Nina Landey Still Treading Water
by Sarah Warn, February 2003

Unless you've seen Treading Water, you probably won't recognize Nina Landey. Prior to that film, the New Yorker's largest role was a one-season stint as a recurring character on the soap Guiding Light, from 1995 to 1996. After she left Guiding Light, she only had a few guest-starring roles over the next few years on series like Law and Order: Special Victim's Unit, ER, and Third Watch.

Then in 1999 she auditioned for one of the two leading roles in an indie film by a first-time director about a young woman's attempts to get her mother to accept the fact that she's gay. Landey landed the role of Casey's lover Alex, a social worker who tries to be supportive of Casey's family situation while juggling her role as the case worker for one of Casey's brothers.

Premiering at the Seattle Gay Film Festival in 2001, the film received critical acclaim and won a few film festival awards before being released on DVD in late 2002. While the film boasted several good actors, Landey is the real standout of the movie, deftly communicating the range of her emotions experienced by her character in the film.

Landey came out as a lesbian to director and co-writer Lauren Himmel (who is also gay) during the audition process. In a conversation between the two stars and the director on the DVD commentary, Himmel laughingly recounts the moment:

"[Initially] I did not know [Landey] was gay. But when I finally found out, there was this one moment [during auditions when] we're in this room and this woman in a striped sweatshirt just poked her head in and gave me this look, and I thought 'That was interesting.' It didn't really register [until later] when I found out that she was 'that way,' that she was sizing me up.

Landey injects that she told Himmel she was gay during the audition process because "I really wanted [her] to know. I feel like I see a lot of lesbian films and the actors are not gay, and [having watched lesbian films for years], I kind of wanted to be a part of it."

Landey laughs, "I was going to get really mad if no one believed that I was gay!"

Looking like a mix between Jill Hennessy, Linda Fiorentino, and Annabella Sciorra, it isn't surprising that few people believe Landey is gay upon first meeting her--although "the smart ones do," Landey jokes. When her straight Treading Water co-star Angie Redman teases her about this, Landey replies "I'm butch on the inside."

Landey acknowledges that unlike Redman (who is not gay), she was initially a little concerned about being typecast by playing such an explicitly lesbian role so early in her career. "I was wondering if...because I'm gay, is this going to screw me up, am I not going to get [straight] roles? It's a conflict, because it is hard in the world, to be gay."

Once she landed the role of Alex in the film, Landey set about introducing her new co-star to the lesbian scene. Before filming started, she took Redman to a lesbian bar and then a public bath in New York so the two women could get comfortable being naked around each other. The night before their first kissing scene, after filming had begun, Landey made Redman do a practice run with her because "Angie had never kissed a girl before. I, on the other hand..." she trails off, laughing.

Treading Water is Landey's first (and so far only) feature film role. Describing her experience on the film, Landey says "it felt good. It was scary, and I learned so much. By the end of the shoot, I think I knew a little bit more of what I was doing."

Director Himmel teases Landey that since the release of Treading Water, "I can't tell you how many women I meet who say "Man, Nina is hot!"" She continues, "I love it how at screenings, people are always saying 'are any one of these stars single?' And Nina's hand goes up, and you just hear across the audience--five hundred lesbians will just groan."

Landey just laughs off Himmel's comment with "I wish!"

Since she finished filming Treading Water, Landey has landed more television guest spots, most recently on 24 and Crossing Jordan. She doesn't appear to have any other film roles in the works, but now that Treading Water is on DVD and accessible to more people, perhaps Landey's visibility will increase in Hollywood.

Actress Guin Turner faced a similar situation a few years ago when she played a lesbian in 1994's indie lesbian film Go Fish, and she has worked steadily in films since then, although mostly in small roles. It doesn't hurt that Turner is also a screenwriter, though (she co-wrote the 2000 movie American Psycho), and appears to be fairly well-connected in Hollywood.

Another up-and-coming actress, Tammy Lynn Michaels, came out a year and a half ago when she began dating Melissa Etheridge. She hasn't worked much since then, although it's unclear whether that's by choice. She was recently in a short film that premiered at Sundance and is now being made into a feature-length film--but the short was made by a lesbian director and funded by a Hollywood lesbian organization, so unfortunately it's not really a barometer for Hollywood acceptance.

Clearly, the jury's still out on whether you can make it in Hollywood as an out lesbian when you haven't established your career yet. Like Turner and Michaels, Landey obviously has the talent required--but talent is only part of the package in Hollywood. But if Landey can find an opportunity to turn in another strong performance in a more mainstream film or television show, her talent won't be under wraps for long.

In the meantime, she will certainly have a strong fan base among lesbians for awhile to come.

Note: comments from the actors and director in this article are taken from the DVD commentary--an entertaining conversation between Redman, Landey, and Himmel which I highly recommend.