"Scene-stealing." That's how Irma P. Hall's performance as wise old Aunt T. in "A Family Thing" has been universally appraised by critics and moviegoers.
Even the film's press kit describes it that way!And when you consider that the role calls for Hall to support two of the biggest scene-stealers in the business, Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones, it's no slight feat that Hall has been able to command so much attention.
"I'm honored and I'm flattered - and I don't believe it," Hall said flatly during a telephone interview from her Chicago home.
"I'm glad that I was able to do the job and make it believable, but there's no way that I would do a more outstanding job than the two best character actors I know of."
Hall says her role in the film, as a blind older woman blessed with wisdom, insight and a mischievous sense of humor, has caught the fancy of audiences because the script made her so real, and so much like friends or family of their own. "People have just tuned into Aunt T., remembering their own Aunt T. - or they wish they had an Aunt T."
"A Family Thing" is the unlikely but dramatically compelling story of a redneck Southerner (Duvall) who discovers after his mother's death that he was adopted, and that his biological mother, who died giving birth to him, was black. He fulfills his adoptive mother's dying wish by traveling to Chicago, where he tracks down his half-brother (Jones).
There, he also meets the sister of his real mother, Aunt T.
The film is a marvelous showcase for the subtle, rooted acting talents of Duvall and Jones, but Aunt T. is a real attention-grabbing part for Hall, who should be on the best supporting actress short list when Oscar nomination-time rolls around next year.
Aunt T.'s best line comes when a skeptic tells her that Duvall's character is white, and she responds, "I don't have the blessing to be able to separate people by looking at them no more."
It's a wonderful piece of dialogue, which concisely sums up the film's attitude - and she has many more like it. "I fell in love with her when I read the script," Hall said. "She was very familiar to me - I've had a lot of `Aunt T.'s in my life. And for me, she's a conglomeration of all these different women. I'm so lucky to have had a lot of aunts and my grandmother and my mother, and, of course, a lot of other women who have influenced my life.
"So (Aunt T.) is sort of like myself, because I am a composite of all these women."
Hall, who is 60, said that playing the 80-something Aunt T. came naturally to her, as she has always loved older people and has embodied a variety of them on stage. In fact, she was playing the part of a woman in her 90s in a stage production when she landed the role in "A Family Thing."
"That's what I was used to I guess, because of the influence of my grandparents first, the way they were toward me," Hall explained. "I just kind of skipped over the middle people and went to the older ones, listening or talking to them. They were very wise, the way I wanted to be. My mother used to say I was the only baby that was born wanting to be old. I was an `old soul,' people used to say."
In the early part of her adult life, Hall was a high school teacher in Dallas, Texas. Her acting career began relatively late, at the age of 36 in 1972. "I never thought about being an actor," she says with a laugh. "I wasn't thinking about it when it happened."
In addition to teaching, Hall did publicity for the school, was an amateur painter and poet involved with the local arts community and volunteered to help out at the Dallas Express, an understaffed local newspaper. The latter gave her an opportunity to interview actorfilmmaker Raymond St. Jacques in 1971, when he came to town to prepare his film "Book of Numbers." St. Jacques liked Hall's article and asked her to help with publicity on the film.
They became friends, and when St. Jacques attended a local arts community event where Hall was reading some of her poetry, he was sufficiently impressed to ask her to audition for a part in the movie. "I took it as a compliment and went on, but later he said he was serious, that I read well - and he did cast me in the film.
"It was just a day's work, two or three lines. Then, after he saw the dailies, he said he would expand the role - that I had talent I should develop. He became my mentor and advised me to join the unions and get an agent and all of those things."
Shortly thereafter, Hall co-founded the Dallas Minority Repertory Theater and made her stage debut. "God gave me a way to develop my craft - a real crash course."
Initially, Hall used her newfound career to supplement her work as a teacher, but in 1984, with her own children grown, she began acting full time. "I said, `Now I will do this and try and make a career of this if I can,' and I reminded God that he had gotten me into this, so it was up to him to show me a way to continue to do it."
Since then, Hall has steadily worked on stage and in radio, television and films (including small parts in such films as "Mo' Money" and "Backdraft"). "I still consider myself in the process of learning this craft. I guess I'm basically still an instinctive actor.
"My daughter has the best explanation - I never forgot how to play. It's like a kid playing a game. My daughter says I'm in a state of arrested development."
Last year, while she was performing in a play, Hall got the call about auditions for "A Family Thing," though she didn't know what it was about. "I just knew it was a film starring Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones. Then when I saw the script, I said, `Oh, I would really like to be in this.' It was such a good script, the people seemed so real and I cared about them."
After her initial audition, which was for the small role of a midwife, Hall says she wrote a note to God and put it on the altar table in her home. It said, "Please, God, if it's your will, let me get a part."
"And I did get a part (as the midwife). And I was very happy that I was going to be in this film, and I was getting my schedule ready - and they called me back and asked me to (video) tape an audition for the role of Aunt T. And I guess they liked it."
Hall says she has never had her eyes on stardom, but she has always felt she could prove herself if given the opportunity. "You know, when I first read the script I thought I could play Aunt T., but I figured they would get someone else, someone more famous - not someone unknown.
"I always thought that one of these days I would inch on up a bit, but I wasn't expecting this big a leap.
"I'm still trying to get over the fact that I worked with James Earl Jones and Robert Duvall!"