Everybody loves Joan Cusack, but it's really a laugh affair
Even a fellow journalist, next in line to interview her at the Toronto International Film Festival, isn't immune. (He looks nervous as I exit the suite where Cusack is ensconced, so I reassure him that she couldn't be nicer. "You don't understand," he says, anxiety personified. "I've been in love with her for years.")
It's an understandable reaction — Cusack blends note-perfect screwball chops with a palpable warmth that draws audiences to her. Watch her in "Broadcast News," shrieking wildly as she races down the hall with a tape; or in "In & Out," engulfed in a massive marshmallow of a wedding gown, learning just before she walks down the aisle that her husband-to-be is gay. Her voice climbing to the skies, she furrows her brow and asks, "Was there, oh, any other time that you might have told me this?"
So it's a relief to learn, in a friendly and informal interview, that her recent absence from the screen is for a happy reason. "My kids are still pretty little," said Cusack, 40, who has two young sons with her attorney husband. " 'School of Rock' was really the first movie that I'd done since my older son was born that was more than, you know, two days' work."
Cusack, who still lives in her hometown of Chicago, says she's very picky these days about any role that would take her away from her family. But "School of Rock," in which she plays a hilariously uptight grade-school principal, proved too tempting to resist. "I worked with Jack Black a little bit in 'High Fidelity,' and I just thought he was so charming and funny. He and my brother John had a very funny chemistry together."
And Rosalie Mullins, the principal who runs her school like an admiral runs a ship (that is, until she has a drink or two), seemed an appropriate choice for this time in Cusack's life. "I was thinking about her in terms of parenting, which I'm learning so much about. One of the things that I wasn't great at (at first) is setting limits. So (Rosalie) seemed like a good character to sort of exercise some of that."
A two-time Oscar nominee, Cusack returned to television two years ago to star in her first sitcom. (She spent a year as an ensemble member of "Saturday Night Live" in the mid-'80s.) Despite some encouraging reviews, "What About Joan" was canceled after a season, but she'd be game to try another series, particularly after both her sons reach school age. And she's making movies again, having recently completed the comedy "Raising Helen" with Kate Hudson.
In a business where so many actors rely on drama for recognition, it's refreshing to find Cusack so committed to smart comedy. Asked about performers who inspired her, she cites classic '70s comediennes. "I grew up watching Gilda Radner, Teri Garr, Madeline Kahn, Barbra Streisand, Lily Tomlin," she remembered. "They were so out there and original."
Of her career's predilection toward comic roles, "it's kind of the way things worked out," she says. "But the serious part, with comedy, is always there, too. It's a thoughtful process to find what's funny."
Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com