But what that experience really taught me was that I was just going to have to work harder. I have to be so good, I thought, that this director has to put my pieces in. But because no one wanted to work with me, I had to learn to write monologues. After writing and writing and writing—bad pieces, then mediocre ones, then good but not good enough stuff—I finally hit upon my first successful character.
Once when I was back in Chicago, I went to a midnight screening of one of the Rambo movies, those Sylvester Stallone shoot-’em-ups about the crazy Vietnam vet. I was sitting in front of an African-American woman, and she talked to the screen the whole time. And it was hysterical, certainly more entertaining than the film. So remembering that moment later at the Groundlings, I started trying to think like that woman. She took that movie so personally, it was funny. “Ooooooh, Rambo!” she’d yell out. “Looka Rambo cl–i-i-i-mb-in’ up dat tree like he an animal! Looka Rambo! RAMBO, WHERE YO KNIFE?” Thankfully, we live in a world where one person’s intimate exchange with a ludicrous movie character can be another person’s ticket to comic notoriety, and when I presented this monologue to the director of the show, he put it in, and it absolutely killed. I even got written up in the LA Weekly, whose reviews could make or break a Groundlings show.
It was also the only sketch I did for six months, and suddenly I got a taste of pigeonholing. That’s right. I had pigeonholed myself as a thirty-year-old African-American woman from Chicago who goes to Rambo movies at midnight. My spirits would soar because this bit started to get me auditions with casting directors, sometimes for a big network show, but then I’d go in and they’d say “Do that Rambo sketch!” I’d do it, and they’d say “Bye-bye, thanks! Isn’t she great?” I was now performing for free in offices around town, for people who had nothing to give me in return.
It taught me a lesson about going in to read for roles. Are television and film executives and casting heads calling you in for their own amusement? Or are you really appropriate for the part? That’s when I started trying to find out as much information as I could before I went in for auditions or meetings. It’s something I think all actors should do, so you’re not wasting your time. If I’m sitting there at an audition all dolled up in high heels and a cute outfit but I’m surrounded by tall, gorgeous blondes, I’m thinking they’re calling me in because I’m the performing monkey. At the Groundlings I was surrounded by girls who looked like me, yet they would waste all this time and energy being upset that they weren’t up for the role of the ingénue in whatever it was they auditioned for. This line of thinking inhibited a lot of careers, in my opinion, because instead of being happy about being up for the best-friend role, they’d be crying, “How come I’m not the girl who gets the guy?” Let me tell you something; I knew I was never going to be an ingénue. At eighteen, I wasn’t that girl. My thinking was, don’t ever try to be anything but the homely, wisecracking girl. Be Rhoda, and go balls out for it. Find the meeting or audition where they’re looking for someone who’s able to be funny on their own, quick on their feet, rather than think I’m going to be able to compete with the tall, stupid, gorgeous girls. Hooker with the heart of gold, quippy secretary, nosy neighbor, that’s what I wanted to do—and knew I could do it better than anybody else—and so I’d go into casting offices and say, “I want to be second banana.”
Even with this more realistic goal, it took years for me to get an agent. I tried answering ads in every industry publication that existed: Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Back Stage West, you name it. I went to public casting calls that I would hear about on local television commercials or read about in the Los Angeles Times. I had my ear open at all times, and in all situations, in hopes that I could at least overhear a conversation between a couple of people in acting class or audience members when I attended a play, or at dinner parties, hoping to get some kind of a tip on where auditions might be held at any time.
I went to several talent agencies, and the drill was always the same. I would paper Hollywood with invites to the Groundlings, or any underground play I happened to be doing on the side, and about once a year, some little down-and-out, Broadway Danny Rose–style agency—usually one that sat above a resale jewelry shop, the kind that boasted client pictures of Linda Blair fifteen years after The Exorcist, or Erin Moran long after Happy Days—would “sign me.” I would go in for the meeting, filled with hope that this would be the agent who would believe in me and send me out on real live television auditions. But invariably, I would have a less than promising meeting, keep working away in the Groundlings, and never hear from that agency again.
I soon learned that the agency business is simply a numbers game. In my opinion, 98 percent of all agents sign up unknown actors hoping the actor will have a gig that just falls into their lap, so they can then collect their commission. And guess what? In my case that’s eventually what happened. In defense of agents, I will admit that it is difficult for an agent to promote an actor if that actor really doesn’t have anything going on. So it is kind of a chicken-and-egg situation. That’s why I don’t count on agents for very much these days, except to negotiate contracts. I learned early on that a very important thing to let go of was the notion that anyone was going to get me work except me. I wasted a lot of time waiting for the phone to ring, when the most important thing is to generate your own shows, your own performances, get out there and do it, anyhow, anywhere, until they can’t help but notice you if you’re good. And even then, you better not have a big nose.
Of course, the term “work” in show business is a loose one. In those days, I had bizarre notions of what a real acting job was. One time I was sitting around the Groundlings with a bunch of girls, and someone came in and said, “Hey, there’s a dentist in Marina Del Rey, his office is calling, and they need an actress to come over and pretend they’re coming on to him for his birthday. They’ll pay thirty dollars.” The idea was, a bunch of his friends would be in a nearby room and then they’d yell “Surprise!”
Dentist humor. “I’ll take it!” I shrieked.
I dolled myself up Robert Palmer-video-style in a totally cheesy $19 powder-blue minidress, fuck-me pumps, and a hot-pink sock in my hair, and drove down to Marina Del Rey in my beat-up Toyota Corolla with 100,000 miles on it. I walked into that office thinking, I am a professional actress.
Really, to me, it was another improv. This was a cake walk, I thought. And it was. I strolled in, sat in the dentist’s chair, and when the guy came in, I crossed and uncrossed my legs about fifty times à la Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, and just started making the most horrible double entendres. “Can you fill my cavity?” “Are you gonna root around in my canal?” “I don’t spit. I swallow.”
I’m pretty sure I took my top off, too, when I said, “Can you do a breast exam?” That’s when everybody barged in with the “Surprise” and cake and I said, “Thanks, everybody,” and took my $30 in cash in an envelope—like a whore—and left.
I was still thinking, I am a professional actress.
Let’s hash this out for a second. Why didn’t I bring a friend? I was so stupid I didn’t even have the wherewithal to grab a gay and say “Drive with me.” If you were a predator, how easy would it be to call up a theater company and get some dopey girl to come down to Marina Del Rey for cash so you could get her alone in an office?
And there’s no telling how far I might have gotten lost in my craft if that little party had donuts….
Let me tell you one more thing about dues, and I’m talking to you, LC, or any of you bitches from The Hills. Like taxes, sooner or later, we all have to pay them.
Me with Janeane Garofalo. We became close in my early stand-up years.
Why do I make fun of Hilary Swank?
After I couldn’t seem to cut a break after working my butt off for nearly a decade, hearing Ms. Boys Don’t Cry’s “I moved here and slept in my car for four days with my mom” sob story all those years later just chafed my ass. I wanted to reach into the screen when she unloaded t
hat poor-me crap on Oprah and slap her in the face. Cry me a fucking river, Hilary. You star in a Karate Kid movie at nineteen, and win two Oscars by thirty. Go fuck yourself. I was banging guys in donut shops. Try being an extra, going to Santa Monica City College acting classes with bored housewives, working as a Kelly girl temp, and doing endless Method exercises where you’re pretending to hold a cup of coffee until you sweat because you really believe it. Then talk to me. If somebody had said, “Okay, you can either do it the way you did it, or you can live with your mom in a Toyota for a year, and it’s filled with your own feces,” I’d take the poop car. Not an issue.
And don’t even get me started on “I yodeled in a van.” Boohoo, Jewel. How horrible. I’ll bet you liked winning that Grammy by twenty-five.
Sometimes you’ll read about stars who can look back and realize how shocking it was that it happened so quickly for them. John Corbett is like that. He started off as a hairdresser, and when I was at the Groundlings he used to be our lighting guy, running the follow spot (the light that stays on a performer when they’re onstage) for ten dollars a show, while I sat on his lap. He was supernice, thought all of us in the Groundlings were really talented, and because he was hot, all the girls wanted him. I remember him saying once, “Oh, hey, the other night I went to a play and some agent came up to me and asked me for my picture.”
The whole time I’d been in LA, I’d prayed for that agent-approaches-you moment, and never gotten it.
“You’re kidding,” I said, barely disguising my despair.
John said, “I didn’t know what to do, so I gave her my phone number.”
He sent in one picture responding to a casting ad in the trade paper Dramalogue—one picture—and got a giant Mitsubishi commercial. Suddenly the follow-spot worker was the cute guy in car ads, the face of Levi’s, and then he was on Northern Exposure. I love John, but boy, do I hate those stories. “I was here a week, and Robert De Niro came up to me in a restaurant and said something about a movie!” Ugh. I consoled myself with the fact that at least John could act. Don’t get me started on the fucking Heidi Montags (oh, I mean Pratts, since when you have three weddings, I guess you might as well take the guy’s last name) of the world, who are just handed a show like it’s a flyer for a goddamn nightclub. Where’s the talent? Where’s the hard work? Unless you count getting blowouts hard work.
I’ll admit it, it was hard watching everyone else at the Groundlings make it into the Friday-Saturday group ahead of me, people like Jon Lovitz, Mindy Sterling, and my good friend Judy Toll. It felt like being held back at school. I’m pretty sure I was in the B company at the Groundlings for longer than anyone I know of in the history of the place. I would just always hear that I wasn’t there yet. So I hunkered down and worked even harder: writing more, going back to classes, trying to be funnier.
When I finally made it into the main company in the mid-1980s, though, I did have the great fortune to perform with the man whom I had hopelessly pestered as a total nobody all those years ago: the awesome Phil Hartman. Phil had left the Groundlings, but came back after years of doing television pilots that never got picked up to be series. Everyone was mystified that he hadn’t broken out. Of course, Saturday Night Live was looming for him, but until then I had the distinct pleasure of being in the same show with him in that ninety-nine-seat theater on Melrose Avenue. I remember that the LA Weekly came out and they said the highlights of the show were him and me. Phil came in and set the paper down and said in that distinctively mock-serious tone of his: “Well, well, well, look who thinks we’re the standouts.” I tried to be cool—“Oh, hey, congratulations!”—but inside I was like, “Wow, I’m mentioned in an article with Phil Hartman!”
Phil was so obviously brilliant and hilarious, but he was also an incredibly good guy. When I just wasn’t getting any traction with auditions in LA, I went to Chicago for a month. John Hughes was making all his hit films there, and I had this idea that maybe I could make something happen. Well, one time I came home at the end of the day to my brother’s apartment and my mom called.
“Ooooh CHRIST, I’ve been trying to get you since yesterday,” she said breathlessly. “Phil Hartman called us with a little part for you, but it was something you had to run over and get that day.”
“You’re kidding!” I moaned into the phone.
My mom said, “You know, he was so sweet. We had this nice conversation, and he said, ‘I think Kathy is really talented. She’s really standing out, and when this part came up, she was the first person I thought about.’ ”
I was so touched. For him to think of me like that—when I just assumed I wasn’t even on his radar—meant the world to me. But missing that opportunity just wrecked me. It made me realize I couldn’t leave LA. If you wanted to work in television, you couldn’t live in Chicago. I’m not Tommy Lee Jones or Sandra Bullock, who can live on a ranch and expect people to track them down. Even if nothing’s happening, it didn’t pay to be somewhere else.
I went on to watch Phil become a huge hit, with immense pride and joy. I would later run into him at NBC events when I was on Suddenly Susan and he was on Newsradio. I remember my last conversation with him like it was yesterday. I had gotten a chuckle out of him, and felt honored to make the great Phil Hartman laugh.
Sometimes I got to know famous people before they were famous from my stint teaching classes for the Groundlings. It became my day job toward the end of the ’80s, and I did that for about five years. I led five improv classes a week, and it was really fun except I lost my voice frequently during that period because you’re doing a lot of yelling over your students for four hours at a time. I consider myself to be single-handedly responsible for the success of any and all of my famous students: Will Ferrell, Cheri Oteri, Chris Parnell, Mike McDonald, and Kenny G’s wife (don’t ask).
I have deep shame, though, about one of my charges, a young Mariska Hargitay. This was before the beautiful Mariska would go on to achieve Emmy fame on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. I was getting ready to start a new class in a hot, sweaty, rented storefront in Hollywood—because the Groundlings had so many classes that not all of them could be at the theater itself—and before the first day I remember my mom recognized her name from my list of students, because of course she knew everything about every celebrity.
“Hargitay!” she crowed. “Mickey Hargitay’s DAUGHTER? Holy Mary Mother of God, JAYNE MANSFIELD’S KID?”
Naturally I was excited now. Anyway, this tall, gorgeous girl comes into my class, and she’s in no way acting like the child of a celebrity. She was just very sweet and normal. We started class, and in the Groundlings curriculum, one of the first exercises you do is the clichéd “trust” game. I made everyone stand in a circle, with me in the center, and I said, “Being onstage, you have to trust your fellow actors, especially when you’re an improviser. You’re going to be there for each other, and they’re going to be there for you. For example, I’m going to fall back, knowing that you’ll catch me.”
Then I let myself fall backward, and sure enough, I was caught. Everyone gets out some nervous laughter, and then they all took turns doing it. By the time it got around to Mariska Hargitay, we’d already done it with ten or eleven students, and they clearly had gotten the point. Then it was Mariska’s turn. “Okay, Mariska, cross your arms in front of you and gently fall back,” I said.
She fell back and nobody caught her. She fell flat on her ass.
I was horrified. This had never happened in one of my classes before. I don’t know if there was a fly buzzing in front of our faces, or being typical actors, we were just distracted. People must have turned their heads at the wrong time, but as the teacher, I took full and complete responsibility. And this was a 5’10″ girl, too. It’s true, the bigger they are, the harder they fall, and BOOM, she went right down on her coccyx. Like a ton of bricks. No, not a ton of bricks. A few very beautiful bricks. She giggled and got right back up like a pro, but it looked like it just fucking killed her. I me
an, everybody else got caught except Mariska Hargitay. Nobody else wanted to do the trust exercise after her. Nobody trusted anybody. It was a terrible way to start that class.
To this day, whenever I see Mariska, and it’s probably been ten times, I apologize. I let her down that day. Let her fall down, if we’re being specific. If she has any lingering trust issues since becoming a big star, I blame myself. Whatever medical problems I read about her having, I point the finger at me. I mean, come on, she joined a show called Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Was this not a call for help? Was she not my very special victim?
When I told Mom later, she didn’t help any with my towering guilt.
“As if she hasn’t been through enough,” she said.
Gee, thanks, Maggie.
Things started to pick up for me career-wise when I finally began getting commercials. I had a commercial agent long before I got an acting agent, but I probably auditioned for about seventy national and regional commercials before I actually booked one.
The breakthrough in that area came in the early ’90s when I nabbed a TV spot for Kenwood, the stereo brand. As explained to me at the audition, the setup was a futuristic world, and I was supposed to perform the ’70s funk hit “Play That Funky Music, White Boy” as if music had never existed. They said I could do whatever I wanted, and since I heard all these people before me singing crazy versions of it, like they were amateurs at a talent show, I just looked at the camera completely deadpan and spoke the words in a halting monotone, totally rhythmless, like a zombie. If you’ve heard Paris Hilton’s album, you know what I’m talking about.
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