Archive

Kirsten Vangsness Thrives on “Criminal Minds”

Kirsten Vangsness definitely stands out in a crowd, and not just because of her vivid outfits, a staple both of her personal style and of Penelope Garcia, the quirky but ever-efficient computer expert she plays on the hit CBS crime drama Criminal Minds.

Not that Vangsness’s typical attire doesn’t attract attention: at a recent CBS party, for example, she wore an ensemble consisting of a poofy purple dress, green bolero jacket and yellow-green earrings in the shape of handcuffs. But the clothes weren’t the reason the 35-year-old actress was more than holding her own in a nightclub filled with A-listers such as Julia Louis-Dreyfus and David Duchovny.

At nearly every moment of the festivities, the effervescent Vangsness and her bright-eyed girlfriend, film editor Melanie Goldstein, were schmoozing with someone or another.

It was a microcosm of her popularity with the fans of Minds, who have adopted Vangsness’ Garcia as one of their own, a welcome flash of light in a series known for its dark tone and bleak moments.

The importance of Vangsness’ Minds character was confirmed in a two-part episode last season when the trusting Garcia was shot and critically wounded by a blind date who happened to be a bit of a psychotic.

The first part ended in true cliffhanger fashion, with Garcia left for dead in the courtyard of her apartment building, and it didn’t take long after the closing credits for the blogosphere to explode in furious reaction, with more than a few fans flatly stating that if Garcia succumbed to her wounds, they were done with the show.

Vangsness herself didn’t have to go online to get a sense of that passion.

“My sister and a few other people were calling me, crying,” she told AfterEllen.com.

“They were saying ‘What’s going on?’ and ‘Oh my God.’ And it was a little weird to see myself in all of those precarious positions, but not as hard as it was, I think, for my extended family. And people do have a reaction. People were, like, ‘I’m so glad they didn’t (kill you).’ It’s such a gift.”

The gift, like so many things in Hollywood, was a happy accident.

When Minds debuted in 2005, Vangsness was seen just briefly in the pilot. Her character, Garcia, was there only to impart a few lines of information to the team of FBI agents, led by Mandy Patinkin and Thomas Gibson, who were attempting to profile a murder suspect.

Things changed when she was called back for the second episode and attended a read-through with the cast, including soap-opera veteran Shemar Moore, who plays hunky Agent Morgan.

“Shemar, whom I’d never met, came in and sat next to me,” she explained. “And we had a sexual harassment meeting we had to go to after we got done reading, and we sat next to each other and sexually harassed each other the whole time through this meeting. And the writers saw us, and then all of a sudden the part that was tiny got bigger and bigger.”

By midseason, Vangsness was featured in every episode of Minds; by the following year, she was an official cast member.

Along the way, the playful flirting between Garcia and Morgan became a staple of the series, and Vangsness made Garcia her own, integrating her quirky personality and style of dress into the character. (But not her tech skills; Vangsness readily admits that Goldstein is the computer genius in this relationship.)

As a bonus, Minds has given Vangsness the added security to continue her award-winning career in Los Angeles theater, a departure from the fear she felt when she first discovered acting while a junior high-school student in Orange County, Calif., a painfully shy girl who came out of her shell on the stage.

“I had no illusions whatsoever,” she said. “I knew I would be living on cat food … but I knew I was going to be an actor. But I had no idea I would make my living doing it. So there’s a certain kind of peace that comes when you know where your rent is coming from, and you know you have health insurance.”

A different type of peace enveloped Vangsness five years ago when she and her longtime boyfriend attended a birthday party. It was there that she first met Goldstein.

“I remember looking at her across a table and just thinking, ‘Oh shit – oh shit! – everything is going to change.'” And it did – gradually.

Soon after, Vangsness broke up with her beau (they remain good friends), but an initial attempt to be pals with Goldstein fell flat, and the two did not speak for three years.

When they finally ran into each other again, Vangsness turned to the written word.

“I sent her an apology letter – you know, because when you come out, you kind of lose your mind. You turn into a 13-year-old again. So I sent her this apology note. She was living her life, and I was living my life, and I didn’t expect things to happen. I was just saying, ‘Hey, I’m sorry, and I just wanted to let you know that I’m out now, and I think I’m more sane, and I just wanted you to know that and to say that I’m sorry.’ So I was just sort of cleaning up my stuff.”

The note obviously worked, as Vangsness and Goldstein just marked their two-year anniversary together.

It was last year, though, when Vangsness decided the time had come to come out to the public. She did so in a way that would make Garcia proud – on the blog she was doing at the time for CBS.com. In talking about a charity bicycle ride that she and other Minds cast members were preparing for, she wrote, “My girlfriend and I (Happy Late National Coming Out Day) bought bikes” for the event.

“[Melanie and I] tried to do it louder,” she said. “We meant to be loud, but we wanted to be loud in the right place. I never wanted it to be like a show: ‘Here I am at the People’s Choice Awards holding hands with this gorgeous woman.’ I didn’t want it to be like that.”

The couple had decided at one point that the 2007 Outfest would be the perfect place to make things official, as it were. “It was totally appropriate. So we get all dressed up, we walk the red carpet. And the next morning we go (online), and then we look up the event, and there’s nothing. We can’t find a picture if our lives depended on it.”

At that point, Vangsness just wanted to get it over with.

“Because I work with this gorgeous man for whom, obviously, I would be dead if I didn’t say that he makes one’s heart a-flutter. And that flirting with Shemar is not fake at all. (But though) I enjoy men very much, it’s just that the girls were just that much better, and you have to go where things are that much better. So I was, like, ‘I need to get this out.'”

“So, because I was writing a blog, and it was the day after National Coming Out Day, I was, like, ‘Well, there you go, and people can just leave it to their imagination and take whatever they want from that. But now I’ve said it, I’m not going to say it again.’ ”

Still, even after her blog post, some people wondered whether Vangsness was serious or not, going so far as to parse what the word “girlfriend” meant in that context. For Vangsness, there was no context to translate. “Melanie’s the love of my life,” she said with beaming emphasis.

Other things also became clear to Vangsness after she came out, including experiencing anti-gay protests in a different way. Ever upbeat, she’s channeled those “sad” feelings into her acting. “I think that dealing with that made me able to be much more understanding and to tread gentler upon the Earth, certainly,” she said. “Anything that makes you a better human being automatically makes you better at your job.”

Content with her personal life, Vangsness has very little to complain about professionally as well. She’s currently appearing in “Spider Bites,” a new play that’s being staged at Theater of NOTE, the small Hollywood theater company that she’s been a member of for eight years. And on Minds, Garcia isn’t hurting in the romance department herself, thanks to her adorably geeky boyfriend, played by Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum Nicholas Brendon.

Before the TV bliss, though, Garcia has to overcome one more cliffhanger, as last season ended with the explosion of an SUV that contained an unidentified show regular. More angst for her fans?

Vangsness wouldn’t say, but did offer some logical words of reassurance.

“If you shoot somebody, you’re not going to shoot them and blow them up in the same season,” she said with a sly twinkle in her eye. “So I’m not saying I’m definitely golden, but I could be golden.”

Criminal Minds returns for its fourth season tonight at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.

 

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button