Allison Janney’s Oscar joy
She was a late bloomer but nobody doubts her acting chops now – even if she always plays the smart one or the drunk one!
SHE’S carved a career for herself playing tough moms – she was Juno’s stepmother in the quirky hit Juno, the strict mom in the musical Hairspray, Emma Stone’s iron-willed mother in The Help, and she currently plays Anna Faris’ rebellious mother in the sitcom Mom.
But none of these roles have come close to her portrayal of Tonya Harding’s hard-as-nails mom in the movie I, Tonya. As the chainsmoking, mean-spirited LaVona Golden who belittles and abuses her Olympic ice-skating daughter, Allison Janney isn’t easy to watch.
But hers has been hailed as the performance of the movie and the standout role of the 58-year-old star’s career. And the Oscar judges agreed, awarding her with a gold-plated statue for best supporting actress.
This was the cherry on top of a heady award season for Allison, in which she scooped a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Golden Globe and a Bafta.
“I did it all by myself,” the 1,83m tall star joked in her thank-you speech at the Oscars – before quickly adding “nothing [could be] further from the truth”.
Looking every inch a Hollywood star in a sweeping red Reem Acra gown, she was almost unrecognisable from the drab, bespectacled character she played in the movie. As she credited her co-stars and family, she also made sure to mention the ear-nibbling parakeet who sits on her shoulder in the film. “He elevated my work,” she quipped.
Until now Allison had earned kudos mainly for her work on the small screen. She’s a seven-time Emmy winner for her roles on Mom (2), Masters of Sex (1) and The West Wing (4). But I, Tonya has thrust her into a new level of fame.
“It’s a new arena for me. I’ve been in movies that have had recognition but
I’ve never been singled out like this before. It’s exciting.”
Yet the journey’s been nerve-wracking too. She told reporters backstage at the Oscars, “I didn’t dare to dream of things like this because I didn’t want to be disappointed. I think at a certain point I’d given up thinking of this happening for me because I wasn’t getting the kinds of roles in film that would give me attention like this.”
Luckily for her, her good screenwriter friend Steven Rogers wrote the LaVona role with her in mind “to show what I could do”, she says. “I’ll never be able to repay him. I think I’m going to get him a Rolex.”
Testament to her work ethic, she was back on the set of Mom the day after the Oscars, her new trophy in tow. Anna Faris was quick to swipe it off her. “Allison won!” she said in an Instagram post. “And I got to hold it! It’s heavy as sh*t!”
The post shows Allison wearing a top that reads, “I survived awards season and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”
Yeah, right.
ONE of the things that made her I, Tonya performance so convincing is that Allison identifies with the ice-skating world.
Growing up in Dayton, Ohio, she loved skating. She had a coach and her parents would get up at dawn to take her to the rink, which was owned by her real estate-broker father.
“I know what it takes in my small way, what kind of a commitment it is and what it means to get up at 5am and drive someone to ice-skating. It costs a lot of money; it’s a very expensive sport.”
But any dream she had of taking it further came to a brutal end at the age of 17 when she fell through a plate-glass window at a party.
“There was a game where couples had balloons tied around their ankles and you tried to pop the other couples’ balloons,” she told entertainment site indiewire.com. “I was cheating and had my balloon tied around my knee because I had a strapless long dress on. Someone stepped on the back of my dress and it ripped and started to fall off. There was a porch with sliding doors and I hit it and the glass fell on top of me.” She cut a tendon and lost “three-quarters of my blood”.
Skating dreams over, she turned to acting with the support of her mom, Macy, a stage actress, and her dad, Jervis, who was also a keen jazz musician.
But it was only after acting legend Paul Newman directed her in a college play that the performing bug bit hard. He and his wife, Joanne Woodward, took her under their wing and mentored her, encouraging her to move to New York and study at the Neighbourhood Playhouse.
After years of “dabbling about” on stage she broke into TV and movies, happy to take on any project that allowed her to flex her acting muscle. She really started making people take notice when she played steely presidential press secretary (and later chief of staff) CJ Cregg in The West Wing from 1999 to 2006.
Roles poured in on the silver screen too. She played Meryl Streep’s lover in the 2002 movie The Hours and the two shared a passionate on-screen kiss.
In a recent appearance on The Graham Norton Show, Allison paid tribute to Meryl, saying the acting legend helped her look good in the scene.
“She actually pulled back the skin on my face and kissed me. She said to me, ‘I’m going to do you a favour – you’re going to thank me for it later’.”
Despite her success she describes herself as “a late bloomer”.
“When I won my first Emmy I remember thinking, ‘ This is the first time I actually feel I’m an actress.’
“My career started very late – I mean, my Broadway debut was at 38. I was a late bloomer in a lot of areas of my life.”
ALLISON plays her personal cards close to her chest and doesn’t talk about her lovelife much – except to say she’ll never get married.
She’s dating Philip Joncas, a 37-year-old film production manager. The two were first photographed together at the Minions premiere in June 2015 and three years later they still seem to be going strong.
She once described him to E! News as “pretty handsome” but no one should wait for wedding bells to ring as Allison says, “I don’t believe in that institution.”
In 2011 she suffered a personal tragedy when her brother, Henry, committed suicide after battling drug addiction.
Allison paid tribute to him in her Oscar speech, holding her award aloft, saying, “This is for you Hal, you’re always in my heart.”
She’s described his death as being a “life-changer”.
“I spent a long time trying to get him sober, I sent him to countless rehabs. And when I lost him, this show Mom came along two years after.”
Allison plays a recovering alcoholic in the sitcom. “I thought it was time to show a family struggling with this, because it seems like these days everybody is struggling or recovering from something. I wanted to show what that’s like.”
Allison recalls how a casting agent once told her she was so tall and “the only roles I could play were lesbians and aliens”.
“But my height has made me more of a character actress. I get cast as either the smartest woman in the room or the drunkest woman in the room, and a lot of stuff in between. But I do well getting those kinds of parts.”
And so say all of us.