The packed-house audience that filled Santa Barbara’s Lobrero Theater laughed and cried their way through a screening of Duncan Tukcer’s highly praised film Transamerica featuring Felicity Huffman’s Academy Award-nominated performance as a transgendered woman who discovers the son she never knew she fathered during her life as a man.
And the crowd was brought to their feet for a rousing ovation when Hollywood star Santa Barbara resident Tim Matheson brought Huffman herself to the stage for an insightful look into the mindset and methodology of the actress who’s snared an Emmy, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award in the past year and just might have an Oscar in her future. Hollywood.com has the highlights:
On her method for finding her character in Transamerica:
“I found the transgender issue to be difficult at first, because I didn’t know anyone in the transgender community, or as Andrea James says, ‘You didn’t know that you knew anyone in the transgender community.’ So firstly I had to look at her internal journey to see if I could connect. That was a journey of becoming who you really are and to manifest who you really are. I thought, ‘Yes. I know that.’ And I certainly know the pain of waking up and not liking yourself and feeling like outsider and an outcast. To varying degrees everyone has felt that. So then when I felt that I could understand that, I just jumped into the research of being trans-gendered, and I read every book that I could find and watched every documentary. I worked with two wonderful women, Andrea James and the actress Calpurnia Adams, who did everything from going through the script with me page by page to telling their stories. I went to transgender conventions. I worked with a woman who coaches men who are becoming women. And then the final piece, it was about a two months journey, but the final piece was my voice because the testosterone changes a lot, but it doesn’t change your voice. So you still sound like James Earl Jones, but you look like Kate Moss. So transgender women spend a lot of time finding their female voice, and also you don’t want to sound like Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot either. But I didn’t have the chest capacity or the testosterone to make a resonance and so I had to figure out a way to drop my voice, as if I was trying for a higher voice…I tried to hide how big I was. That made people go, ‘What is she hiding? She must be big.’ I brought myself in. I brought my arms in. I cupped my hands and I made my walk as streamlined as possible, which gives you an odd gait, and then I learned femininity like it was a foreign language.”
On the breaking through after years of struggling as an actor:
“By the time that you’re in your thirties or forties, you’ve had the stuffing knocked out of you a bunch of times. Five percent of the screen actor’s guild makes a living wage. That’s a living wage, and not people who are, like me right now, in a hit TV show. So I’ve had the stuffing knocked out of me a bunch of times, which is not just particular to me. I set the bar pretty low then, too. I was like, ‘I’d love to be a working actress. If I could get paid for it, fantastic.’ The fact that I’m this old and I’m in this position…[high pitched squeal] I’m nominated for an Academy Award! I can’t believe it. It’s been amazing. It’s been amazing. My husband said that it’s like I’m in another universe where all my dreams have come true and he can’t relate to me at all.”
On keeping hope alive during the lean years:
“Wasn’t it Abraham Lincoln that, when you look at his election record, he ran for county so and so. Failed. He ran for this. He failed. He ran for that. He failed. He tried to get elected for that. He failed. And his advice was never give up. Never give up. Never give up. What did I do to buoy myself? I cried a lot. I had a lot of friends, and I knew that it was tough, and honest to God I wasn’t good at anything else. So there weren’t a lot of options. On the other hand, my husband is good at a lot of things, and when he couldn’t get anywhere with his acting career he started writing, and then his writing sort of took off and then sort of went down, and then his acting would pick up and then that would die, and he tried directing. So as he says, ‘There are many rooms in the house and if one of them doesn’t open for you try another one.’”
On working with her husband, actor William H. Macy:
“I know that usually it’s hard to work with your husband–and certainly hard to play tennis with your husband – but working with Bill, it’s how we started in the Atlantic Theater, and has always been a joy. He raises the level of your game. He’s also a gentleman and so he’s great to have around the set, and he knows my work so well and he’s a really tough critic. I actually work well with that. I remember that he had a part on Sports Night for about five episodes and we did a first reading and I was like, ‘Yeah, this is my show, my TV show.’ And we did a reading and did a run through and he went, ‘What are you doing?‘ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘You’re not listening. You’re not in the moment.’ So on one hand it can kind of go like that, and then on the other hand there is someone in your life who is your North Star and that is really great.”
On how much of herself is in the characters she plays:
“A lot. Well, our job as actors is to tell stories and the interesting ones are usually about the truth of the human soul whether it’s a comedy or a drama and so the soul that I’m working off of is mine. If it doesn’t make sense to me cognitively or emotionally I usually can’t do it and I’m usually bad at it and I usually get fired which has happened several times. So a lot of me is in the roles.”
On David Mamet:
“I think that I’m just born under a lucky star. I trained with Mamet for years. He was my acting teacher and then he started putting me in plays, and I guess that writers who go to Mamet plays have strong and specific voices as well. So Aaron [Sorkin] cast me based on seeing me in a Mamet play. Duncan Tucker cast me based on seeing me in a Mamet play. I owe Mamet my whole career. So it’s not a choice that I made. I think that I just landed in the lucky seat there…I think that Mamet did me a great service, other than casting me, in that his training me was as a playwright, and according to that the actor’s job is to fulfill the playwrights intentions. That’s very different than most actors are trained, where all the spotlight is on you. I’m there for the playwright, and he’s very much about the words and you saying the words in order. And Mamet likes iambic pentameter most of the time, so you don’t want to screw it up. He’s a genius, but he’s one of those really smart people that makes you feel smart. You know how some smart people make you feel stupid? He makes you feel smart and capable and good enough, and as a director he’s very, very exacting. John Lahr–the guy who writes in The New Yorker–wrote about it once, and he said it so eloquently. He said Mamet takes an actor and squeezes it so tight through almost like a funnel, but what emerges from the other side, if you can make it through, is so pure. That’s what he is like as a director.”
On the differences between working in film versus television:
“I haven’t done many films, but certainly with this film we were on locations and it’s a small indie, so you’re just doing it 24/7. You just eat, breathe and sleep the movie. And my experience in television has been fantastic–I love TV and I have a great time doing it, because it’s like summer stock. Every eight days you put on a one act play and you’re always behind you don’t quite know what you’re doing, everyone is tired, but it’s also great. There’s a real community and everyone gets together and smokes cigarettes and complains and then goes and acts and eats too much. So it’s really fun. I love to eat. Everyone is like, ‘That sounds horrible.’ But it’s really wonderful getting to act Marc Cherry’s words every week, and his voice with that milieu of Desperate Housewives is so appealing and wicked and delightful. The fact that it’s lightening in a bottle and that I’m going to have a job next year is phenomenal.”
On Oprah Winfrey fulfilling her fantasy of singing backup for Tina Turner:
“She said, ‘My job is to make dreams come true.’ And my heart sank. I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ She said, ‘You’re going to be a backup singer.’ I was thinking that it was going to be for, like, Toto, and then she said Tina Turner, and I was ecstatic. But I don’t sing a lot and I don’t dance, okay? They were all onstage and there’s Tina Turner who thought that my name was Susan the entire time, but I didn’t care – I was not about to correct her. She was like, ‘Susan, in this part we turn around.’ I was like, ‘Okay, Tina!’ She was like, ‘Susan, what are you wearing?’ I said, ‘Oh, whatever you want!’ And so they ran through the song, which was completely different from what I listened to on my little recorder. It was really fast and short. They ran through it once and said, ‘Okay, come on up and do it with us.’ And there’s the backup singers doing the moves, and then I sort of ran through it once with them not knowing the moves, and then they went, ‘Okay, see you tomorrow.’ And I was like, ‘What?!‘ So I went to the camera guy and I said, ‘Can I have a cassette of the rehearsal.’ So I got that and then I went to the backup singer and I said, ‘Would you please sing into my walkman?’ because it’s a harmony and you can’t hear yourself. Then I went home to my hotel room and I put the cassette in and I’d practice the moves, and then I played the thing and practiced the harmony until twelve o’clock at night. I was so freaked out. So it felt like finals, but then on the day it was fantastic.”
On prepping for the high-fashion aspect of the Oscar red carpet:
“There’s all the dresses. You have to pick the dresses and you have to take a shower You have a stylist who comes and says, ‘What about these dresses?’ Then you have people going, ‘Wear our jewelry.’ I haven’t chosen a designer yet, but I’m narrowing it down. That’s as close as I can tell. I’m choosing between red and blue and I don’t know. I’m looking at sketches. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at sketches, but every sketch looks good. They sketch it and you go, ‘That’s good. I like that.’ So I haven’t chosen anything except for comfortable shoes. I am going to take comfortable shoes.”
