Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio

Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio has lived in London, she says, "for the better part of 18 years now." This fact may surprise those whose theatrical memories stretch back to her swift ascent through the New York theater world. Mastrantonio’s New York stage credits include being an understudy in West Side Story and then Amadeus, appearing opposite Kevin Kline in Henry V, alongside Michelle Pfeiffer and Jeff Goldblum in Twelfth Night, and most recently as Aldonza in the Brian Stokes Mitchell-led Broadway revival of Man of La Mancha, for which she was nominated for a 2003 Tony Award. But London, W2, has in fact been her primary postcode of choice, home to her film director husband, Irishman Pat O'Connor, and their two sons, Jack, 16, and Declan, 12. Wheredoes that leave an actress who was making an equal impression on film, in such diverse projects as The Abyss, Class Action, The January Man, and The Color of Money, for which she was a 1986 Academy Award nominee? Mostly these days being a mom, with occasional forays into the London theater. In 2004, she appeared at the Donmar as the elegantly past-her prime ballerina, Grushinskaya, in Michael Grandage's chamber-sized revival of Grand Hotel from the same composer, Maury Yeston, whose new show Death Takes A Holiday Mastrantonio last year workshopped in New York. Now she's a devastating force in Lindsay Posner's top-drawer revival of A View From the Bridge at the Duke of York's, playing the wife to Ken Stott's sexually riven Eddie Carbone. One recent morning, Mastrantonio took time out for a friendly, freewheeling chat about playing Italian as opposed to being it, juggling motherhood and work, and the siren song still exerted by New York.

What an experience you and that cast are giving London audiences in a production, I think, that fully rivals the famous Michael Gambon/National Theatre staging of this same play two decades ago.
Thank you! [Laughs] But tell me, do you think we look like The Honeymooners up there? I sometimes wonder whether I look like Alice Kramden standing around the kitchen table.

I wouldn't worry about that. What's amazing is how real everything seems, starting with Ken Stott's remarkable authenticity as Eddie.
Well, you know Ken is Scottish but his father, I believe, is from Sicily, so he's half-Italian. There are several other company members who are to some degree Italian, like our Marco, Gerard Monaco, and the two neighborhood guys you see right at the beginning. Although I'm of course of Italian origin, I'm affecting an accent as well, since the whole idea of the Italian-American is really based on an East Coast model and I grew up in Illinois.

What’s your ancestry?
Half of them are from outside Rome—the behaved half [laughs]—and my mother's side is from Bari and Naples. My grandmother very much spoke Italian-accented English, though by the time it got to my parents' generation and me and my sisters, we sounded pretty local.

It's the temperament, not just the accents, that this production gets so right.
That's the thing about Italians: our eyebrows are practically up to our hairline, and that's just to discuss a sandwich. Our behavior can be impulsive and an outsider might not quite follow the flow, but what's usually the case is that we're not upset at all about whatever it is, we're just being Italian [laughs]. We don't harbor any ill feelings or a grudge; once it comes to the surface, it's over.

A scene from A View from the Bridge

It's amazing in all these years here that you haven't done more theater this side of the pond.
As they say, first came the house, then came marriage, then came the baby carriage. The point was that my husband's film career was really happening in Europe, so when we arrived here, I assumed that I could juggle everything, that I could live anywhere, and for a while I did, though [laughs] don't get me wrong, it wasn't like Harrison Ford.

But presumably you had to put on hold, or at least rethink, an acting career that in movies, certainly, seemed on a very fast track.
Yes but you know, it never really dawned on me to do all that stuff, or play that particular game. I know I'm speaking to you today but, trust me, I'm really not into self-promotion; I don't know how to do that. Maybe I don't have the self-belief. And once I started to live a domestic life, I thought too much work was going to put a damper on the health of my family—that I had to stay in the kitchen. America, as we know, is an incredibly ambitious place, which is fine, if your ambition is to be really good. But if you feel like you've either got to get to the top of the heap or nothing, that's another story.

That's just one reason why The Color of Money must have been so extraordinary, appearing alongside one legend in Paul Newman and a younger actor, Tom Cruise, on the way to his own huge stardom.
Yes, and I'll always remember the ease with which Newman handled his fame. He had certain rules, like he never signed autographs. He was always unfailingly gracious but that was one of the limits he set. But, you know, his style went way beyond not signing autographs: his generosity and charitable activities were pretty astonishing, too. With Tom, it was different because it was all new to him at the time; he was flabbergasted.

So the whole "Let's get on the cover of Vanity Fair" way of building a career was presumably not your goal.
You see very early on who's being asked to have their pictures taken and who's not, and when the TV executives, for example, quickly suss that you don't want to live in Los Angeles, you never hear from them again. You get the pecking order very early on in the film business, and no amount of publicists can help you with that. In Hollywood, there's even a game within the game. I don't know: maybe I was too well-loved as a child.

Do you recall your Oscar night 23 years ago, or does that seem like another life?
Another life—and it was another life, long before Oscar night was a catwalk for designers. I was doing a show at the Public at the time, and the wonderful [costume designer] Jane Greenwood went and got me a dress, and that was what I wore. The PR's were nowhere to be seen. And I remember after the ceremony going to the Governors Ball and there was this melee and suddenly I found this quiet room and there, leaning on a bar, was Sam Cohn, who said [drops voice], "Hello Mary Elizabeth"—Sam Cohn! There was no greater mentoring or tutelage. He was so much the New York that I grew up in, which isn't the New York that exists now.

Now that your kids are older, do you see yourself doing theater more frequently here?
Yes, though there's always that question, where do we go from here? Or from there? I think they're not quite sure what to do with me here, to be honest. I mean, in London there are a lot of people who can do Twelfth Night. So perhaps they look at me and wonder, "Is she going to mangle the accent? Is she going to fit in with the rest of us?" With A View from the Bridge of course it's all about being Italian, which I guess means I'm never going to play Queen Elizabeth.

Speaking of shows you have done, are you aware that Mandy Patinkin omits The Knife from his list of credits these days, or at least did during his recent one-man show at the same theater at which you are now appearing?
He does? That's not very loyal! Or maybe it's just that I was filling in space. I've had so little to offer in the last few years that I'm surprised I'm not bringing up my third-grade play [laughs].

Is New York still an attractive option?
I love Broadway and the quality of work there can be second to none, but it is so demanding and there's always another goal line. And you're never really ready there. Once you're into it, the ceilings get higher and higher. Having said that, I'd like to get back to the States to live. I'm ready. There are a lot of actresses here—they don't need me.