Anyone who believes actresses are vain ought to take a look at Jill Clayburgh’s two stunning performances this fall — one on stage in “The Clean House,” and the other on screen in “Running With Scissors.”
In the former, the 62-year-old actress plays Virginia, an eccentric, unhappily married woman obsessed with cleanliness; in the latter, she plays Agnes, an eccentric, unhappily married woman who lives in squalor. In both, she evokes sympathy and fondness for downtrodden, unattractive personalities — and unflinchingly conceals her own allure.
“If only I had hair and makeup,” she laughs, sitting in a dressing room of the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (where “The Clean House” opened Tuesday night) and reminiscing about her coiffure for “Running With Scissors.” “We just cut it and put a little grease in and that was it.” That was almost more elaborate than her beauty regimen for this play, in which she does her own minimal makeup and dons dowdy clothes. But none of that deterred Clayburgh. Instead, she’s grateful to director Ryan Murphy for Agnes, just as she is thankful for the four roles that have kept her on the New York stage almost continuously for the past year.
“This is the most wonderful time as far as acting,” she says — despite her two Oscar nominations, in 1979 and 1980. “I look at women my age who don’t have something to do and I think, ‘Wow, I am so lucky to be engaged in the questions of a performance.’ It’s just a wonderful thing when other people are thinking about golf.”
Clayburgh, who is married to “Hurlyburly” playwright David Rabe, risked oblivion when she opted out of Hollywood to raise their two children, Michael and Lily, in Connecticut. Much has been made of her return to the spotlight, though it wasn’t carefully planned. “I really was not ready to work again,” she admits of “The Clean House,” after her star turns in “Barefoot in the Park,” “A Busy World Is Hushed” and “A Naked Girl on the Appian Way.” “But I just couldn’t turn this down,” she says of the play, written by Sarah Ruhl, who received a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship this year.
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“Film is harsh. I love the freedom of theater,” continues Clayburgh. “You are telling the whole story every night, and you have parameters, but within those parameters you are inventing things. And what can you say? It’s live.”
She can pass the wisdom of her experience on to her daughter, also an actress and one of a few confidantes she trusts to “not bulls—. Everyone is always saying ‘Oh, you were fabulous!’ I feel like I can go to her for the real truth,” she says.
But even after a year of widespread acclaim, she’s still uneasy about not having more concrete plans than taking a well-deserved break after “The Clean House” closes. “That’s one of the things in our business,” Clayburgh explains. “The minute that you are out of work, you worry. I mean, I like my life, I don’t have a problem not working and I have not worked for many years. But you really feel that you will never work again.”