At the first table read, Holofcener remembers her horseplay with the actor who played Seinfeld’s infamous Elaine Benes all but overshadowing the co-lead, James Gandolfini: “We could finish each other’s sentences – she so got the materials, she so got me. She would jump in with ideas that were generally fantastic. And we would laugh until we peed. Jim would look at us like: ‘Boy, am I in a chick flick or what?’” (...)
It is classic Holofcener: petty, narcissistic and pitiable, yet hilarious and relatable. Louis-Dreyfus knew she could trust Holofcener because of that unique perspective: “There’s an honesty and authenticity in her writing that makes me comfortable with her point of view.” (...)
Louis-Dreyfus is 62. With age, she says, it has become easier to untangle self-worth from work, although not entirely: “It’s tricky. We actors are in a business where you’re selling your brand and you have to bring a truthfulness to what you do.” Has she ever wished someone had been more honest with her about her work, as Don fails to be? “Gosh,” she says. “Actually, no, I don’t think so.”
Fair enough: from the outside, it’s difficult to identify any missteps across her 40-year career. Having played the self-serving vice-president Selina Meyer in Veep from 2012 to 2019, Louis-Dreyfus is as beloved today as she was in the early 90s, when she incarnated Seinfeld’s self-serving, big-haired shover. She is the most garlanded Primetime Emmy and Screen Actors Guild award-winner in history; in 2018, she received the Mark Twain prize for American Humor.
Louis-Dreyfus’s appeal, agree Holofcener and Armando Iannucci, the creator of Veep, is her hunger to stray beyond the pale. With the hapless Selina, says Iannucci, “she was always the first pushing it further in terms of her having no principles. She’s put in charge of a healthy eating project, one of the pathetic things presidents give their vice-presidents to keep them busy. And Julia was quite keen to push the fact that Selina cannot abide anyone who’s overweight, in a slightly uneasy way. She’s quite happy for the audience to be appalled by her character.”
At the same time, says Iannucci, “there’s a genuineness there as well. You can see why those characters might have arrived at that point psychologically.”
If Louis-Dreyfus did have anything close to a misstep, it was her dispiriting spell at Saturday Night Live, from 1982 to 1985. She had a hard time as the youngest female cast member in what she has characterised as a druggy boys’ club. (She did, though, forge a bond with an equally miserable Larry David, who would later co-create Seinfeld.) But even that cultivated a guiding presence of mind: when she got the boot, she resolved that she would only keep acting if it was fun.
Most young actors would cut off a limb to make it. Why not Louis-Dreyfus? “Maybe because I was so fundamentally unhappy for those three years,” she says. She knew it didn’t have to be like this from her time in the Chicago improv troupes the Second City and the Practical Theatre Company. “I really enjoyed doing work with my friends that was thrilling and collaborative and ensemble-y. And so I knew from having fun, right?”
SNL wasn’t “the most wretched experience of my life”, she concedes. “But it was very challenging. I knew I couldn’t keep that going. And if this was what it meant to be in showbusiness, I wanted nothing to do with it. I had this feeling: if I can’t find the fun again, I can walk away from this.”
Fun and practicality seem to be the cornerstones of Louis-Dreyfus’s attitude. In 1989, David and Jerry Seinfeld signed her up to play Elaine. A recent New York Times article marking 25 years since the Seinfeld finale posited that it still resonates because the characters “flouted societal conventions and the rules of traditional adulthood”, constructs increasingly inaccessible to younger viewers. Louis-Dreyfus isn’t sure. “I don’t know if I’m smart enough to draw a conclusion like that,” she says. “At the end of the day, it was just fucking funny, and that holds up.”
Fair enough: from the outside, it’s difficult to identify any missteps across her 40-year career. Having played the self-serving vice-president Selina Meyer in Veep from 2012 to 2019, Louis-Dreyfus is as beloved today as she was in the early 90s, when she incarnated Seinfeld’s self-serving, big-haired shover. She is the most garlanded Primetime Emmy and Screen Actors Guild award-winner in history; in 2018, she received the Mark Twain prize for American Humor.
Louis-Dreyfus’s appeal, agree Holofcener and Armando Iannucci, the creator of Veep, is her hunger to stray beyond the pale. With the hapless Selina, says Iannucci, “she was always the first pushing it further in terms of her having no principles. She’s put in charge of a healthy eating project, one of the pathetic things presidents give their vice-presidents to keep them busy. And Julia was quite keen to push the fact that Selina cannot abide anyone who’s overweight, in a slightly uneasy way. She’s quite happy for the audience to be appalled by her character.”
At the same time, says Iannucci, “there’s a genuineness there as well. You can see why those characters might have arrived at that point psychologically.”
If Louis-Dreyfus did have anything close to a misstep, it was her dispiriting spell at Saturday Night Live, from 1982 to 1985. She had a hard time as the youngest female cast member in what she has characterised as a druggy boys’ club. (She did, though, forge a bond with an equally miserable Larry David, who would later co-create Seinfeld.) But even that cultivated a guiding presence of mind: when she got the boot, she resolved that she would only keep acting if it was fun.
Most young actors would cut off a limb to make it. Why not Louis-Dreyfus? “Maybe because I was so fundamentally unhappy for those three years,” she says. She knew it didn’t have to be like this from her time in the Chicago improv troupes the Second City and the Practical Theatre Company. “I really enjoyed doing work with my friends that was thrilling and collaborative and ensemble-y. And so I knew from having fun, right?”
SNL wasn’t “the most wretched experience of my life”, she concedes. “But it was very challenging. I knew I couldn’t keep that going. And if this was what it meant to be in showbusiness, I wanted nothing to do with it. I had this feeling: if I can’t find the fun again, I can walk away from this.”
Fun and practicality seem to be the cornerstones of Louis-Dreyfus’s attitude. In 1989, David and Jerry Seinfeld signed her up to play Elaine. A recent New York Times article marking 25 years since the Seinfeld finale posited that it still resonates because the characters “flouted societal conventions and the rules of traditional adulthood”, constructs increasingly inaccessible to younger viewers. Louis-Dreyfus isn’t sure. “I don’t know if I’m smart enough to draw a conclusion like that,” she says. “At the end of the day, it was just fucking funny, and that holds up.”
She declined to capitalise on her status as one of the 90s’ biggest television stars, turning down movies to raise her two sons, who were born during Seinfeld’s run (although she says the rumour that she passed on playing Mia in Pulp Fiction is untrue). Iannucci recalls her prioritising home life during the filming of Veep: “She’s very much a family-oriented person, and that seems to be her rootedness.” (...)
In 2017, while shooting Veep, Louis-Dreyfus was diagnosed with breast cancer, suspending filming for a year. She was treated and underwent a double reconstruction (and has campaigned for all women get the same opportunity, regardless of financial ability). The producer of You Hurt My Feelings recently remarked on her and Holofcener’s wonder at human narcissism. That hasn’t changed since her brush with mortality, she says: “The bullshit is always there and I love exploring it. I’m very interested in the warts and all of human beings and their interactions with each other.” (...)
Beyond cinema, she has made the inevitable celebrity foray into podcasting.
In Wiser Than Me, Louis-Dreyfus interviews older women, from Amy Tan to Jane Fonda, about their life experiences. Fonda’s documentary Jane Fonda in Five Acts inspired the idea. “I was completely stunned by the scope of her life, and that I didn’t really fully understand everything that she had done, accomplished, experienced,” she says. “It led me to the next thought: what about all the other older women out there who have had a lot of life? I want to hear from them, too. There’s enormous value in speaking to women who have been there, done that and can give you the sage advice.”
Fonda told her that she regretted getting cosmetic surgery. Last year, Holofcener told this paper that virtually every female actor over 50 had “distorted their own face” with surgery. Louis-Dreyfus’s stance is that people should do what they want: “I’m not making any judgment whatsoever of anyone who does it. Having said that, I have not had any plastic surgery. It’s not something I’m keen on doing – as, you know, demonstrated by my face in the movie.” (...)
Holofcener has previously said that Louis-Dreyfus “should be a huge movie star”. Does she want that? “Well, I don’t know what it means to be a huge movie star,” she says. “Stardom – that’s like air. In my view, that’s not a worthy pursuit. But I’m trying to find more material that’s fresh, and material that I would like to see myself. It’s like this movie: if I weren’t in it, I would go opening weekend to see it, because it’s the kind of film that I enjoy watching.” She lets out a huge, broad laugh as she considers a hypothetical insecurity. “And then I’d have a complete shit fit that I wasn’t in it!”
by Laura Snapes, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Ryan Pfhluger
[ed. A promo piece, but she is still one of the greatest comediennes of our time. And seems to do it so effortlessly. See also: You Hurt My Feelings review (Guardian).]
