Sep

An Interview with ‘Boston Legal’ Actress Julie Bowen

Posted by: admin in Cast, Interviews

We like Julie Bowen, and not just because she’s from Baltimore. We like her because she slow-danced to “Endless Love” with Adam Sandler on an ice rink in “Happy Gilmore.” We liked her sass on the macho lawyer series “Boston Legal.” She reminds us of the popular girl in high school who was nice to everyone without losing her edge. We talked to her the other day at 5:30 a.m. her time, as she was cutting through the canyons of Los Angeles on her way to the set of ABC’s promising sitcom “Modern Family,” which focuses on three couples and their assorted problems.

On “Modern Family” you have three kids, and in real life you have three kids — do you worry about getting burned out on family on both ends?

Yeah. My husband — my real-life husband — asks me, “What do you think single Julie would be doing now?” Probably going to parties, getting a pedicure, going for a long run. I had many decades of me time and now I just don’t have that anymore. There are days when I rail against it.

How’d you get this job?

I read the script and desperately wanted to do it, but I was really pregnant with twins and the character wasn’t. I jumped through a lot of hoops. I auditioned, begged and pleaded, and they agreed to shoot around my gigantic belly.

Baltimore is a great place. I was lucky. I had an idealized childhood there and we had a good suburban lifestyle. No one locked their doors, and everyone ran around. I imagine it’s very different now.

And you went into acting after studying the Renaissance in the Ivy League.

My parents had an old-fashioned ideal of college, that four years at a liberal arts college should be a liberal arts education. If you want to specialize, go to grad school. . . . I graduated from Brown and said, “Remember how you guys said you’d send me to grad school?” And they said, “Not for acting. No no no no. That’s not what we meant when we said grad school.” So I waited tables to put myself through acting classes.

How much of a diva was William Shatner on the set of “Boston Legal”?

Not at all. He is so lovely. Funny as hell and very good sense of humor about himself and his career. He commands a certain amount of attention and respect and everybody is glad to give it to him because he’s still Shatner.

Let’s talk about “Runaway Daughters,” the campy 1994 Showtime movie in which you snogged a young Paul Rudd.

It was my first job when I got to L.A. . . . It was incredibly fun. And that Showtime series [of B-movie remakes] gave so many people chances that were just starting out — Renée Zellweger, Salma Hayek, Matt LeBlanc — and we all got to work together.

You ever get recognized for “Happy Gilmore”?

Most people go, “Wait a minute, that was you?” They can’t put those two together. “You don’t look anything like you.” And oh, my hair in that movie. It was my first movie and I just said to the hair department, “Okay, do you what you want.” And I was in my trailer and thought no one will see this movie, so it’s okay. It’s lived in perpetuity, that big frozen orb of dyed hair.

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