“I don't do a lot of press, so I really had no idea. But when I was at Dinah Shore Weekend, that was pretty serious recognition,” says Mariel Hemingway about attending the annual lesbian extravaganza last month to promote the new film In Her Line of Fire, in which she plays a lesbian secret service agent. “It was nice attention, but it was definitely very intense attention. People were not subtle.”
Even though she isn't gay, the 44-year-old actor looms large in the eyes of many lesbians who found affirmation and enchantment in the 1982 classic Personal Best. In the movie, Hemingway plays an Olympic hopeful track athlete who falls for her male coach as well as her female teammate and mentor. The film contains tender and steamy scenes that many women count as their first and favorite images of lesbian sexuality in film.
Although she was 21 when the film was released, Hemingway was just 18 when shooting began, and 17 when she started training in preparation for the athletic role. She says she thinks of it as more of a coming-of-age tale than a coming-out story: “To me it's more about who am I? Where am I? What am I doing? than ‘I'm a lesbian. I want to tell you all about it.'” She is quick to add, “But I think probably that's what realizing what your sexuality is is like. That age is confusing for everyone.”
Hemingway's acting career is filled with roles both numerous and intense. Her screen debut came at 13, when she starred alongside her older sister Margaux in Lipstick. At 17 she was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as Woody Allen's paramour in Manhattan. Now she has made over 30 films in addition to her many television appearances, several of them lesbian-themed.
In 2002 she guest-starred in a Crossing Jordan episode called “Scared Straight.” In 1995 she hosted Saturday Night Live with an opening monologue that had her practically making out with every female cast member she introduced while barely mustering a hello for their male cast mates. And one year prior to that she made history with a lesbian screen kiss on Roseanne.
Regarding how her role on Roseanne came about, Hemingway says, “ They just came to me. I guess they thought, ‘Ahh, she's hot to play lesbian.' Now I look back and think, Oh, my God! How many times have I done this? [Laughs]” But she says she never thought of it as a big deal or a special ability, not when she first read the script for Personal Best
and certainly not now: “I think everyone can play gay now. They're not calling me from The L Word.”
Hemingway says one of her favorites roles is the one she enjoyed in the romantic comedy The Sex Monster (1999). She plays a wife whose husband goads her into a threesome with another woman, then finds himself left out of the fun that the two women begin to indulge in regularly. The film's tagline is “the ultimate male fantasy gets a reality check.”
“I love comedy, but when you're a woman in this business it's really hard to be thought of as a comic actor if you're tall and attractive,” says the 6-foot-1 veteran performer. “Looking statuesque or tall and blonde, it's not where people go.”
Page 1 / 2 - Next
