Experienced Actresses Have Their Day in Autumn Sun

After months with barely any significant female roles on the big screen, the fall season is suddenly awash in interesting portrayals by actresses. And not just the usual handful of Oscar-hopeful leading roles.

Coming releases such as “Dr. T. and the Women,” “The Yards” and “Requiem for a Dream” afford a number of seasoned talents the opportunity to shine in ways we’d almost forgotten they could, among them Ellen Burstyn, Farrah Fawcett, Faye Dunaway and Shelley Long. You could almost call it the “in praise of older women” season--older in Hollywood being any female past the age of 35.

It’s no secret that few substantial leading female roles written every year are grabbed up by the handful of stars who are perceived box-office draws: Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, Jodie Foster, Michelle Pfeiffer. These actresses are just as parched for challenging opportunities as everyone else, but they have marquee clout in their favor. In the rare instances when there’s a chewy part for a woman over 40, the list gets even leaner: Meryl Streep, Joan Allen, Holly Hunter and a handful of others.

But if the pool of strong roles for leading actresses is shallow, the availability of interesting supporting parts has been practically bone-dry, particularly for veteran actresses. By contrast, there always seems to be room for older actors to strut their stuff. The best supporting actor category is often filled with them (James Coburn and Michael Caine won the past two years), whereas the supporting actress category usually leans toward younger women (Angelina Jolie won this year, though Judi Dench won the year before).

“I think there are so many reasons why this has happened,” says Long, who has been largely absent from the big screen for the past few years. “Studios have lost confidence in a mature woman’s ability to draw audiences. Even for younger women the scripts are not as strong or as well-promoted. They [the studios] don’t know how to sell them, though the films often wind up being well-received on video.”

Also, because of the limited number of good female roles in general, American actresses rarely have the luxury of journeying back and forth between lead and supporting parts the way male stars such as Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman or English actresses such as Vanessa Redgrave and Julie Walters often do. Oscar-winning actress Frances McDormand is one exception. This year she’s had two opportunities to steal scenes, as the feisty mother in the current release “Almost Famous” and her earlier performance as Michael Douglas’ all-too-wise love interest in “Wonder Boys,” which is scheduled for re-release in October.

Bringing a Kind of Loopy Dignity

Most older actresses have retreated to television. But several films due for release this season offer interesting and diverse roles for women, in particular Robert Altman’s appropriately titled “Dr. T and the Women.” Richard Gere plays Dr. T, a beloved (in more ways than one) gynecologist, but the rest of the film is populated by more women than any Hollywood movie in recent memory. Though they’re basically all well-heeled and from Dallas, they vary widely in age and temperament.

Among the players are familiar faces like Helen Hunt, Laura Dern and Liv Tyler. But the cast also includes Long, Lee Grant and Fawcett. While the film is farcical in nature, the ensemble brings a kind of loopy dignity to their roles, similar to the women in Altman’s last film, “Cookie’s Fortune” (1999), which was also written by novelist and screenwriter Anne Rapp. “They all have a wit and depth you don’t get to see much of these days,” Long says about the characters.

“Dr. T was a really good time for the women,” says Fawcett, who plays Gere’s mentally unhinged wife. “It’s rare that you see that many interesting female roles in movies unless they’re played by ingenues, like in ‘American Pie.’ And even some of those can be very pat.” Much of Fawcett’s role is physical (she even has a nude scene in a public fountain), but she says that with the exception of “The Apostle,” it was her most satisfying work on the big screen in many years.

“The part called for a great deal of body language, and Altman let me research the character [who has a rare psychological malady called the Hestia complex, which makes a person retreat from the world because he or she is loved too much]. It was a challenge to be able to convey so much about her without written dialogue.”

Altman’s improvisational style also helped Long develop her character as Dr. T’s seemingly daffy, but rather calculating head nurse. “When I asked Altman how he saw this character he just said, ‘Bring your bag of tricks,’ ” says Long, whose original training was in comedy improvisation.

“He meant that I have a wealth of experience and training to draw from and he wanted me to use it. That kind of opportunity is wonderful, unusual and a little scary.” With no rehearsal and only a blueprint of her character, Long immersed herself in the Dallas scene to pick up pointers. “The film has a lovely dynamic,” says Long of the movie’s ensemble nature. “You contribute to the plot and then fade back and someone else comes forward.”

Two Roles for Burstyn

Oscar-winning Burstyn (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”), who says her feature film career of late has mostly been “keeping wig makers busy creating gray wigs for me so I can play grandmothers,” has two distinctive supporting roles in films this fall: in James Gray’s “The Yards” and, more daringly, in Darren Aronofsky’s NC-17-rated “Requiem for a Dream.”

“Except for ‘The Spitfire Grill’ . . . , I can’t remember the last good role I was offered in movies,” says Burstyn. “The ‘80s were pretty quiet, though I always found work in television. But it’s been a long time since there’s been such a good role offered to someone my age, let alone two.”

Burstyn’s explanation for the double stroke of good fortune, she says, is that a generation that grew up watching her in movies like “The Last Picture Show” and “The Exorcist” back in the ‘70s, are now making movies, such as young directors like Gray and Aronofsky. She notes that both films are opening within a month of the successful re-release of “The Exorcist.”

In “The Yards,” Burstyn is cast opposite one of her contemporaries, Dunaway, who portrays her sister. It’s one of those infrequent opportunities to watch two celebrated actresses play off each other. Another ‘70s star, James Caan, also interacts with Burstyn and Dunaway, and their characters complement the younger generation of actors in the film: Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix and Charlize Theron.

But it’s Aronofsky’s grueling “Requiem for a Dream” that gives Burstyn what she calls perhaps her most challenging role ever, both physically and emotionally. The part, she says, came at the perfect moment, just after she had finished a run onstage playing Mary Tyrone in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” a herculean exercise for any actress, but one that primed her to portray Aronofsky’s lonely woman who descends into madness after becoming addicted to diet pills. For the role, she had to act under a series of punishing prosthetics and, during a two-week hiatus, lose 10 pounds for her final scenes.

“I’m lucky that this role came along just after I did Mary Tyrone onstage. It was like training for the Olympic games. If ‘Requiem’ hadn’t come along, I would have done all that training without an Olympics to participate in.”

The sudden upsurge in strong supporting roles for older actresses may be just an aberration. But Fawcett would like to think otherwise. “I’m not sure what happened, but maybe it’s our time,” she says, beaming.

Long is a bit more realistic. “Although ‘Dr. T’ was written by a woman, it still took significant male names [Altman and Gere] to get it made.”

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Studio Cries Foul in Ratings Disagreement

* Artisan claims “Requiem for a Dream” is a victim in the ongoing political feud with Washington over movie marketing. F5