HOLLYWOOD — Rachael Stirling and Troy Garity are both actors whose mothers are famous actors. Her mother is Dame Diana Rigg; his is Oscar-winner Jane Fonda.
Both are starring in upcoming cable movies. She's got the lead role in BBC America's "Tipping the Velvet"; he's got the lead role in Showtime's "Soldier's Girl."
(Oddly enough, Stirling plays a Victorian lesbian in "Tipping," which premieres tonight at 8 p.m. on BBC-America; Garity plays PFC Barry Winchell, a member of the U.S. Army who fell in love with a transgendered nightclub performer in the fact-based Showtime movie "Soldier's Girl," which premieres Saturday, May 31.)
But while Stirling would love the chance to act with her mother, Garity cringes at the thought.
"No, that's a little perverse to me," said Garity. "I mean, she's my mom. I want to complain and yell at her, and when the day of work goes sour, I get to cry on her shoulder or she gets to scratch my back.
"Acting (with her)? I don't know. It's a little incestuous."
Stirling, on the other hand, wouldn't mind at all. "I think it would be great sometime," she said. "I don't know when."
Both Fonda and Rigg are proud mothers of their acting offspring, however. Garity said Fonda has been nothing but supportive. And when Rigg got a chance to see "Tipping the Velvet, "She blubbed — English word for cried — all the way through with pride," Stirling said. "It was pathetic."
And while both come from acting backgrounds, neither was pushed to join the family business. "Oh, I jumped. I was by no means pushed," Stirling said. "If anything, held back by the scruff of the neck. I didn't go to drama school. I went to university."
Garity, the son of Fonda and activist/politician Tom Hayden, was given his paternal grandmother's maiden name so he could make his own way in life and not live in his parents' shadows. And Stirling, the daughter of Rigg and her second husband, tried to do the same. She's gone out of her way not to let people know who her mother is.
"Because I didn't know if I was going to be any good at it is the truth," Stirling said. "I knew I could be good at it, but when I've been over here before and ever kind of, sort of been embarrassed when somebody's brought up my ma, nobody quite understands why I react like that. Whereas in England, everybody's quick to pounce and say, 'You only got that job because of your mother.' And so I just took precautions and decided to go it on my own until I thought I could do it and had done enough to be able to stand up and say, 'She's my ma, but I did it on my own.' "
And, she'll have you know, it's not a burden to be the daughter of the woman once voted the most beautiful in the history of television.
"Of course not," Stirling said. "It's a joy."
While Stirling may one day have the opportunity to act alongside Rigg, Garity doesn't think that he could act alongside Fonda even if he wanted to.
"Will she come back to acting? Probably not," he said.
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