Ellen Barkin on Animal Kingdom and Playing a Villainess That Would Make Walter White Blush
The Tony-winning actress also discusses the tragedy of Hollywood sexism.
BY JULIE MILLERJUNE 14, 2016 4:06 PM
By Stanley Greene/NOOR/Redux.
Twenty-five years ago, Ellen Barkin starred in a movie that tipped society’s most maddening examples of misogyny on their heads: Switch, a comedy written and directed by Blake Edwards that was probably too brainy for big box office. The movie centered on a successful businessman and sexist womanizer who is ultimately offed by one of his jilted lovers. As afterlife punishment, he is reincarnated as a beautiful woman (Barkin) and challenged to befriend a single member of his new sex. When the forward-thinking film came up during a phone call with Barkin on Monday, I asked whether she thinks she would have fared differently in Hollywood had she been born with the same talents and intelligence but the body of a man—the sex that doesn’t seem to expire in the eyes of industry execs at the age of 30.
It seemed like a fair question. Barkin has been unapologetically fierce in navigating her impressive career and Hollywood relations, sometimes to the detriment of her reputation; in 1993, a New York Times piece about her wondered, “Is She Difficult or Just Straight Outta Queens?” The article’s writer, Jan Hoffman, determined that the female star of Tender Mercies, The Big Easy, Sea of Love, and This Boy’s Life had not ascended to the Hollywood heights of, say, Julia Roberts or Geena Davis because “the woman has a bit of an attitude problem.”
So, does Barkin think she might have had a different trajectory had she been born with a body that made her toughness more, uh, palatable?
“I tend to not think of those things,” Barkin replies. She speaks deliberately, choosing her next words and then delivering them dryly: “I could’ve done better in a woman’s body with my own career, but I didn’t.”
She continues, “You know, I don’t plan for the future and I never want to be anything I’m not. I don’t look over my shoulder. I was taught that by a brilliant acting teacher who was really a mentor of mine.”
Barkin is, however, soberly aware of the shortage of roles available to actresses of her experience, and the hypocrisy of Hollywood.
“It’s hard at 62 years old to not be able to incorporate what you’ve learned through the years. Of course you get better [as an actress], but if you can’t put it to use, it’s kind of a tragedy. When the parts you’re being offered are, ‘You know, what do you want for dinner, dear?’ Or, ‘Don’t go out so late.’”
This is one of the reasons Barkin signed on to Animal Kingdom, TNT’s reboot of the 2010 Australian crime film that earned Jacki Weaver an Oscar nomination and a place on Hollywood’s radar. Barkin plays the Weaver character, “Smurf,” a deliciously dark matriarch who keeps her criminal sons ( Scott Speedman and Shawn Hatosy) uncomfortably close—there is a vague hint of incest in this beachside household. The premiere, which airs on Tuesday, sees Barkin strutting around her neighborhood in high heels and tight tank tops, stroking the back of one son as he does lines of cocaine off a living-room mirror and boldly plunging into the gray areas of parental relationships that are more Oedipal than Ozzie and Harriet.
“Here, I had an opportunity to really test myself,” Barkin says of the project, noting that she was hesitant to take on a series that required her to move to California and submit to a grueling production schedule. “Television is very different than movies and stage. But it’s kind of reignited me. I see there’s a whole world of my own creativity that for some reason I’ve yet to tap into. Not just in terms of the character, but in terms of my own technique of acting. I’m being given the room to take some big chances. At my age, that’s rare. I love this job.”
Ellen Barkin in Animal Kingdom.
Courtesy of Eddy Chen.
Part of the reason Barkin has taken so well to the project, she says, is because the camaraderie on set was instant, thanks to the trusty crew director and executive producer John Wells has accumulated over his years on E.R., The West Wing, Shameless, and Southland. The familial sense also helped ease Barkin into the responsibility of being the project’s lead.
“I’m happier as a character actor,“ Barkin concedes. “I haven’t had a career that’s filled with roles that are number one on the call sheet. I’m much more comfortable with other numbers in front of my name.” She laughs. “I worked with some really iconic actors of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and now. They really taught me a lot. I might not be as talented as they are, but I do have enough intelligence to try to help my younger [co-stars].”
Barkin says she laid this out for her co-stars on Day One.
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“I just said, ‘I’m 62 and I want your notes. I don’t care how old you guys are.‘ One of them was 19. But I said, “If you see me do something that doesn’t sit right with you, come talk to me about it. If you have an idea for me, come talk to me about it. Let’s all talk. Let’s do this together.’ That’s how we started off, and it’s really been just one of the most pleasant experiences on that end.”
“These are young kids and they need role models,“ Barkin says. “I think it’s up to us to, you know, be super aware of that, and I am. I try to do whatever I can to help . . . It’s like you’re just walking at the front of the line and you want people to keep pace with you.”
Her onscreen dynamic with her brood is a little more difficult to define.
“Smurf does not love her sons in the traditional way at all, but she does love them in her own way. She protects them in her way. She’s been in a bad way since she’s been a young girl struggling to survive. She’s figured out a way maybe she can, and she’s passed that skill set onto her children.
“I’ve played just downright evil characters, but I don’t quite know if we want to call [Smurf] that. Honestly, I like playing mean girls. I just do. It’s fun. Compared to what I’m offered now, especially. I’ve reached a point where working for a week on a movie, where you’re someone’s wife or grandmother or mother, it’s just not enough. What television has afforded us is just this wide world of experimentation. If you look at what’s happening today, I mean, my entire generation of actors is either gone or on television. You know?”
Barkin is especially excited to see how audiences react to a female TV character—a manipulative ballbuster—who’s really breaking bad.
“Will they accept a woman [in this position of power], as opposed to a man?“ Barkin wonders. “Do I become just a ***** where the man might become very creative in how he earns his living and is praised for those powerful qualities that we attribute to men? Or will they turn around and make those characteristics negative when we attribute those to women? She’s ambitious for her sons, and to some extent still for herself.”
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Twenty-five years after Switch, Barkin has come full circle in some ways, finding a powerful character in a woman's body . . . who is allowed to be a female at heart. Yes, this character might also be a grandmother and mother. But don’t get it twisted: Barkin’s character won’t be reheating anyone’s dinner or nagging about curfews.
“Smurf loves these kids,” Barkin reiterates. A pause, then more deliberate words followed by what I imagine is Barkin's trademark curl of the lip on her end of the receiver. “I can’t quite tell you yet if she’d take a bullet for one of them, though.”