Alfre Woodard: What's It All About, Alfre?

Alfre Woodard improves every movie she's in, whether it's Grand Canyon, Passion Fish or the new Crooklyn. But is she in the movies she wants to be in? Not really, because the movies she wants to be in aren't being made yet.

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When I first considered the prospect of talking with Alfre Woodard, I thought, "Terrific, she's the definition of an actor's actor: chameleonic, idiosyncratic, true." I start reading her credits: nominated for an Oscar for Cross Creek, Emmys for "Hill Street Blues" and "L.A. Law," lauded for her work in the stage and PBS versions of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf. I moved on to her other screen credits: Remember My Name, Extremities, Miss Firecracker, H.E.A.L.T.H., Scrooged, Passion Fish, Grand Canyon, Bopha!, The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag, Heart and Souls and Blue Chips. That's when my heart hit the soles of my shoes. Why? Here's a formidable actress who seems to specialize in appearing in movies I'd watch again only at knife point. Her oeuvre includes, almost exclusively, boringly quirky and/or boringly dreary movies of the kind Hollywood likes to fool itself into believing are about "real" people. Please.

Waiting nearly 45 minutes for Woodard to show at a chic Italian trattoria in earthquake-rattled Santa Monica, I try to ignore the brand-new cracks that spiderweb the walls, thinking, "Great. Just how I want to die, crushed in a pseudo-Florentine deathtrap waiting for a serious, earnest actress." Then, in flies Woodard. Chic in eggshell-colored linen, preening a spectacular corkscrew do I'd call fusilli all'Africana, she slinks into her seat and cries, "I'm at your mercy."

With that, Woodard tears headlong into a hilariously detailed apology for being late that encompasses a description of how recent aftershocks toppled her bookshelves and de-winged one of her Emmy statuettes. By the time she lets her gaze flick toward a gold-chain-and-medallion-encrusted fellow diner a few tables away and observes, sotto voce, "Oh, honey, is that guy a Mafia don or what?" I let out a very audible sigh of relief.

Woodard wants to know why I've just sighed. "Because, I thought you were going to be serious, actor-y, and a pain."

"Hmmmmm," she muses, "serious and actor-y? I've been called serious and I've been called seriously goofy. Let me put it this way. I am a founding member of Artists to Free South Africa, and we, as people, are using our position as a microphone to get something heard that doesn't usually get heard. The State Department's tilt on things is that freedom fighters are terrorists and we're using our organization to address our community the way grass-roots groups around the country use their communities. I am an activist and sincere about that. I can be absolutely unorganized and hysterical, like I was today, or I can be completely cool and hold the ground for everybody else around me."

At a nearby table an out-of-towner is surreptitiously eyeing Woodard, obviously having recognized her. After nearly a decade or more of dozens of movies and TV shows, after working with such directors as Robert Altman, William Friedkin and Lawrence Kasdan, giving performances that have made her one of the most widely admired, least widely known actors in the business, what does Woodard make of the response she sparks from the public?

"I don't really think of myself as a celebrity," she asserts. "I don't give out anything that would make people come up and talk to me. I'm intensely private. People have always looked at me for one reason or another, but I'm never convinced that they aren't looking for some peculiar reason. I mean, I usually wear sort of an Afro hairstyle. I'm in an interracial marriage. [But] it doesn't matter why they're talking about you, it still feels like you're naked. You still have the feeling like you're back in high school or something. My husband will sometimes say, 'Alfre, you're attractive. Have you ever thought that they are just looking at you?'"

Or that, despite the fact that she seems to undergo a shape-shifting from movie to movie, perhaps these lookie Lous just like her work?

"Movies are overwhelming, they make you seem so magnified," she continues. "People see an actor and think they have a friend or an acquaintance. Especially if someone in a movie touches us, makes us laugh or cry or they just plain bug us. I mean, if they bug us, it's like we've been personally bugged by them, you know?" Here Woodard puts her arms on her hips, copping the attitude of an urban, tabloid-reading Jane Q. Public. "I can't stand that bitch so-and-so. Isn't she supposed to be pregnant? Didn't she get in a car wreck? And, ooooh, look at that--I mean, she's 35 and she's got no cellulite. Well, why doesn't she have any cellulite? How'd she get rid of it?"

While Woodard's still laughing, I ask her what she thinks of being interviewed for Movieline. She widens her eyes and studies me. "I've read stories about me that left me feeling violated, furious. From my youth, one of the things in life that I fear most is being misunderstood. I'd rather not be known. I like talking to you, but I also know how I'm going to feel when it's over: that we met at a cocktail party, did the grind and then you went out and told."

When I tell her how grounded I find her work, even when she's stuck playing a half-genius, half-moron in mush like Miss Firecracker, Woodard is quick to defend the film. "That was excellent," she says. "I felt like an Olympic runner in a relay with everyone's legs just as pumped up and strong and flexible as yours. People think that's about eccentric, high-strung Southerners? Please, that movie is toned down. That's how my family cuts up."

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