Glenne Headly: The Real Person Behind Trueheart

For actress Glenne Headly, filling the stylish shoes of “Dick Tracy’s” girlfriend Tess Trueheart was all in the name. “Warren told me he wanted me to live up to the character’s name in the role. I think ‘trueheart’ suggests to me a a very caring and large-hearted woman, one that does things because she believes in them, because it’s actually the character’s credo.”

And although she read the comics, she admitted: “I didn’t really get an idea of Tess from them because there wasn’t that much of her in them. And the way the script was written, I think Tess had a lot more moxie than she seemed to have in the strip. I got a sense of style and the period from the comics, though.”

She was impressed by her co-star and boss, Warren Beatty. As a performer, Headly commented, “He was able to think of a lot of things going on production-wise, without ever showing that as an actor. He’s pretty reticent on camera; he doesn’t ‘hog’ it at all.”

And Beatty the director was no slouch either. “He would help to convey whatever I needed to, whether it was to be stronger or to be less so,” she said. “He was a real guiding force.”

The actress, an alumnus of the High School for the Performing Arts in New York, honed her craft in theaters in San Francisco, Chicago and New York. She won a World Theatre Award as outstanding newcomer in Christopher Hampton’s “The Philanthropist.” “I think theater certainly honed my craft. But I love both movies and theater,” she said.

After “Dick Tracy” wrapped, Headly got a starring role as Joyce Urbanski in Alan Rudolph’s film “Mortal Thoughts,” which is due out in January, 1991. “My character’s the complete antithesis of Tess. I play a strong, abrasive woman, a tough girl who grew up in a lower-middle-class background and is the wife of an abusive husband.”

And now? “I want some time off this summer to work on my house, stripping paint and sanding hardwood floors. I’d also like to work with black bears or bald eagles on work-study programs at a wildlife station. Last summer I worked with bighorn sheep in Wyoming and I loved it.”