Living in real-time

Ventura County Reporter
1/28/10

Television audiences around the world are well-acquainted with actress Jane Kaczmarek, from her role as the formidable mother, Lois, on the popular comedy Malcolm in the Middle, for which she received no fewer than seven Emmy nominations and countless other awards. The daughter of a middle-class Wisconsin family, Kaczmarek found her way to Hollywood via Yale drama and the Broadway stage, appearing in scores of productions before striking gold with seven seasons of Malcolm.

Kaczmarek will join a star-studded cast that includes Ted Danson, Dana Delany, Sally Field, John Glover, Amanda McBroom, Sandra Oh, Zachary Quinto, Mary Steenburgen, Steven Weber and Noah Wyle on Saturday, Jan. 30, for Hearts On Fire, this year’s sold-out gala, dinner and auction to benefit the Ojai Playwrights Conference.

The busy actress, mother and dedicated philanthropist recently took time out from a hectic schedule to discuss the upcoming benefit, work and life with VCReporter:

VCReporter: You’re coming to the Gold Coast for the Ojai Playwrights Conference Benefit Gala. Wonderful.
Jane Kaczmarek: The Ojai [Playwrights] Festival is something I’ve done for a couple of years now, and it’s a great opportunity to work on snippets of wonderful theater with wonderful actors. Bob Egan is a very celebrated director who puts this thing together, and he’s an old friend. The playwrights who have worked up there are just incredible — the plays we do at the festival have all come from playwrights who have come through their program. It’s amazing to have this much talent coming up to such a beautiful community for the weekend. It’s something I really look forward to every year.

VCR: You seem to do a splendid job of maintaining your ties to the stage, despite your great success in TV.
I come from theater, so I find it’s always the most gratifying thing you can do as an actress. You really are storytelling from beginning to end. When you do television, you’re all over the place, you film in snippets; you’re working with directors who have a very distinct idea of how the thing should be cut together. You have a lot more creative input when you’re on the stage; it’s more fun than any other acting.

VCR: And theater is so unpredictable, never performed exactly the same way twice.
It’s very exciting. You know, the Ojai thing is so fast, we really only read through it twice before the audience comes in; we really have to be on our game. And there are some great actors there, who really hit the ball hard back to you, so it’s been an incredibly enjoyable thing to do. You just have to remind yourself that this is what you’re trained to do, and it’s a skill that you often don’t even get to exercise when you’re doing television. When you’re on stage, everything depends on what you create with the other actors.

VCR: What a win/win for you to not only get to practice your craft in such an exciting manner, but also to plug into the charity ethic to which you remain so deeply committed.
Yes, our foundation, Clothes Off Our Back (www.clothesoffourback.org), is doing a Golden Globe auction for Haiti. Jodie Foster and Emily Blount are giving us dresses, Sony is sending a bunch of DVDs and posters over, stuff is coming in from all over this week. The foundation now has auctions year-round, and we’ve raised over $4 million for children’s charities since 2002. It’s a very exciting thing to do.

VCR: It must be a nice break from TV, where you’ve been on quite a roll. You went from Malcolm in the Middle to the short-lived Help Me Help You to a pretty good run on Raising The Bar, but it can’t be easy to maintain a home and family life while the vagaries of TV production demand so much of your time and attention.
Malcolm was a magnificent experience and I’m very grateful for it, but it’s very unlikely that I would ever do a job like that again. You know, I had two babies on that show, was pregnant twice, and paid a really big price in my kids’ early childhood by being away so much. I’ll be keeping a low profile this spring, I think. Hopefully, I’ll find something that will allow me to be home as much as possible.

VCR: It’s interesting that the kind of judge, jury and executioner that was your Malcolm character, “Lois,” has since led you to the judge’s bench more than once.
Yes! (Laughs) I used to say that the character I played on Raising the Bar could have been Lois’s sister, but with a lot more education! With more education and professional experience, that’s whom she might have ended up being.

VCR: You once said that Lois allowed you to move into comedy — and of course you were widely celebrated for that — but the part that seems to stick from Lois was the toughness. I wonder where it leads you next — something similar or would you shed her skin altogether?
Raising the Bar was a great job for me because it allowed me a very limited schedule, which I really appreciated, but comedy is just so much fun. I wouldn’t mind doing a four-camera show, with a live audience. Coming from theater, that’s just such a satisfying experience. So I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that will be next for me.