Relishing a lead role that’s once in a lifetime
72-year-old stage, film and TV performer says she cherishes the range of emotions she got to express in acclaimed movie I’ll See You in My Dreams
Blythe Danner has become an overnight success, after 72 years.
It’s not that the Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress has been labouring in the showbiz vineyards all this time without being noticed. Far from it. Her work onstage, screen and television has earned her numerous honours and many devoted fans. Did you love her as Hank Azaria’s mother in Huff? Couldn’t get enough of her as Eric McCormack’s mother on Will & Grace? Done deal.
But it’s only in the past few weeks, as rave reviews have poured in for her first starring role in a film, I’ll See You In My Dreams (opening in Toronto on May 29), that the media are offering her the hats-in-theair adulation usually reserved for A-list stars.
“It’s been such a surprise that I can’t get over it,” she laughs on the phone from her California home. “I just go around smiling all day.”
Danner certainly knows all about the trappings of stardom, having lived with them through her children, actress Gwyneth Paltrow and director Jake Paltrow, but it’s not something she pays much attention to.
“When we get together, I’m just a mom and a grandmother. We talk about the kids and shopping, or what we’re going to have for dinner. We never discuss our professional plans with each other. In fact, I think Gwyneth was surprised when I started getting all this attention for the movie because she didn’t know I was playing the starring role.”
But then again, neither did Danner. When writer/ director Brett Haley sent her the script of I’ll See You In My Dreams, the story of a woman named Carol who begins a whole new life in her senior years, Danner automatically assumed she wasn’t being offered the leading part.
“I’m always playing the friend or the mother or the crazy lady down the street. I thought Brett wanted me to play one of the bridge club who act as Carol’s support group. When he told me he wanted me to play Carol, I really had to think about it.”
Why would she hesitate when opportunity knocked after so many years?
“Frankly, I was worried about my stamina,” she says. “I’d never carried an entire film on my shoulders and I wasn’t sure I should try it for the first time at 72.
“We didn’t have a big budget and we were shooting it in 18 days. That’s really very short. Luckily, I had the weekends off, which gave me a chance to rest up.” Her love for the material itself also sustained her. “I love this film so much,” she declares fiercely. “I’m not usually so enthusiastic about many of my projects, but I cherish the range of emotions this lets me use. The script did reflect a lot of the things I had gone through in life.”
It’s been a pretty amazing life, for the record, which began when she was born into an upscale Philadelphia family in 1943, with siblings who have also gone into various forms of the arts.
Danner went to a Quaker high school and an experimental liberal arts college before plunging headlong into the theatre world.
And what a plunge. Her first professional job was in one of the biggest flops in the history of musical theatre, 1967’s Mata Hari.
Never heard of it? No wonder. The saga of the infamously sexy First World War spy, it starred Pernell Roberts ( Bonanza) and Viennese fashion model Marisa Mell and was directed by film great Vincente Minnelli, who hadn’t been near a theatre in almost 30 years.
“It was an such an eye-opener for me,” chuckles Danner. “My very first Broadway show and people used to walk around backstage muttering, ‘This is a writeoff.’ Producer David Merrick would just lurk and scowl. We had extraordinary sets and costumes, but the rest wasn’t so hot.
“I remember the funniest thing that happened. Our first preview was a benefit for the Democratic Party, full of society types. Mata Hari was shot in the final
“Frankly, I was worried about my stamina. I’d never carried an entire film on my shoulders and I wasn’t sure I should try it for the first time at 72.” BLYTHE DANNER ACTRESS
scene, the doctor took her pulse and pronounced her dead. I was part of the group singing in the background.”
And at this point, she does a very funny, breathless version of one of the songs she sang. Then she starts giggling as she remembers it. “The curtain fell slowly, but just as it was about to clear Marisa’s face, she reached up and scratched her nose. The audience couldn’t stop laughing. I mean she was supposed to be dead, for crying out loud!
“Somebody asked her why she did it and she said, ‘Vell, my nose vas itchy.’
“I think we closed the next night. I remember that the original movie of The Producers was playing at the same time and we all went to see it and laughed and laughed because it was just like what we had been through.”
Luckily, Danner didn’t get discouraged by that experience because in less than two years she was starring in a hit commercial comedy called Butterflies Are Free, for which she won a Tony Award.
An unusual career followed, in which she played interesting roles in quality movies but never rose to stardom, and appeared on countless TV shows, usually as someone’s mother. She starred in some of the great roles of classical theatre onstage. (Her Viola in the 1972 Lincoln Center production of Twelfth Night remains my favourite portrayal of that part ever.)
“I was never interested in being a star. Honestly. I was interested in doing good work, being with talented people and raising my family.”
She married director and producer Bruce Paltrow in 1969 and they stayed together happily until his death in 2002.
Playing the widow Carol in her current movie gave her “a lot of things I could tap into. One of the good things about being my age is that there’s so many feelings, so many experiences you have access to. And when you realize you don’t have unlimited time left, you’re not shy about using what you can.”
But unlike Carol, who put her life on hold after her partner’s death, Danner did the opposite.
“It may sound terrible, but I felt fortunate after Bruce died, because people must have sensed my need and work started pouring in. And I embraced it wholeheartedly. I don’t mean to be dramatic, but work saved my life.”
One of everyone’s favourite scenes in I’ll See You In My Dreams is in a karaoke bar where Carol sings a moving version of “Cry Me A River.” Danner lifts the veil on another part of her past to explain how she did it.
“Music was my second love. Theatre was my first. In college, I used to sing with a jazz group and the great Bill Evans’ manager saw me and wanted to record me, but I had cold feet. I’ve sung onstage several times since then, but I wanted to return to that world and I got a chance to do it again.”
The one thing the wise Danner doesn’t claim any knowledge of is what happens to us after death.
“I ask Bruce all the time what it’s like where he is and he never answers me. I guess it will have to stay a mystery.”