Pollock co-star describes her passionate role

02/23/2001

By Jane Sumner / The Dallas Morning News

To get the role that landed her first Oscar nod, Marcia Gay Harden had to audition again and again for Pollock director/star Ed Harris. Did she go so far as to pound on his door? "I sat in his driveway and honked the horn," she says.

The actress, as outgoing as Mr. Harris is shy, got the job.

Her astringent turn as Lee Krasner, the braying, Brooklyn-born life force behind Mr. Harris' Jackson Pollock, was a dark horse.

But enough Academy voters jumped the fence to nominate both the University of Texas theater grad (Class of '80) and her co-star, the thrice-nominated Mr. Harris.

She wanted to do Pollock, she said in Dallas last week, because Mr. Harris had been working on the project for a decade. "It's so rare to be in a project where the director has passion."

After watching a tape of Ms. Krasner, finally famous as an artist in her own right after Pollock's death, the actress began imitating her exaggerated Flatbush accent.

"But Ed said, 'Whatever you're doing, Marcia Gay, stop it immediately.' She did, and together they found the younger Krasner, vulnerable and insecure, who lived in the shadow of a tortured genius.

Usually, she says, "I'm not asked to display that kind of anger and anguish on screen." In one explosive scene, the acerbic Krasner tells the volatile, depressive Pollock in no uncertain language why she won't bear him a child.

"We played together in the Sam Shepard play Simpatico on stage," she says. "We met and Ed was so intense and so dedicated to being truthful at all costs."

Once, while she was wagging her finger at him on stage, he leaned over and bit it. He was also "exhilarating" as a film director, she says.

"Ed would direct me while the camera was rolling. He would say, 'Say it again, Marcia Gay. Right now! Do it!' Then the dust would come off and something would erupt in the performance."

Asked if the actor is as sexy off-screen as on, she throws back her head in a swoon and admits that their kiss was one time she didn't want to hear a "Cut!"

When not "pounding the pavement in L.A. for a job," the actress lives in the Catskills with her 2-year-old daughter Eulala Grace and husband Thaddeus, whose "making-of" film of Pollock will be included in the DVD version.

The nominees

Kate Hudson
Almost Famous
Oscar Quotient: 7.5
Born: April 19, 1979, in Los Angeles.
Nominated role: Leader of a troupe of groupies, she loses her heart and nearly her life in the wild, messy world of '70s rock.
Career highlights: In three years, the daughter of Goldie Hawn has racked up eight films, including Robert Altman's Dr. T and the Women in Dallas, without trading on family fame.
What Oscar would mean: Like mother, like daughter. Mom won a supporting Oscar for her first big role in Cactus Flower (1969).

Judi Dench
Chocolat
Oscar Quotient: 6.5
Born: Dec. 9, 1934, in York, England.
Nominated role: Crusty, diabetic French villager who melts when a mysterious chocolatier arranges secret visits with her grandson.
Career highlights: Deserved an Oscar for playing Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown (1997); won one for an eight-minute gig as Queen Bess in Shakespeare in Love a year later.
What Oscar would mean: There is nothing like a Dame (of the British Empire) in juicy character roles.

Marcia Gay Harden
Pollock
Oscar Quotient: 5.0
Born: Aug. 14, 1959, in Tokyo.
Nominated role: Jackson Pollock's tough artist-wife, who battles, cajoles and champions the self-destructive painting genius.
Career highlights: Since debuting as an icy moll in the Coens' Miller's Crossing (1990), the University of Texas grad has zig-zagged between studio (Flubber) and indie (The Spitfire Grill) flicks.
What Oscar would mean: First-time nominee would get validation for more than 10 years of bright, always solid work in 20 films.

Julie Walters
Billy Elliot
Oscar Quotient: 4.5
Born: Feb. 22, 1950, in Birmingham, England.
Nominated role: Exacting dance teacher who turns 11-year-old kid onto the beauty of ballet despite the objections of his coal-miner dad.
Career highlights: After Oscar-nominated debut as a working-class wife trying to better herself in Educating Rita (1983), she's mostly appeared on British stage and telly.
What Oscar would mean: Could goose the trained nurse-turned-actress back onto the big screen, where she's proved an ornament from comedy to Kurt Weill.

Frances McDormand
Almost Famous
Oscar Quotient: 4.0
Born: June 23, 1957, in Illinois.
Nominated role: Formidable loving mom of a 15-year-old boy who gets to travel with a rock band. "Don't take drugs!" she yells at him over the phone.
Career highlights: Debuted in Coens' Austin-filmed Blood Simple (1984), then married director Joel (1988). Nominated for brave supporting work in Mississippi Burning; won for chatty, wise lead in Fargo (1996).
What Oscar would mean: Reinforce what we already know – that's she's one of our most convincing can-do performers.