‘Cage’ star becomes Oklahoma Icon
With four Primetime Emmys, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and a Golden Globe, Alfre Woodard has learned quite a bit over the years about the safe storage of her trophies, especially after a powerful earthquake rattled her California home in 1994.
“I had Emmys up high on a bookshelf — I had floor-toceiling bookshelves … and I had two (Emmys) at that point — they came down and embedded through the carpet into the hardwood. One of them crashed down to the Earth, and the other one was smushed,” she said.
“I have other awards that they weigh anywhere from 15 to 20 pounds, and I learned to not keep them up high. So, they actually sit on the floor around the house. But my floors are very clean, and I see them because we sit on the floor a lot.”
Woodard, 65, added to her status as Oklahoma’s most awarded actress when she received the Oklahoma Film Icon Award during the 2018 deadCenter Film Festival.
“It’s very attractive,” Woodard told me, studying the sleek trophy. “This one’ll go probably on the shelf above right on my desk in the office.”
The Icon Award honors Oklahomans whose success in the film and entertainment industry has drawn positive attention to the state, and the charming and talented Tulsa native spent more than an hour regaling a home-state audience of film fans, moviemakers and several of her relatives with stories from her career during “An Evening with Alfre Woodard,” which deadCenter organizers asked me to host. Our wide-ranging conversation flowed from the way her Oklahoma upbringing has influenced her to the secrets of her long career to hints about