Arrive - September/October 2013

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television (Angels in America, West Wing), eventually cir-
cling back to the theater.

“She’s got a huge range and a huge depth and a way into
roles that makes them uniquely hers,” says Lynne Meadow,
artistic director of the Manhattan Theatre Club, which is
producing The Sno w Geese. “She’s one of our most gifted
American actors and deeply committed to theater.”
Parker would devote herself to theater full time if
possible, but the demands of being a single parent make
the stage life impracticable. She has two children, a son
with the actor Billy Crudup and a daughter adopted from
Africa, who don’t see their mother for dinner or bedtime
when the curtain rises at 8 p.m. Hollywood provides a
more accommodating life, and it pays for tuitions and
interludes without commitments so she can focus with a
modicum of normalcy on school drop-off and recitals.

The movie roles and television stints are a practical necessity, but Parker clearly prefers the honesty and directness of the stage. By way of example she refers to an actress “of slight ability” who nonetheless shines on television thanks to the tricks and artistry of postproduction.

“That’s the magic of the medium,” she says, “but I’d
rather fail and know it’s my fault.”
Television wizardry can touch up a weak performance.
It can also ruin a good one. Parker bristles at the memory
of a scene shot for Weeds twisted by editing into an unrec-
ognizable mash. “I was so devastated when I saw it,” she
says. “It’s disturbing if somebody creates something that
isn’t anything like what you intended.”

THE REWARD OF RESURRECTION

Parker will never stand at the center of the Hollywood
whirl. She is unsuited for the America’s sweetheart roles
that Julia Roberts plays or the adorkable rom-com parts
written for Drew Barrymore. She’s too rough-edged, too
much like the surly smart kid quipping in the back of the
classroom. New York magazine called her the “thinking
man’s sex symbol.” Parker says she gladly accepts that
designation, adding, “I wouldn’t mind being the idiot’s sex
symbol either.”
If she isn’t quite right for Hollywood’s conventionally
glamorous roles, she is nonetheless an actor’s actor, a
natural for the stage. The critic John Leonard described
her as an actress capable of “always thinking about three
things simultaneously, one of them scandalous.”
This fall she will prepare for her nightly performance
in The Snow Geese by arriving at the theater early—she
likes to stand alone on the stage, sit alone in her dressing
room—to warm up her voice and perform superstitious
precurtain rituals she declines to describe. A stage role,
she says, is never fully realized or perfected. She wel-
comes the way in which each nightly performance finds
“its own character, each surfaces an unexpected aspect
of the play unlike any that preceded it.” People pay a lot
of money for those tickets, Parker says. “You owe them
the best you can deliver every night. To give them last
night’s show is a cop-out.”
When a performance goes well Parker feels a hum,
like a thrumming engine. If a scene founders she takes
comfort knowing that the chemistry can reverse in a
moment.

“When I was growing up in Arizona the sun would be out, then suddenly storm clouds came and the sky cracked open. It can be like that onstage. It usually happens when you take a chance. You can be resurrected.”

The resurrection is reward enough for her exertions, along with the gratification following a good night’s performance. “I like the way I feel after,” she says. “Wrung out and wiped clean. Empty and clear.”