Julie White, Killer Agent
Julie White, Killer Agent, in 'The Little Dog Laughed'
By ANITA GATES NYTimes January 20, 2006
In a way, Julie White owes it all to a stomach ulcer. It kept her home a lot in the third grade, and acting in the movie musicals she saw on television looked like great fun. But "growing up in Texas," she says, "I didn't realize it was a viable career choice."
It has been viable. Today she is basking in the kinds of reviews most actors only pray for.
From the first minute of Douglas Carter Beane's delicious comedy "The Little Dog Laughed," at Second Stage Theater, Ms. Wilson owns the stage. Her character, Diane, is a brash, fast-talking, infinitely sure-of-herself Hollywood agent determined to save her client, a closeted gay actor, from himself.
"Please, for me, as a favor, butch it up, Mary," she tells that client (Neal Huff) in Act 1. He has decided to come out just as he is about to play a gay character in a film. Bad timing.
Ben Brantley, writing in The New York Times, called Ms. Wilson's work "an irresistible adrenaline rush of a performance." He said of Diane, "When she's hammering out the clauses in a contract (taken to the last delicious degree of absurdity by Mr. Beane), she's Scheherazade."
Over steak frites and iced tea at Le Madeleine, a restaurant down the block from the theater, Ms. White is certainly compelling but much gentler. A dentist's daughter born in a naval hospital in San Diego and brought up in Austin, Tex., she can even be self-deprecating.
"I'm about as deep as a Dixie cup," Ms. Wilson announced during a discussion about acting approaches. When Method actors are backstage connecting with primal memories, she's reading Us magazine, she said.
With four hours between last Saturday's matinee and evening performances, she talked about her life and career so far. She wore a turtleneck and tan cords but Diane's hairstyle; her own is usually curlier and looser.
At 44, she is enviably thin. Good metabolism, she said, but also mentioned "three floors of stairs between the dressing room and the stage." That helps. And she smokes, although it's her New Year's resolution to quit.
Ms. Wilson said she never had a master plan for success. Growing up, she did local shows, driving herself to auditions as a teenager. She acted in "Two Gentlemen of Verona" and "Company" in Austin community theater and attended Southwest Texas State University. (The University of Texas was "too big.")
Joseph Stein and Stephen Schwartz saw her in their musical "The Baker's Wife" and suggested she move to New York. She did, enrolling at Fordham University, but she started getting work and never graduated.
Ms. Wilson made her New York stage debut in 1988 in "Lucky Stiff," an Off Broadway musical. Her subsequent credits include Wendy Wasserstein's "Heidi Chronicles" (a small role) and "Spike Heels" with Kevin Bacon and Tony Goldwyn. She originated the role of Beth in Donald Margulies's "Dinner With Friends." Theresa Rebeck wrote "Bad Dates" for her.
During the 1990's, she also played the wacky neighbor on the sitcom "Grace Under Fire" for four seasons. More recently, she was a memorable funeral home owner in several episodes of "Six Feet Under." She's headed to the West Coast again soon, even though "The Little Dog Laughed" may have a life beyond its current extended closing date, Feb. 26.
She will be going with her husband of four years, Christopher Conner, an actor. Her 19-year-old daughter, Alexandra (from an early marriage to a New York restaurateur), is a freshman at the University of Southern California.
With the flurry of attention being paid to her, Ms. Wilson said she was a little suspicious of real fame because "people become big Macy's balloons of themselves."
There is certainly the danger of becoming typecast as a tough-agent type. She and her current character have some things in common, Mr. Beane said. "Julie is a motormouth," he said. But she didn't fit his original concept of Diane. "I had somebody completely different in mind," he recalled. "But I decided to let go and let Julie."
By ANITA GATES NYTimes January 20, 2006
In a way, Julie White owes it all to a stomach ulcer. It kept her home a lot in the third grade, and acting in the movie musicals she saw on television looked like great fun. But "growing up in Texas," she says, "I didn't realize it was a viable career choice."
It has been viable. Today she is basking in the kinds of reviews most actors only pray for.
From the first minute of Douglas Carter Beane's delicious comedy "The Little Dog Laughed," at Second Stage Theater, Ms. Wilson owns the stage. Her character, Diane, is a brash, fast-talking, infinitely sure-of-herself Hollywood agent determined to save her client, a closeted gay actor, from himself.
"Please, for me, as a favor, butch it up, Mary," she tells that client (Neal Huff) in Act 1. He has decided to come out just as he is about to play a gay character in a film. Bad timing.
Ben Brantley, writing in The New York Times, called Ms. Wilson's work "an irresistible adrenaline rush of a performance." He said of Diane, "When she's hammering out the clauses in a contract (taken to the last delicious degree of absurdity by Mr. Beane), she's Scheherazade."
Over steak frites and iced tea at Le Madeleine, a restaurant down the block from the theater, Ms. White is certainly compelling but much gentler. A dentist's daughter born in a naval hospital in San Diego and brought up in Austin, Tex., she can even be self-deprecating.
"I'm about as deep as a Dixie cup," Ms. Wilson announced during a discussion about acting approaches. When Method actors are backstage connecting with primal memories, she's reading Us magazine, she said.
With four hours between last Saturday's matinee and evening performances, she talked about her life and career so far. She wore a turtleneck and tan cords but Diane's hairstyle; her own is usually curlier and looser.
At 44, she is enviably thin. Good metabolism, she said, but also mentioned "three floors of stairs between the dressing room and the stage." That helps. And she smokes, although it's her New Year's resolution to quit.
Ms. Wilson said she never had a master plan for success. Growing up, she did local shows, driving herself to auditions as a teenager. She acted in "Two Gentlemen of Verona" and "Company" in Austin community theater and attended Southwest Texas State University. (The University of Texas was "too big.")
Joseph Stein and Stephen Schwartz saw her in their musical "The Baker's Wife" and suggested she move to New York. She did, enrolling at Fordham University, but she started getting work and never graduated.
Ms. Wilson made her New York stage debut in 1988 in "Lucky Stiff," an Off Broadway musical. Her subsequent credits include Wendy Wasserstein's "Heidi Chronicles" (a small role) and "Spike Heels" with Kevin Bacon and Tony Goldwyn. She originated the role of Beth in Donald Margulies's "Dinner With Friends." Theresa Rebeck wrote "Bad Dates" for her.
During the 1990's, she also played the wacky neighbor on the sitcom "Grace Under Fire" for four seasons. More recently, she was a memorable funeral home owner in several episodes of "Six Feet Under." She's headed to the West Coast again soon, even though "The Little Dog Laughed" may have a life beyond its current extended closing date, Feb. 26.
She will be going with her husband of four years, Christopher Conner, an actor. Her 19-year-old daughter, Alexandra (from an early marriage to a New York restaurateur), is a freshman at the University of Southern California.
With the flurry of attention being paid to her, Ms. Wilson said she was a little suspicious of real fame because "people become big Macy's balloons of themselves."
There is certainly the danger of becoming typecast as a tough-agent type. She and her current character have some things in common, Mr. Beane said. "Julie is a motormouth," he said. But she didn't fit his original concept of Diane. "I had somebody completely different in mind," he recalled. "But I decided to let go and let Julie."
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