[IMG:L]It is hard to imagine actresses Lisa Kudrow and Virginia Madsen worrying about getting the pink slip on their next big project, but they do! This and more was revealed when the two teamed up for an actors coffee talk at the Los Angeles Film Festival last week. Kudrow, best known for her role on Friends, and Madsen, who received an Oscar nomination for Sideways, spoke candidly with moderator Elizabeth Pena and the crowd of festival goers about their early days in Hollywood, ageism, and more.
How did you keep from getting discouraged when you first started out?
Lisa Kudrow: Well, I think it is a fine line between self confidence and being a little delusional. It is okay because anything I heard from a teacher that was not “God, you are awful” or “Oh my God that was horrible.” Then it was a huge complement. If someone said “That was good.” I would say “See, that was good.” Honest to God that’s how…if I made a joke at a party and someone said “Oh my God you are really funny.” I would think “That person thinks I’m really funny.” I would just hold onto any scrap.
How do you deal with inexperienced actors?
Virginia Madsen: I get them to drink a lot. No, I’m serious. Usually some phone calls and meetings. I get to know them and their process, their work if they haven’t done a feature; maybe they’ve done a short and ask them how they are preparing. Why they are doing this, if they wrote it, just asking them more about themselves and their process to get to know them and then drinking after that. You know going out for coffee, spending time together, going out to dinner just getting to know someone like an old friend. Then I feel at ease that way as well.
LK: That’s a lot of work (laughs).
Do you still get nervous? What is your trick to shut everything out?
LK: I’m still worried I’m going to get fired. I’m afraid you are going to send me out of this room. Scott [Prendergast] is here and on the very first day of working on his movie Kabluey we were just chit chatting and he casually asked how I had prepared for the role…I said “I don’t do a lot of that” and then I thought “Oh, alright I’m going to get fired.” Then I did my scene and then he said “Okay, that was good.” And I thought “I’m going to be fired!”
VM: I have that fear too. I have such a fear of being fired. Well they cast me, but …
[IMG:R]Do you encounter ageism in Hollywood? Especially in television, where most female roles are for women under 30?
LK: Yeah, except thanks to Desperate Housewives that completely changed.
VM: And especially with the cable networks. There is a lot of work for us there, especially for women going into their 50s. Now it is kind of alright to be in your 40s – they think we are still cool or we know things (laughs).
Do you prefer comedy or drama? Do you have a different approach that you take for each?
VM: I don’t know if you’ve ever done something where people thought it was funny and said “Do that thing again!” and then you’re like “I don’t want to do it again.” I kind of felt like that and you have to be really brave to risk it again.
Lisa, you did Friends for such a long time, what is the biggest difference between working on a sitcom as opposed to a film?
LK: Free time. It is so different, because it was not just a sitcom, but a multi-camera half hour comedy so you just shoot it one day a week in front of an audience and you are rehearsing or not the rest of the time, so there was just a ridiculous amount of free time. Like a part time job, after the first five years, once you know what you are doing.
You had such a great dynamic on the show. Chemistry is everything…
LK: Well yes, I think that is true for a lot of things. I know it is just acting and you don’t always get along with the people you work with, but for a TV show you know where it could go on indefinitely you’ve got to just be the part. For a lot of casts and TV shows they are just looking for people who just are that person. It is a little easier. So we all just decided we would be friends from the pilot on.
VM: When you are working in a comedy, you know as far as making choices and doing it over and over again, how do you keep it spontaneous – not just week to week, but on an actual taping day?
LK: You have to forget about the audience, at some point you have to decide that the audience doesn’t count anymore because they are just not going to laugh in the live audience. You start thinking about the people in their living rooms who will be watching it and that is who I had to focus on. At times I would even get a little cranky at the audience just because “I can’t please you! I can’t care about you!”
Virginia, you did the movie Dune, which I imagine was a big budget movie…
VM: It was a huge budget movie. That was like 1983. That was my first, I had done a TV movie back in Chicago, but it was my first Hollywood job …the monologue that I had, it was a science fiction movie, so a lot of the words that I was saying were either made up words or words that I couldn’t pronounce so I had to memorize that and then basically stare into the camera and just say this really long thing…I was getting make up and hair done and Arnold Schwarzenegger was next to me as Conan and I was trying to memorize while looking at his enormous, quite beautiful chest with a gash on it that I was quite fascinated by, and I was trying to memorize this thing so once that was done I basically had to just stand there in the gown and watch all these amazing actors who were from the World Shakespeare Company and Sting with his orange hair and no clothes on…
[IMG:L]Lisa, how did you segway into acting? I read that you were in medical school?
LK: I wasn’t in medical school. I studied biology in college and I wanted nothing to do with acting…When I was a kid I always loved acting and I shoved it out of my head all together through high school and college. Then you know what, oh God, I don’t know how to explain it. I heard a voice, my voice, but in my head (laughs). It wasn’t telling me to do naughty things. I was driving and I heard some promo on the radio for a sitcom and I remember thinking “Oh that is just so over the top, they should be more subtle, I’ll do it better when I have my own sitcom.” I was applying for graduate programs for a field of biology that I was interested in and then it just kept coming, the thought or voice. I don’t know what to call it. It was strange and really out of nowhere and then I just gave up and said alright and I signed up for Groundlings…my brother’s best friend Jon Lovitz had just gotten onto Saturday Night Live and so I said alright “I’m going to do this.” And he said “Go to Groundlings I learned the most there.”
What are some of your approaches to character when you are working on film, theater or television?
LK: Well, I don’t do much. Can you tell? I don’t do much, because I’m taking everything from the script first and that impression.
VM: I don’t do the kind of preparation that I did when I was 27, thank God, because I used to really over do it so much, so by the time I got to something like Sideways I knew not to study it too much…with that character I had to really show this very vulnerable sort of sad side of myself so it was important not to cover it with technique and tricks or research – well, I did research the wine quite a bit.
Is there a character you are dying to play?
LK: I have a character that I did in the Groundlings that I can’t wait until I’m 70 to play. I can’t wait, I mean I can wait. I’ll wait. Even in animation I tried to do this voice and they made me redo everything. They said “It doesn’t sound like you.”
VM: It is the same. I have this character, this lady I want to be, that I can’t do now. There is no way that anyone will let me do her even at this age; she’s got to be older.
LK: Oh my God! We’re going to write something together and get some old age make up and do it anyway!
What future projects do you have coming up?
LK: Well Kabluey which is at the festival and then there is a movie that will come out at Christmas that I have a small part in, PS I Love You with Hilary Swank and a really good looking man.
VM: I’m doing a horror film in September. I know Candyman fans will like that. It is a really, really cool script about a haunted house and I get to have…three kids in the film so I’m excited about that, even though they get tortured.
[IMG:R]Virginia, with a family also in the business, have you ever considered creating a company with your brother Michael, who is an actor and producer, and your mother Elaine, who is a director, writer and poet?
VM: No, but I have created my own company. My brother has his own production company…I’m actually producing a documentary that my mom is directing right now and that has been an incredible experience to work together. My brother and I would love to act together, but we don’t really find brother and sister scripts for the two of us. We seem like we would play opposite one another, but I don’t know, they haven’t found a buddy film for Michael and I.
How about a mystery or a plot line where he is stalking you?
VM: Yeah, that’s really funny. He thinks we should do a movie about incest.
LK: Finally! (laughs)
VM: He just turns into a 10 year old going “Come on, it is the last taboo.” He will go with it for like an hour and I’ll be like “Stop it!”
I thought he never wanted to see a movie where you are naked?!
VM: See, that is comedy to him.
LK: What could be funnier than incest? (laughs)
