Here's Kate Nelligan - on the fast track again.
A couple of months ago, her hip-undulating, gum-pulverizing waitress character Cora all but stole "Frankie & Johnny" from Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino.Cora was loose, real loose. The only thing constricted about her, in fact, was her miniskirt. By stark contrast, in her role in the new movie "The Prince of Tides," everything about Lila Wingo Newbury - matriarch of the dysfunctional Wingo family - is tight, from her pursed lips and squinty glare to her mien and outlook.
With these two portrayals drawn from opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, Nelligan, 40, could be a contender for an Oscar nomination (she recently won a National Board of Review award for "Frankie & Johnny"), and with good reason: She has earned it.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that those are the only offers of major film work she's had in five years. Even now, dispersed throughout the country's movie multiplexes, she's still waiting for the phone to ring.
Why? There are no easy explanations, other than to say, that's Hollywood. It's common in the industry for "stars" to endure flops and go on and for actresses in the second tier to disappear for periods of time.
It has to do with amorphous factors - the perception of women of a certain age.
At the outset of the '80s, Nelligan, a native of London, Ontario, was one of the hot properties of the British stage, winning plaudits both in the classics and contemporary drama - most notably in David Here's "Plenty," which was later made into a film starring Meryl Streep.
Armed with her achievements, she moved to Los Angeles in 1981. Soon Americans awakened to her presence thanks to a triple play - her mesmerizing performance in the movie "Eye of the Needle," a steamy no-holds-barred rendering of Emile Zola's "Theresa Raquin" on public television (originally televised on BBC), and a reprise of "Plenty" in New York.
In 1986, after four or five years mixing television, stage and movies, she was cast in the title role of "Eleni," drawn from Nicholas Gage's haunting memoir of his mother, slain during the Greek civil war.
The movie had everything going for it - a powerful theme, a dramatic tale, an indomitable central character - yet it opened to damning reviews and sank (to borrow the title of another Nelligan movie) without a trace. And with it, seemingly, went Nelligan's film career.
"Sometime in the year after that, it was clear to me that the merry-go-round had gone around and that it was over. And I didn't have a big enough film career to sustain that failure. Somebody was going to take the fall - and I took it," Nelligan says.
She found work on the stage, on television and overseas. But not in Hollywood.
It wasn't the first barrier she had to confront in life. She had polio in her infancy and early childhood.
"Nothing was taken away from me - I couldn't walk to begin with. I didn't have any sense of hardship about (the polio). I was tiny."
The illness cleared up by the time she was 6, and Nelligan says she has suffered no lasting physical effects.
Her family, as she describes it, was in its way as dysfunctional as the Wingos. And her career choice nearly was derailed for lack of funds. But each time, she fought back and won. In the aftermath of her latest performances, she expects to continue the fight.
"It's OK," she says, as if to reassure a questioner as well as herself. "It's not the final score. It could work out. I think the worst is way behind me. Those years (of not finding work) were the worst. And now everybody's going, `Oh, my God, she's so good!' Well, fine. Give me a job."
She's bemused that the industry views Cora and Lila as evidence of a sea change.
"(Nelligan) . . . has entered a new phase of her movie career as an expert character actress," New York magazine critic David Denby wrote, for example, extolling her performance in "Prince of Tides" as "formidable."
"That's all I've ever done!" Nelligan hoots. "I've never played anything but leading parts, but I've always been a character actor in those parts."
Nelligan appears to be carving a major niche in supporting roles.
Barbra Streisand, director and star of "Prince of Tides," brought her back. She'd seen Nelligan in a play in New York, "Spoils of War," in which Nelligan portrayed a working-class woman trying to maintain a bond with her teenage son. Streisand thought she'd be excellent for the role of Nick Nolte's character's wife, Sally Wingo.
The actress-director had planned on using two women as Lila Wingo at different ages and had tapped Irene Worth as the sunset Lila. But when no credible match could be found between two actresses, Streisand offered Nelligan the multigenerational role (instead of the role of Sally) - but not before more than a dozen auditions and a few sessions with wigs (Nelligan wears a casual, below-the-shoulder red fall as the young Lila, and a proper conservative dark blond style as the elderly woman).
Director Garry Marshall was more easily impressed. While working with playwright Terrence McNally on the film adaptation of the play "Frankie & Johnny at the Claire de Lune," Marshall attended a performance of a McNally revival, "Bad Habits," off-Broadway. And there was Nelligan, as nothing less than a downtown bimbo.
"I thought, look at that, look what that lady does with moves," Marshall remembers. "I didn't know who she was! I thought she was Rita Moreno!" He offered her an audition as Cora.
"She told me, `You're the only director who thinks I'm sexy and hot, so I'll do it.' "
This time, one audition was enough. But it took months to convince Paramount. Finally, Marshall sent studio executives a tape of her, in costume. "I told them, `Here, this is the type, that's the girl!' And they got off my back."
Lila Wingo - repressed, anguished, dominated, trapped, bitter - was another matter. In Kate's case, though, her mother was the "very fierce" one, dominating the household. Her father, who repaired refrigerators, was "sweet, kind, steady."
"My mother was an alcoholic, the power in the house. Some of the power went for good and some for bad. But she knew our neighborhood was a dead end. . . . She tried to get us out."
Kate, the fourth of six children (two boys and four girls), got out via a scholarship to the University of Toronto at 16. Two years later, a professor steered her to an open audition of Britain's prestigious Central School of Speech and Drama.
She won a place and signed up, earning tuition for the first year, and board for a furnished room, by working in several jobs.
She was a go-go dancer, an Arthur Murray dance instructor, sold cosmetics door-to-door, even did some telemarketing. But the 20-hour workday was killing her. So she devised a gutsy scheme.
Contacting the Shakespearean theater in Stratford, Ontario, she asked for the names of its supporters who hailed from her native town. She got a list of five names and wrote to each, asking for patronage for two years. Two agreed, and she chose one.
After graduating, she joined the Bristol Old Vic and performed in more than a dozen productions in rapid order. By 1974 she was on London's West End in her first pairing with playwright Hare. More roles followed, plus stints on the BBC. By 1979, she had "Plenty."
Two years later, she made her trans-Atlantic move, to Los Angeles. But Hollywood was expecting an Englishwoman - a Julie Christie or Glenda Jackson for the '80s.
What they got was a sensual, smooth-lined woman who talked like an American.
Today, she bristles at ageism in the industry, as it affects her. As she sees it, "people are terrified in the American film industry if a woman is 40, and if she's not a star."
"I look at myself the way a professional athlete would: I have an earning capacity that is going to drastically diminish in a few years. I have to be financially set up by the time I'm 45."
Her husband of three years, Robert Reale, is a musician and composer. But she's the breadwinner, she says, explaining, "He's at a different stage in his career."
Regardless of her husband's income, Nelligan says she values financial independence. "I don't depend on anyone for financial security, now or in the future. Never have, never will."
The stage, where her career could blossom for years to come, doesn't pay very well. Her hope is movies, which pay more handsomely than stage roles. And contrary to some actors who find moviemaking boring, she is enthralled with it.
"I don't know what people mean by boring. You're not sitting around - you've got a scene to play!"
How does she perceive weaknesses - and how does she deal with them?
"You're always trying to hit your forehand," she says. "There are areas you're not facing as a person - always. If you're not comfortable with your sexuality in a given part of your life, for instance, you're gonna see it in your work. If you're not finding things funny at a certain point, you're gonna see it. Whatever you're not dealing with as a human being inevitably shows up in your work. I try actively to seek out - to be forced to play my backhand, to strengthen it, to face it.
"Comedy got to be like that. I hadn't done it for so long, and it scared me. I had to deal with that. I had to open that door and say, `Well, if you really can't do this, let's find out.' And now I'm not scared of it."
In the broad picture, reconciled with her history, she's ready for her 40s.