A part almost worth the wait

Melissa Leo likes being back. She likes being back in Baltimore, the place she called home for much of her five-year run on NBC’s “Homicide: Life on the Street” and where she recently was the guest of honor at a benefit for the Screen Actors Guild.

“I am a little bit home again,” she says, later adding, “It was the city of Baltimore that took me in.” Still, even more, she likes being back in the public eye. Acting-wise, things have been fairly quiet since she left the cast of “Homicide” six years ago; parts have been scarce.

But director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “21 Grams,” in which she co-stars as the wife of an ill-fated ex-con, is putting her back on Hollywood’s radar screens. “This is practically like the first film I’ve ever done,” she says. “Most of my film work [13 films since 1984, according to the Internet Movie Database] has never seen the light of day. Even if it gets released, it’s one week in the theaters.

“Breaking into the Hollywood film industry has eluded me for 20 years,” she says.

Baltimoreans may be surprised to hear that. Certainly, her five-season stint as Sgt. Kay Howard, for a time the only woman in the otherwise all-boys club that was “Homicide,” made her a favorite in the area. Always trying to fit in with the guys, eschewing makeup and dresses for less attention-grabbing business suits, yet determinedly trusting her own instincts, the character had a lot of women identifying with her.

In fact, Leo says she and “Homicide” parted ways over efforts to turn Howard into a more conventional female TV detective, complete with heels and tight sweaters. “The break with me and them came when they wanted me to pose with this boyfriend she had had for a prom photo, that would look like it was shot when they were kids. And I said, ‘I’m not posing for a prom photo. Kay Howard didn’t go to the prom. Me, her and hundreds of thousands of other women who didn’t go to the prom -- can we tell that story?’ And they wouldn’t go there. I sort of went downhill from there.”

Then, the disappearing act started.

“I couldn’t get hired anymore,” says the actress, now 43. “Some of it might have to do with my age. Some of it might have to do with ... movie stars that never would have done television are now getting the work I would have done on television.”

“Homicide” also left Leo with what she insists is an undeserved reputation for being difficult. And then there’s the classic actor’s dilemma of being associated with a certain role.

Leo, who says she wasn’t Inarritu’s first choice for “21 Grams,” had to fight for it, to the point where she even had to put together a sort-of audition tape. “He asked if I would do a videotape of myself, nothing to do with the script, nothing to do with the character,” she says. “I gave him soup to nuts, about my personal life, my work life, the ups, the downs.”

The audition process may have been a little unusual, but Leo sensed it would be worth it. “I had been given this amazing script, and the very fine advice to see ‘Amores Perros’ [Inarritu’s first film]. Here is someone who wants what I do. I’m a character actress, and have been since I was a 20-year-old actress starting out. Character is what I’m interested in doing, becoming someone, becoming someone else.”