Tony Winner Joan Allen Also Wins Roles With Jeff and Beau Bridges

Tony Award-winner Joan Allen is one of the few actresses to work with both of the fabulous Bridges boys. She starred opposite Jeff in the 1988 film “Tucker: The Man and His Dream” and now appears with Beau in HBO’s drama “Without Warning: The James Brady Story,” airing Sunday, about the near-fatal shooting of President Reagan’s press secretary and his long and painful recovery. Allen plays Brady’s wife, Sarah.

“I think Jeff is a little wilder,” explains the soft-spoken actress. “I think Beau is a little more pragmatic and down to earth. What would a comparison be? Jeff would be like a scat jazz musician and Beau would be a little more like a classical musician.”

Though cast just 10 days before production began on “Without Warning,” Allen was able to meet Sarah Brady. “I wanted to find out some personal things,” she says. “Sarah was very generous with her answers. I asked her things like, ‘Did you cry when you heard the news?’ Also, I was watching how she sat in her chair and how she held her cigarette and the quality of her voice.”

Allen, now 34, is one of the original members of Chicago’s acclaimed Steppenwolf Theatre. The Steppenwolf production “And a Nightingale Sang” brought her to New York eight years ago.

“The unfortunate thing about Chicago is that you can’t making a living in the theater,” she says with a sigh.

But she has in New York. Allen was the toast of Broadway three years ago when she won the Tony for Lanford Wilson’s “Burn This,” a role she originated at the Mark Taper Forum. She also was nominated in 1989 for Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Heidi Chronicles.”

The last two years, though, Allen has been concentrating more on her film work. “When I do a play it becomes your whole life,” she says. “Life pretty much for me is on hold when I do a play. That’s what makes it hard to commit. It’s a very serious responsibility.”