Martindale says acting is perfect fit for her active imagination

Award-winning actress Margo Martindale considers the colorful imagination she experienced as a child both a curse and a blessing.

“When I was a kid, my imagination led me to great fear of being blown away by a tornado, witches and ghosts. And throughout my life I go too far in it. It takes everything to get on a plane. I’m still afraid of most everything,” she says, seated in a brocade chair at a small round table in a guest room here.

“The world I can go to in my head is so alive that acting is a perfect place for me. I can use my imagination, and it becomes real. I did it always in my backyard, but I didn’t know I was acting. It was playing. It was makebelieve. It was being somebody new all the time.”

Fans of Martindale already know she’s somebody new all the time. She’s portrayed everything from a small town bartender to a KGB agent. She was the selfish mother in “Million Dollar Baby” and earned an Emmy for her role as the matriarch drug lord in “Justified.” In her latest incarnation, she’s transformed into a canny bail bondsman who knows more than she lets on in “Sneaky Pete” now streaming on Amazon.

That little girl in her backyard tried on every persona she could think of, Martindale said. “I was a hairdresser. I was the head of an orphanage. I directed shows. I became somebody else. I was a schoolteacher. I was really mean to some people. These were who I became in my backyard. This imagination is wonderful, but it takes me down paths that I have to stop myself from thinking about because it causes debilitating fear — fear of bricks falling, fear of planes falling out of the sky, fear of terrorists, bridges crashing. There was a time when I thought people had guns in the front row (of the theater). I went onstage anyway,” she laughs, “even if they were going to shoot me for what I was doing.”

For years Martindale prospered in supporting roles, and no one shot her. Her face was familiar, but few people knew her name. “There was a time when I thought I could do something else. What, I’m not sure,” said Martindale, who’s wearing a rust-red silk blouse with Dolman sleeves and black pants.

“I could be a research scientist, that’s where I’d always go — then another (acting) job would come along. I remember after I did a show on Broadway, this was 2004, and I had ‘Million Dollar Baby’ come out — which was a big step. I didn’t have a job for six months, and I thought, ‘... What am I going to do now?’ I went back to try to do commercials, and people were mean to me.”

The mean people were other actors competing for the same commercial. “‘What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘Well, I need a job, too.’ I got a commercial or two, sure. But the people in the thing said, ‘She’s in the movies. She’s been on Broadway. What’re YOU doing here?’ ‘I need a job just like you.’”

Good at math and science as a kid, Martindale said her parents didn’t mind when she took a shine to acting. “My brothers were famous athletes, and I was a girl so it didn’t really matter what I did. I was going to get married anyway or something … Then I got 22 scholarships to school, and my daddy said, ‘Stud fee,’ meaning he was going to be the stud for anybody who came along because his children were doing really well.”

It was her choir director who first noticed her. “I came from very small town in Texas and was a cheerleader, and the choir teacher said, ‘You have a loud voice, why don’t you come audition for the musical?’ ‘Done.’” The musical was “Bye, Bye Birdie,” and she played Rosie Alvarez.

While she was struggling to work as an actress, Martindale held down almost as many odd jobs as the parts she played. “I always could make a dollar in many, many, many different ways: private investigator, spa consultant, waitress for a Weight Watchers restaurant, waitress at other places. I coached people. I worked in three offices. I was good at answering the phone and at private investigating.”

She had learned early on to roll with the punches. She had spent six years of her life in a body brace. “From 12 to 18 in high school,” she recalled.

“I got to take it off to go to school, but I put it back on when I got home. That molded my life. It was scoliosis probably caused by polio — that last epidemic of polio that hit Texas in 1953. They can never be certain of that, but I was very sick at that time and in the hospital, and the girl behind me got polio. The doctor said that’s what he suspected.”

She lost her father when she was 20 and recently lost her brother, Tim. Both events weigh heavily on her, filling her eyes with tears.

A question about her husband, musician Bill Boals, brings her smile back. “He makes me laugh,” she says. “He’s ridiculous. For 31 years he’s made me laugh.”