just come in: Hello, everybody.
Nice to meet you.
How do you do?
Being a character actor means you get great parts.
It doesnt always mean the part is very big.
But I made up for it by doingAnn, in which I had two hours of uninterrupted character revelations.
Some of your most iconic parts all fit into a similar box.
Theres a deliciousness there.
So you get typecast.
Typecasting on the one hand is great, if you get typecast in great roles.
But its also a form of laziness.
We just get used to seeing somebody a certain way, and thats how we want to.
I remember about 10, 12 years ago, saying to my agents, Mark my words.
Weve got to think out of the box.
I cant go on playing all these roles forever like this.
In recent years, I gotMr.
Mercedes,which I dont know whether youve seen it.
It was on Audience TV.
That was a very warm and interesting character.
I just had this feeling.
And what it turned out to be wasAnn.
I didAnn, and it was actually a mission.
I really felt like that was a calling that maybe Ann Richards instigated from heaven.
But that was a compulsion.
I had to do that.
As it turns out, it was the role of a lifetime.
How would you describe the way you were previously typecast?
There is some overlap [with me].
But I was certainly not rich.
And Im not a bitch in my life, at all.
In fact, Ive been involved in civil-rights issues since I was in college.
I am personally not that woman that Im sometimes cast as.
But I sure like playing them, because I usually play them with a satirical bent.
I usually delight in revealing their unconscious foibles.
I delight in revealing how they think everybodys got to pay.
Where doesThe L Words Peggy Peabody fit in there for you?
Because I love her so much.Peggy Peabody!
Peggy Peabody is absolutely one of my all time favorites, right from the name on.
Peggy Peabody is a great name.
I actually know the Peabody branch in New York.
And its a very elegant family.
And Peggy, you think of the name Peggy Guggenheim, who was a great art collector and heiress.
So the combination was too great.
This is a very big-minded, fun personality who was quite self-aware of her own grandiosity.
And she made fun of herself in some of her pronouncements and was quite satirical.
Yeah, I loved that part.
I loved that part.
And I just made up that stuff because I have an archeologist friend.
And Im not political in that sense.
I dont join clubs.
Certainly the homosexual issue is completely different in ancient countries like Italy or Europe.
We just all have to grow up.
Our society is growing up, for sure.
So I never hid my life.
But I didnt speak about it because I was offended by the idea that I should be expected to.
Was that at all part of the appeal for you?Well, no, its a wonderful role.
And actually Peggy wasnt gay.
She ends up with a woman at the end, though.[Laughs.
]Well, thats Ilene.
In that first episode where Peggy appears, she says, I was a lesbian once in 1974.
And Bette says, Just 1974?
And she says, Yeah, that was enough.
So, she didnt have any judgment about it.
If thats ending up with a woman, then thats ending up with a woman.
Why wouldnt they be your friends?
Youre in the same world.
And most of the people I know are in show business.
I dont know anyone who has so many really good friends.
And she is very committed to those friendships and talks to them regularly on the phone.
Doesnt let too much time go by before they see one another.
And keeps up with what theyre doing and their children and their lives and their jobs.
I dont have that data pipe at all.
I was very isolated.
Walking alone in the city.
So, basically, I traveled a lot in my middle years.
I went to Paris probably ten times.
I went to England probably that many times too.
I identify myself there.
I like the task.
I like the nature of the work.
Its problem-solving in a way.
I guess the thing thats hard about it is the sedentary nature of it.
The obligation to do it is not a pleasant feeling.
Am I making you feel terrible right now?
No, youre right.
Im just like, Shes right.Dont you find the pandemic has its own business?
I havent read a book.
I havent read a book since this pandemic.
I read so much on the computer now because of the magazine articles.
I readTheNew Yorkeron the computer.
And its for the birds.
But I certainly cant regret it.
But then when it came time to re-up six years later, I actually didnt.
People couldnt believe that I did not re-up that show.
Some things are more important than others.
As I say, I live my life in public.
I do everything that I would do if I were an unknown person married to a man.
I just live my life.
Or lets say its not private.
I dont have private communications with her in public.
I dont talk about the private aspect of our relationship in public.
I live in the public.
And so Im on Twitter.
Sarah doesnt do Twitter so much.
I do love your Twitter.Thank you.
Well, I have a lot of opinions.
I also have a lot of questions.
Im actually sort of tweeting less I have less to say about everything.
So its not like I have a lot of fresh things to say.
you’re able to only say, Oh my God, so many times.
Like just tweet, OMG every day.
I did notice that youretweeted a tweet from God himself,saying, Once you die, thats it.
What was that about?Oh, I love God.
I love the sense of humor.
God has a great sense of humor.
And a clever sense of irony.
And he often tweets things that are so heartbreaking and true about life in my view.
No, hes a tonic.
I really, really think thats a remarkably clever Twitter account.
Well, thats all I have for you.
You have a lot of time off.
You have a very changeable life.
I think its a matchless life.
So its a matchless life to have.
