Estelle Parsons

You don't have to be a dedicated follower of theater to feel in awe while speaking with Estelle Parsons. Having spent more than half a century working as an entertainer, the 80-year-old actress dashes off the sort of personal vignettes—growing up with Jack Lemmon in New England, debuting with Ethel Merman on Broadway, horsing around with a young Warren Beatty in Hollywood—that are nothing if not legendary. She's received four Tony Award nominations, won an Academy Award for her scene-stealing performance in the 1967 classic Bonnie and Clyde and earned a seat in the pantheon of great TV in-laws thanks to her recurring role on the sitcom Roseanne. All that, and she's directed plays from Shakespeare to Al Pacino in Salome, served as artistic director for the Actors Studio for five years, and was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 2004. Most impressively, Parsons doesn't give the impression that's she winding down one bit, as is obvious from her latest gig: the mammoth, demanding role of matriarch Violet Weston in August: Osage County winner of the 2008 Best Play Tony Award. Broadway.com caught up with Parsons the morning after the rave reviews came in for her Broadway return. She was obviously having a good week.

First off, congratulations on the reviews! How are you celebrating?
Well, I'm at my computer at home. This is the first time I've opened in a Broadway show where I get, like, 45 e-mails about a good review. It used to be your phone would ring off the hook. So I was going to make an attempt to read some of them, but I'm looking up Broadway.com, and I don't know what to do now that I'm there. I'm not asking for a computer lesson! I have e-mail and all that stuff, so it's not that I'm in the dark ages. One day I'll get a teacher to guide me through the web, because I know there are some untold treasures there. I don't have time to sit in front of a computer for too long.

Amazing you'd have time for anything, since August cast members frequently comment on how demanding the show is. Does it take a lot out of you?
No, I think it takes a lot out of the audience [laughs].

Had you seen the play?
Sometime in the spring, I had. I knew Tracy's work through friends who've worked on his plays, but I wasn't quite prepared. I just think the set is incredible.

Is climbing the stairs of that three-story set a challenge?
I don't ever think of them in that way. When people started to come see me after the show, several times someone said, "Oh, those stairs!" And I thought, "Good god, I wish they'd be looking at my acting and not counting how many times I go up and down the stairs!" I just find it sublime to have life going on everywhere in a big house like that. It's wonderful.

How did the role come your way?
I've done two plays at Steppenwolf, Alan Bennett's Talking Heads and Rod Wooden's Your Home in the West, with Rondi Reed. I played the old mother who died in the middle and lays there dead, through a whole act. I also did Roseanne with Laurie Metcalf, and she and Rondi said, "Deanna [Dunagan] is going to leave, and you'd be perfect for this part." And I was like, "What?" The idea never occurred to me. As a person or even as an actor, you never know what you're perfect for. At least I don't.

How does Violet compare to some of the other women you've played onstage?
It's different from anything I've done. It's a very interesting play. When you go out there to do it, [the writing] just forces you to play it. It's not something I think about or prepare to do. Maybe it's because the writing is so…organic? I don't know how to explain it. But it's a totally foolproof part. Whoever's willing to invest in playing the character is going to be that character.

Amy Morton told us she felt the writing possessed a certain "pinpoint accuracy," and you just get on the ride and go.
Yes, it's very curiously present. I kind of relate it to stand-up, where you have things to say and you go out and say them. That doesn't mean it doesn't involve your whole entire being. God knows, stand-up involves your whole entire being. It's exciting.

Was the idea of stepping into Deanna Dunagan's shoes tough? Or did you just forget about her?
I didn't forget about her. I've never replaced anybody before, and it's very difficult. You don't have the benefit of all the things they talked about and chewed over during rehearsals. You don't particularly understand why you're doing anything. I was trying to fit into the whole machine—in a good way, not mimicking, because I'm a different person. I tried very consciously to be that women I liked so much, particularly her physical movements.

Let's backtrack some. Weren't you childhood friends with Jack Lemmon?
Yeah, we lived on the same road up in New Hampshire, where I spent summers when I was a kid.

What sort of trouble did you get into?
We never got in trouble. We were just teenagers. We had a gang. We had a car. We'd go tooling around in the woods. He was always playing the piano and writing music, and I was always singing his stuff. I was more musically inclined then. I was always doing imitations of Frank Sinatra and Al Jolson. I wanted to be another Ethel Merman. It took me about 30 years to realize that I wasn't Ethel Merman.

How did you fall into acting?
I started very early at a community theater that my mother took me to, and they took a big interest in me, putting me in the lead roles of children's plays.

Were you a hammy kid?
No, I've been very serious about my work my whole life. So much that I'm probably horrendously boring as a person. I'm probably nasty to work with, too, the type who's very serious about every bit of minutiae in everything. It was never a game to me. That's what was hard in school. A lot of students did it for fun, but for me, it was never fun. Every single second had to be employed constructively. So I was always very frustrated.

You studied law [at Boston University] at one point.
I went for one year. I wasn't comfortable with being an actress as a grown-up. My grandfather was a Greek and Latin scholar at Harvard. My father was inclined to literature and poetry, and he was a lawyer, as well. Going into the theater was something I just couldn't square with myself, even though I was working in it in all the time. I vaguely thought I'd be a politician, but as I discovered in law school, my psyche couldn't take a lot of real-life drama. That's when I knew the phony life was good for me.

One of your first big jobs was being an on-air personality in the earliest years of the Today show. How was that?
It was so exciting! To be part of something in the pioneer days! You'd just make up the rules as you went along. We didn't have time strictures. If you ran over on something, fine. If a guest didn't show up, I'd put on a sign saying I was Ava Gardner, and we'd do a little satirical sketch on the spot. It was just open season. They'd put me in a room to do commercials without a script! They'd give me 30 seconds and I'd do a whole commercial off the top of my head. That couldn't possibly happen these days, could it? Now they've gone absolutely beyond the pale in terms of opening your mouth about anything.

Let's talk about your Broadway debut.
That was Happy Hunting, starring Ethel Merman and directed by Abe Burrows [in 1956]. It was a wonderful experience. I started with a very small part. I played a reporter at Grace Kelly's wedding. The producers didn't like one of the actors, so I kept getting more and more lines, and I had a pretty good part by the time we got started in Philadelphia.

Was it intimidating working with a legend like Merman?
I didn't have much to do with her, really, just two or three lines, and the rest was choral numbers and stuff. Years later, after I won the Academy Award, we did some benefit at somebody's house on Park Avenue, and she said, "Oh, Estelle. I was in a show with you!" And I said, "For god's sake, Ethel, you weren't in a show with me. I was in your show!" She was so cute.

What do you remember from the night you won the Oscar for Bonnie and Clyde?
I remember feeling like I'd gotten this terrific piece of candy. I had to miss my show [that night]—I was in Tennessee Williams' The Seven Descents of Myrtle, which I got a Tony nomination for. And [producer] David Merrick said, "You're going out!" I said, "I'm not going out. I have a show." He said, "I don't care if you're in New York; I'm putting on your understudy." Then Warren [Beatty, Bonnie and Clyde's producer and star] said, "You've gotta come out." So out I went.

What were you thoughts about Blanche Barrow when you first read the Bonnie and Clyde script?
I thought it was a very extensive role for a secondary role. And I really wanted to work with Arthur Penn. He's been the most important artistic force in my life. He helped me discover so much of the talent that I have. I'm just forever in his debt. I'd not be the professional I am today were it not for the work I did with him.

What about working with Warren Beatty? Did he ever get fresh with you?
Oh, no. He would grab me and throw me on the bed in front of all the press people. But that was all in the spirit of fun. At that time, he was still just a pretty boy, really, just starting to flex his artistic and intellectual muscles. It was exciting to be around him.

About Faye Dunaway, didn't you once remark that you'd never met anyone with such a "demonical drive to succeed as a movie star"?
I love Faye, and we remain friends. But yeah, she was very driven. She still is. She's that kind of person, very high and nervous energy. Working on films is hard. You're up very early in the morning. You're at the mercy of the director and the lighting and all that stuff. Getting to be a movie star is not an easy job. It seemed complicated to me.

Usually people think theater's the tough stuff.
That's because it's eight shows a week. But it's also a great leveler. In the movies, you don't have an audience deciding whether you're really putting it out there. And you get so spoiled! People treat you like royalty. On a film, there's a huge financial investment in you. If you throw a hissy fit about your costumes and walk off your set, thousands and thousands of dollars are wasted. So you get pampered. Then you come back to the theater and you're treated like just another worker. It's a real slap in the face. I understand why people stay over there [laughs].

I know you've turned down quite a bit of film work, including the role of Jason's mom in the original Friday the 13th.
That's a horror movie, right? I had so many offers for those, but I had to pass. I can't even read a horror script, they scare me so much.

If you'd signed on, you would've gotten beheaded with a machete.
Yeah, well, you see! I remember reading one script where my character was sitting in the woods with somebody's head in my lap. I thought, "God, I can't even read this on the page, how can I possibly act in it?" I can't look at a those kind of movies to save my soul. I think I was spoiled when Frankenstein walked into that backyard with the little girl. That was the end of that for me.

Back to theater, you started to direct your own projects in the late '70s. What brought on that shift?
Someone said to me, "What do you want to do? You can do anything you want," and that was a bit of a shock. I knew wanted to do Antony and Cleopatra, and didn't know what director I wanted to do it with. So I thought, "Well, what the heck, I'll direct it myself." I ended up doing a multicultural production, which [Public Theater founder] Joe Papp saw and thought was astounding. He asked me to form a Shakespeare company for him [to bring innovative productions to New York City schools], which I did, but I had to back out of that and theater in general for a while. My son was young and dyslexic, but in those years, we weren't really sure what was going on. I didn't feel I could deal with that and do eight shows a week.

Your recurring role as Bev on Roseanne gave you more flexibility, right?
That was great, since I'd just go out there for four days a month, and if I couldn't come at a certain time, they'd work around it. I got to maintain a presence in the acting world and have the opportunity to build a quality of life with my kid. It was great to work with Laurie, and I loved Roseanne and John. We had a great team. I've been very lucky in my life, I'll say that.

Frankly, it seems unfair that you've never won a Tony Award.
I've been nominated four times, the last one for Morning's at Seven [in 2002]. But no, I've never won a Tony. There've been times when I've thought, "This is gonna be my big Broadway hit!" Like when I did Ready When You Are, C.B.! [in 1964] with Julie Harris, which ran for only two months. Things go wrong, as you quickly learn in this business. I had to wait a long time, and I got to the point when I couldn't help thinking, "Okay, what kind of parts am I going to get now?" Then along comes this extraordinary role in this extraordinary piece of work, and now I'm finally in my Broadway hit! Every night, I peek out and the theater is full of people. It's just an amazing experience for me to see them all out there. I can't get over it!

See Estelle Parsons in August: Osage County at the Music Box Theatre.