Elizabeth Ashley
After spending an hour with Elizabeth Ashley in the Broadway hangout Angus McIndoe, it’s tempting to jump up and start belting “I’m Still Here” in her honor. Good times and bum times? You’d better believe this feisty 69-year-old actress has seen them all, and she’s not only still here, she’s starring in the Broadway premiere of Horton Foote’s Dividing the Estate. With a pack of Carltons on one side and a Bloody Mary on the other, Ashley holds forth in riveting fashion on her 50-year theatrical career, which began with a Tony for her Broadway debut in Take Her, She’s Mine, hit a high point with her performance as Maggie in the 1974 Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and endured to her current in-demand status for mature roles including Cat’s Big Mama and Amanda in The Glass Menagerie in regional productions. Back on Broadway for the first time in five years, Ashley puts her comic gifts to full use in Dividing the Estate as Stella, an elderly Texas matriarch whose chitchat about bloodlines and supper guests masks a steely resolve when it comes to splitting up the family fortune. In person, Ashley is eternally alluring and endlessly fun to listen to, especially on the subject of her oh-so-eventful life.
Welcome back to Broadway—and how nice that the entire Dividing the Estate company is back together [from the play’s fall 2007 premiere at Primary Stages].
Kudos to Lincoln Center Theater for that. There was kind of a bidding war to bring this to Broadway, and one of the things that clinched the deal was that [artistic director] Andre Bishop and [executive producer] Bernie Gersten wanted the whole cast as it was. You almost never see a Broadway play that has this many people in it because it’s considered economically unfeasible. [Producer] Jeff Richards brought in August: Osage County, which also has 13 actors, but that’s rare.
Has anything changed for the Broadway production?
We have a wonderful new set that really looks like an old house on this estate. We have different costumes and different wigs. I’m looking much older, which isn’t that hard. When I first heard I was playing an 83-year-old woman, I was like, “Oh that’s a stretch,” but it was hardly any stretch at all.
Bull!
No, really! The second time I retired [in the 1980s], I became a sailor—not a yachtie, a rag-ass sailor—and I had a boat accident and broke almost every bone in my body. So much of my life has been “Oh, I got away with it, I got away with it,” whatever it was. As my mother, Miss Lucille, used to say, “I just hope I’m alive when all those chickens come home to roost.” They didn’t while she was alive, but I’m almost 70 years old now and they’re roosting in every bone in my body.
Dividing the Estate is a real crowd-pleaser, isn’t it?
I’ve never been in a play that audiences love more than this one. It’s Horton Foote’s genius that every person who sees it swears to god that it’s their family up there. I first read this play four years ago and I loved the intricately woven, Chekhovian aspect of it. I loved the southern gothic aspect. I loved the structure of it. It’s that rare thing, a brilliantly made play.
What do you like about Stella, the matriarch you play?
She’s so human. I love her imperfections, her determination and her unwavering belief in her principles and values. More than one of her children is a painful disappointment, but she’s able to love them and see them for exactly who they are. She’s not in denial, or any of that modern mishmash. There are no fairy tales in this play. She will recount things she remembers and one or two of her spawn will pipe up and say, “Oh that’s not true, Mama, blah blah blah.” It’s truer than true to her! The facts are not synonymous with the truth, as my mother used to say. She also said, “Success and achievement are not synonymous.” I held tight to that one throughout my life.
You’ve never done a Horton Foote play?
Never have, and I always wanted to. Horton, god bless him, had sort of become a fan [of mine], I guess you could say. He came to see me in three or four things, usually the Tennessee [Williams] things because he loved Tennessee and Tennessee loved him. He would always come backstage and have really insightful, interesting things to say. He has an inner eye for the actor’s creative process. When I did Big Mama [in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for Michael [Wilson, director of Dividing the Estate] in what I think was a brilliant production, Horton said to Michael, “She’s got to be Stella.”
You’ve worked with the two greatest southern playwrights. How would you compare the plays of Foote and Tennessee Williams?
Horton and Tennessee are actually extremely similar, although they come at it from opposite ends. Tennessee comes from the darkest of places. He’s looking into the belly of the beast and the darkest part of the human heart, but little by little he will start to shred that canvas and you see light coming through. Horton, on the other hand, is coming from the brightest, most positive aspects of normalcy, and little by little you see into the frailty and the worst fears and more venal sins in human nature. The wonderful thing about both of them is they have such affection for the human condition. They don’t judge, so there’s no need to forgive. They see life with a smile and a tear. Horton is a warrior of hope. Tennessee was, if anything, a heart-of-darkness warrior.
What are your memories of playing Maggie the Cat?
I’ve said this a million times, but it was like being kissed on the butt by God [laughs]. It was not only a privilege, it was a stroke of luck—thank you, Tuesday Weld, because she turned it down. I’d never seen the play. I’d seen the movie, but that had nothing to do with Tennessee’s play because it was the 50s and they couldn’t deal with the subject matter. But as an actor, if you are extremely lucky and circumstances fall the right way, you sometimes come across a part that has your name on it. Maggie had never been played by anybody southern, for one thing. And Tennessee was there, on site. I was essentially playing my mother, in terms of how Maggie thought.
You became very close to Williams.
Oh yes. After I did Cat and Tennessee and I became friends, in the presence of my mother, he made me promise to do four plays of his before I die [The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Red Devil Battery Sign and The Glass Menagerie], and I’ve now done them. Tennessee loved my mother. He could be 87,000 sheets to the wind and when my mother came in, he would become this Victorian gentleman.
How do you feel when you see photos of yourself in Maggie’s famous slip?
I’m glad that as long as I had it, when I was young enough to do it, I put it on the street for all it was worth! [Laughs.] Perhaps that’s why I can retire to the hall of fame with a plaque; I never have to do it again. I don’t have to get sawed, sucked or sewed. I never have to pretend to be one minute younger than I am. I’ve never darkened the door of a gym and I don’t plan to.
Did you see any of the recent revivals of Cat?
No. I wanted to. I’m a big fan of James Earl Jones; I think he was born to play Big Daddy. I saw Kathleen Turner, and she was wonderful, but I didn’t like the production much. Brits don’t get the south. A lot of directors don’t get how funny Tennessee’s writing is. Tennessee is quite like Shakespeare in the fact that there’s a rhythm to the language. Too many think that is just kind of slooowww [she goes into an exaggerated drawl], and it isn’t. They don’t understand that conversation is blood sport in the south.
It’s funny you say that, because Michael Hayden [Ashley’s co-star in Sweet Bird of Youth] quoted you in a First Person essay describing acting as a blood sport. He also said you’re the sexiest leading lady he’s ever worked with.
You’re kidding! I love Michael Hayden. He’s a silver-tongued devil! What’s he after?
Do you still consider yourself sexy?
No! I’m with Jeanne Moreau. Years ago she did an interview on 60 Minutes with the always pompous Mike Wallace. She said [Ashley takes on a French accent], “Listen to me, by the time a woman is 50, she should have committed every sin. She should have had every lover and satisfied every lust. To do so after 50 is unbecoming.” I couldn’t agree more. I married a bunch of people and god knows I trafficked in men. I’m glad I did it, and I wouldn’t take most of it back. However, there comes a time when this whole obsession with adolescence is unbecoming. Age is treated like a disease, and they can sell anybody anything if they think it’s a cure. On every commercial, old women are depicted as doddering fools or grotesque monsters. I simply will not play that. Old women are frightening to the world because we carry all the wisdom. We know how big everybody’s dick is. That frightens men more than anything.
You’re very youthful and attractive.
Oh please! I weigh about 40 pounds more than I should. It’s hard to get me to take a bath unless they’re paying me. It serves capitalism very well to be conditioned to believe that our physical appearance is our identity, our value and our worth. It’s our everything! I won’t buy into it.
Let’s go back to the beginning of your career. You arrived in New York in 1959, and within three years you had won a Tony Award, were on the cover of Life and had a play [Barefoot in the Park] written for you by Neil Simon.
And I was in the Payne Whitney mental ward. Oh yeah! It was never a big mystery to me why someone like Freddie Prinze blew his brains out. There you are, infantile, you don’t know anything, and all of a sudden you’re it! You’re the twinkie for five minutes. There’s no way somebody 18 to 25 years old can possibly know that all you really are is a piece of goods. The first thing the people who own your ass let you know is that you are their creature. They made you, and if don’t tote that barge and lift that bale, you can get thrown out and there’s another one just like you on the street, sugar.
And you went through all that before the age of the paparazzi.
I was a tabloid queen before there were tabloids, and it’s psychically damaging. Early success is like being in an 87-car crackup on the freeway; you do not have the tools to understand it. Any shred of belief in yourself is immediately ripped away because you’re the one who got lucky. You’re trying so hard to be that person in the picture. In today’s world, it is so brutal, I don’t know how any of those kids survive it. I think most of them don’t. Brad Pitt and Angelina did a brilliant thing when they turned that mega mega global stardom around and sold the [baby] pictures for charity. And Bono has been brilliant that way. I think it takes incredible intelligence, determination and courage to survive it.
When you were coming along, young actresses felt pressure to give up their careers for marriage.
That’s exactly what I did. [After a brief marriage to James Farentino, Ashley was married to George Peppard for six years.] It didn’t work for me! Gave it a shot. You talk about hell—try being married to a movie star. You’re the furniture!
Your memoir [Actress: Postcards from the Road] makes it clear that you and George Peppard were not temperamentally suited.
Oh, I was looking for a father. And he was the oldest, whitest, straightest man I’d ever run into. He was 14 years older than I was. But he was good for breeding. [Ashley has one son, 40-year-old Christian Peppard.]
You’d be a fabulous grandmother.
I was never Betty Crocker. Ask my son! Not that I think Beaver Cleaver’s life was terrific either. I was a working, on-the-road, gypsy actress. I tried to assuage my guilt by telling my kid he was going to really, really like me when he was about 45, and that’s true. I don’t believe you can ever have it all. I think you’re lucky if you have something that you believe is worthwhile. A job, you know what I mean?
I get the feeling you’re never going to get married again.
Oh my god, no! I’m a stone loner, I always have been. We’re all culturally conditioned to feel that we have to be part of some tribe or some unit. My whole life has been trying to escape from tribes and units and family. I’m utterly in awe of the people who do [marriage] well, with commitment and satisfaction. Very few do. Men need to be married more than women do. Once a woman with some means of supporting herself and her children is able to live alone, most would never, ever cohabit with a man again. You don’t have to cohabit with them to get laid, for god’s sake.
You’ve been through a lot, including losing all your possessions in an apartment fire 10 years ago.
That’s not the first time I lost everything I had. If you divorce a movie star who doesn’t want to divorce you, they want to see you poor and pathetic and humiliated because that’s what they feel. Most people’s vengeance is what they fear themselves. That fire destroyed everything but the clothes on my back. I own nothing. I’ve had a rent-stabilized loft since the late 70s, or I couldn’t afford to live in New York City. I don’t work in film or television; I only do this [stage acting], and most of the time I’m on the art circuit, what I call with great affection the “begging bowl” theaters. It’s the hardest job in the world, running theaters like Hartford [Stage] or the Alley or the Shakespeare Theater; they have raise money with the begging bowl because people do not give to the arts.
Would you like to do another TV series?
Oh sure, I’d do it for the money. One of the best jobs I ever had was Evening Shade, with Burt Reynolds, Hal Holbrook and Charlie Durning. But I can’t audition; I’ve never gotten anything I auditioned for. I’m not really a good film actress because there’s something so private about the stage, as odd as that sounds. I can do things on the stage that I cannot do in actual life.
You mentioned August: Osage County. Is that a play you’d like to do?
I would love to play that mother someday, or that sister. Oh yeah. It’s a brilliant play. It will be around. I may get a shot at it if I’m alive.
You’ve been acting professionally for 50 years. Doesn’t that make you feel proud?
I’m proud that I’m still vertical. You’ve gotta understand, there was hard bar money that I would not be alive past 30.
In your memoir, you expressed ambivalence about your talent. Has that changed? Can you embrace the fact that you are an outstanding stage actress?
I think I’m good at my job. Because I look at it as labor. Life is a series of tasks, and ideally we find the tasks to which we are well suited. I understand what my task is on the stage. It’s not “look at me,” it is to serve the playwright and tell a story. I see myself as being part of something really ancient: Let me tell you my story, and if I do it well, maybe you’ll know a little more about being alive than you did before you heard my story. It seems to me that we are smugglers, and I’m a pretty good smuggler of ideas. I like that. But I am only at best a tool of the playwright. The ship is the playwright, the director is the captain of that ship and I am a damned good first mate.
See Elizabeth Ashley in Dividing the Estate at the Booth Theatre.
