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Interview with Jill Bennett

Raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana, actress Jill Bennett got her start in theater and then moved to television, with roles on Days of our Lives and Beverly Hills 90210. In the next year or two, she can be seen in the upcoming movies Expiration Date and The Pleasure Drivers (where she plays a lesbian hitwoman), and in an upcoming here! Networks movie called In Her Line of Fire.

In a recent interview, Bennett spoke with us about her experiences as an out lesbian actress, why she’s always cast in bad girl roles, and what changes she’d like to see in queer films.

AfterEllen.com: When did you start acting? Jill Bennett: Not until I was in high school. I always sort of had a flare for performing but it wasn’t until I was 16 that I started doing theater, and then I latched on to it and thought “this is what I should be doing, this is what I love to do.” I was actually a state speech champion, which got me a college scholarship, and then I studied theater in college and then came to L.A. right after.

AE: So when you came out in college, did you come out to your parents? JB: Yes, I came out to my parents. My parents are divorced, and my dad basically said he knew when I was a teenager that I was gay. I had two boyfriends, but it was very, you know, very like “whatever,” and my brothers older friends always ask me out and I never wanted to go, and my dad also said he noticed the way I was with my girlfriends, so he always kind of wondered. My mom had a little bit of a problem with it at first, and I think her biggest concern was the I wasn’t going to have children or that I would never have a stable life. But I basically forced her to accept it, and eventually she did. She’s a wonderful woman, and now my entire family knows and they are wonderful–my grandfather, everybody is very supportive.

AE: So how did you get from Indiana to L.A.? JB: I moved to Los Angeles right after college, in early ’97. I was very fortunate and landed a manager very quickly, but I didn’t get my first job until ’98. I played a nurse on Days of Our Lives, and after a while I was up for a contract role, and my manager at the time said “If you are getting to that point this quickly, then you obviously have potential and you don’t want to get hooked into a soap opera.” I didn’t want to do a soap opera anyway.

So I did Days of Our Lives and then I had a little bit of a problem for a couple of years getting paying work, and did theater around town just to keep busy, and to keep the muscles working. Doing the Vagina Monologues was a personal quest of mine. It’s is an amazingly important show to make–the message is unbelievable, and Eve Ensler is making a documentary about all the things that she’s done with the money she’s gotten from the the show. She’s an inspiration, changing the world through arts, and that’s the ideal kind of project that you want to get to eventually.

So when I saw the show, I told my manager “I have to do this!” and we started researching where the show is being done, found a producer in Chicago, and basically hunted him down non-stop until I got it. We convinced him to hire me–sent him tapes, flew out there to audition, I mean I was relentless in getting the show because this was something I have to do.

Then I had a recurring role in the last season of Beverly Hills 90210.

AE: I used to watch 90210 when I was a teenager. Not so much in its later years, but… JB: No one watched it in its later years, but I played the nanny to Ian Ziering and Lindsay Price in the last season–the nympho nanny that had sex with everyone but pretended to be this virginal, virtuous girl. That was a lot of fun, and my first big primetime TV gig. It wasn’t a fun set to work on, because it was the last season and everyone just wanted out, but it was a fun experience.

Then I did an episode of a 1999 sitcom called Zoe with Selma Blair, and that was a lot of fun. Sitcoms are the ideal television gig. I love comedy, that is what I really love to do. It’s in front of an audience, and the rehearsal process is a lot like theater: four days you’re rehearsing, and then on Friday you get up in front of an audience do it for the camera. It’s a perfect marriage of theater and television.

Comedy is also just more fun to do, and it pays well, which enables you to do your own projects on the side or do theater in the summer, something that you really love to do.

AE: How did you get into television?

JB: This is going to sound incredibly artsy and pompous but the truth is, I believe that film and television are the best way to reach a mass audience. I loved doing The Vagina Monologues, but I was doing it for weeks on end to sold-out audiences of four hundred people per night, and I’m thinking “this is not reaching the kind of audience that ideally you’d want it to reach.” I don’t expect early in my career to be able to do the kind of projects that I believe are politically valuable or important to the world, but I am hoping, like most actresses, to be able to make the sort of films that I want to make. Acting is something I love to do. I love to perform and I love the art, the craft of it.

AE: In a perfect world, that’s what you would do? JB: In a perfect world, I would love to have a sitcom, do film or television in the summer, save my money, start a production company and do the kind of films that I want to see done.

AE: What kind of films? JB: I do have a soft spot for queer film. I want to make really well-done lesbian films.

AE (laughing): I don’t think those are allowed. JB: I think you’re right. I think we don’t often have the money to do it, and the lesbians that do have the money, many of them don’t want to see their money go to that. There are a few women working their asses off to get it done, but in general, we just don’t have the means. I might want to get into directing someday, but I still love acting, and for now I would love to be involved with really good queer film makers and make quality lesbian films.

AE: If someone gave you a million dollars right now to make a film, what kind of film would you make? JB: A romantic comedy, a lesbian romantic comedy because we take ourselves too seriously. Now that we’re starting to get more visibility, we need to lighten up. The angry lesbian stereotype is true–I’m one of them–but underneath that there is fun and frolic and we need to show that a little bit more now. I hear “angry lesbian” a lot and that is something that we need to change, which might be what some of the mainstream lesbian stuff is trying to do, but I think we could go a little farther with it. We are in desperate need of a well-done romantic lesbian comedy.

It’s nice to see that we’re starting to be represented more in television and in film, but of course there isn’t a lot out there, so we’re going to be really critical of what there is. I’m pretty critical of it myself.

It irritates me that more queer film makers aren’t using out actresses. Of course, casting directors need to hire the best person for the part, and I wouldn’t say I couldn’t play a straight role, because I certainly can. So it’s complicated. But queer filmmakers do have more casting power now, so we need to do what the ol’ boys network does and start hiring within our community. There’s an effort being made to do that, but i think we can do a little more of it.

AE: What’s your favorite lesbian movie? JB: You know, I really liked Kissing Jessica Stein. Made by two straight girls, but what I liked about it is that Jessica never called herself a lesbian. I am very sensitive about that topic–films like Chasing Amy, where Ben Affleck seems to be the cure-all for lesbians, irritate me more than anything, because as a lesbian who passes as straight, I have enough heterosexual men hitting on me.

I tell them that I’m a lesbian and that doesn’t seem to matter to them, and it doesn’t matter because all they see in the media is that we haven’t met the right guy yet, or that we’ve been raped or molested or abused by our daddies and we’re just waiting for Mr. Right to come sweep us off our feet, and I’m really tired of seeing that. It even happened on Queer as Folk recently [when Melanie slept with a guy last season], and it pissed me off.

AE: They ran out of storylines. JB: They ran out of storylines. Certainly that happens sometimes, but that storyline has been used so often and I am so tired of seeing it. And, at least in my case, that’s never been an issue, that’s never even come close to happening.

I would like to see a movie where the girl gets the girl. A mainstream film. Going back to Kissing Jessica Stein, she never said she was a lesbian, and then the other character was a lesbian and I thought it was a very honest representation of what happens to a lot of straight girls who just become attracted to another woman. I really loved that film. I love the writing, I love the acting, and I didn’t feel offended walking out of the theatre.

AE: Tell me about the movie you’re working on now. JB: It’s a romantic comedy called Expiration Date. I play the girlfriend of the main character, who breaks up with me in the beginning of the movie. I’m convinced it’s because my thighs are too fat, so I spend the rest of the movie shoving donuts down my throat to prove to him that I don’t care that he thinks I am fat, that I am fine with who I am. It’s a nice change from the evil, dark characters that I’ve been playing.

AE: In a movie you did recently, The Pleasure Drivers [which stars Lauren Holly, Meat Loaf and Billy Zane], you play a lesbian hitwoman. Can you tell us a little more about that? JB: I play a hitwoman who, in the beginning of the film, gets dumped by her girlfriend, and I take sadistic pleasure in my job in the rest of the film because of this breakup. My storyline follows my journey through one day–all of this takes place in one day–to find this person and to kill them. It’s one of those roles that could potentially piss off a bunch of people, who might look at it and say “here is another lesbian role and she’s a killer.” But I’m so sensitive about that kind of thing, and when I read the script, I loved it. And I thought “here is an opportunity for a real lesbian to play a lesbian role” because if I see one more like willy-nilly straight girl running around with her long fingernails and high heel shoes trying to be gay…Not to say that there aren’t lesbians that are that way, but it’s frustrating when that’s all you see on film.

So when I went into the audition, I sort of let them know in a very subtle way that I understood this role. There was also an S&M element of the film that has been pretty much been washed out of it now, but initially within the script there was a heavy S&M element and I wanted them to know–not that all lesbians know what S&M is–but that I was familiar with this kind of thing. Later, I think they even told me that me explaining that I got this put them at ease, because they didn’t know who they were going to cast in this role, and then I came in and they were like “okay, she gets it.”

AE: Do you find there to be a lot of out lesbian actresses? JB: There are plenty of lesbians in Hollywood, but they’re not out. And that’s their choice, but I can’t do that, it’s too important to me. Outside of being an actress, I feel like being out is the biggest way that gay people can change perception. There are people that give millions of dollars to gay organizations but are closeted to their own families. A lesbian in South Dakota who is out to her friends to family is doing a lot more for the gay community.

AE: Has being out hurt your career? JB: It hasn’t yet, and I don’t know honestly if it will, or how it’s going to effect me in the long run. I feel like we haven’t had enough women who have started off being out to know–all of our major gay actresses were closeted and then came out eventually, or came out and decided to be straight again, so there hasn’t been a whole lot of us who started off being gay to see how our careers have or haven’t taken off as a result.

In some ways, I don’t think its such a big deal anymore, I really don’t. It’s really upsetting to me to see actresses who I know are gay–through friends that have dated them–act closeted in public. It’s like, what are you doing? It’s 2005 now. And I really believe how you address it is going to determine how everyone else feels about it–if you make a big deal about it and are closeted, and you cause the paparazzi to chase you around and try to prove that you’re gay, you’re creating more of a stir than if you’re just like, “Yes I’m gay, so what, move on. Let’s talk about something else.” I think we got to start coming out now, it’s not such a big deal anymore. Yes, Middle America, whoever those people are, supposedly don’t approve of it, but I disagree.

AE: I think they are more accepting than we give them credit for… JB: I think they are a lot more accepting than we give them credit for. I think that we have to give them a little space, but realize that most people don’t hate us. I am fairly cynical, but when it comes to this topic, I’m an optimist and I really think it’s not as bad as we think it is–even with the election, even with all those things that happened, I think it’s a lot better than we think it is.

AE: You have more of a “brunette personality?JB: Yes, meaning that I wasn’t bubbly and naive, sweet, and innocent. That is what they expect when they cast blonde, unfortunately. I always auditioned for the lawyers, the doctors, or the bad girl roles–and they don’t cast blondes in those roles. I would have casting directors constantly say to me, “We love your work, you just don’t look the part. We don’t know what it is.” I finally noticed that every network session I was in, I was the only blonde. Five or six times I said “I need to change my hair color,” then finally I did it and boom–every casting director afterwards said it worked so much better. After I dyed my hair, I started working within six months. It’s a better fit.

AE: So they always go for blondes in good-girl roles? JB: Not always, but usually. They’re not going to cast an actress who has to play bubbly and innocent if they can hire an actress that is that. I wouldn’t. If I were casting a film, I would want to find someone who is naturally like that, which is again why it is my hope that more casting directors hire lesbians to play lesbian parts, because there is just an ease with it. It is something that I look for when I see lesbian roles. There are some straight actresses who can pull it off really, really well and there are others where I’m just not buying it.

AE: I noticed you have a lot of tattoos… JB: I do! I think I have ten now. If I weren’t an actor, I would be covered. I have loved the way they look ever since I was a little girl. I see a girl with tattoos, and I’m like “Wow!” (laughing) I don’t wear jewelry at all, tattoos are my decoration. It’s a fun hobby that unfortunately I have to slow down on, because it takes two or three hours of makeup now to cover them when I play a role.

AE: Besides hair color, what have been biggest challenges in your career? JB: There are just so many actresses, it often has nothing to do with talent, it has to do with who you know–it’s luck and timing and the right role. It’s hard sometimes going on audition after audition–I think I’ve been on 425 auditions and out of that many, I haven’t had many big roles. It’s constant projection, and you have to suck it up and go on to the next and realize it is not personal. I’ve been to networks six or seven times for serious regular roles on sitcoms and TV shows, and I’m always number two, the girl in second place. To get up and go to another audition and to start all over after that is really difficult.

I want to make films that make a difference. I want to be out and hope that that will make things better for gay people and for myself. I hope one day I can start to make the kind of projects or be involved with kind of projects that can really make a difference.

AE: Any advice to inspiring actresses besides being out? JB: Don’t give up. Go to the gay film festivals, get involved in our community because they will start hiring us. People are starting to realize that if you have a gay film and you have an out actor in it, you are much more likely to get some attention for it. So don’t give up, and get involved in your community whether it is politically personally or as a performer who can make a big difference. Find people that believe in you, you can’t do this without a support group. I have a manager that has been with me for years and he is relentless. The man works his ass off for me and he is a big reason why I have continued to move forward in my carrier; you’ve got to find people to support you.

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