ellen barkin ince landing her breakout role in Barry Levinson’s 1982 film Diner, Ellen Barkin has been holding her own against acting titans like Al Pacino (Sea of Love), Robert de Niro (This Boy’s Life) and Robert Duvall (Tender Mercies), to name just a few, for the last 29 years. Now at 57, the New York native—born in the Bronx, educated at Manhattan’s High School of the Performing Arts and the prestigious Actor’s Studio—is finally making her Broadway debut. She plays Dr. Emma Brookner, a wheelchair-bound doctor-turned-crusader in the early days of the AIDS epidemic in New York’s gay community, in Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart. Broadway.com caught up with the offbeat beauty to chat about what finally drew her to Broadway, and what really goes on backstage at the Golden Theatre.
Congratulations on your Broadway debut! Why did you wait until now to come to Broadway?
I tend not to think of it that way—maybe just because of how old I am, a "debut" anything seems a bit late—but yes, it is my first time on a Broadway stage. When my children were younger, I found that the schedule of stage was not so conducive to child-rearing, meaning you never cook dinner and you never put your kids to bed, which I always thought was kind of a crucial part of the day. Movies were a little easier to navigate, because I could put my children to bed at night and they could eat dinner with me in my trailer.
What about this piece grabbed you?
I just think it’s too important not to do. It was very important that this play that was such a watershed theatrical moment finally be on Broadway, and to be a spear-carrier for Larry Kramer in the war he’s been fighting for a lifetime is an honor and a privilege for me. And the addition of [co-director] George Wolfe is like, well now we’re just in Geniusville, USA, as far as I’m concerned.
You were in New York acting off-Broadway in the early ‘80s; does the play bring back memories of that time for you?
Absolutely. You cannot help but completely relive the terror and horror of what was going on then. I look at the first 41 names of AIDS victims that come up [on the set of The Normal Heart], and I had a friend on that list. It is a real, visceral remembrance of that terror. There are maybe two generations of human brings who really don’t think AIDS is an issue anymore, and it’s bad. It's bad and that’s in part because of what happened at the beginning, that it was never identified as the plague it was and still is, and then it morphed into what it is now, a huge money-making machine for the pharmaceutical companies.
You seem like perfect casting for this crusader of a woman.
It’s true. When people ask me, “How do you get up the rage every night?” I say, well sometimes I just listen to the play and other times I wake up in the morning, turn on my TV and watch my president hand over his birth certificate. Where do I get my rage? It’s free-floating, it’s blowing in the wind, it’s everywhere. It’s the perfect climate for these words to be heard.
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