By Abigail Lewis
Anyone who’s read the classic Buddhist manual, Zen and the Art of Archery, can tell you that the best way to hit a target is to aim away from it. If that seems counterintuitive, check out the career of TV luminary Amy Brenneman. But for the advice of a good friend who advised her to “hang in there,” she was headed for a job as a Brooklyn schoolteacher and we’d never have seen her unique combo of brains and beauty on NYPD Blue, Judging Amy or Private Practice.
Even having made the cross-country move to California from New York and her native Connecticut, Brenneman started married life in Benedict Canyon—appropriate enough for a rising star—but then moved to the Valley to raise her family.
“I like the Valley because it isn’t fashionable,” she explains. “Wherever I’ve lived, I’ve just never felt comfortable in the fashionable part of town. I think it breeds a certain kind of snobbery.”
There’s nothing stuck-up in the almost rustic feel of Brenneman’s unassuming Encino home, and if her outfit on the day we meet is designer, it’s well concealed. Her pulled back hair is still wet from the shower, no makeup rims her thoughtful grey-green eyes or covers her pale freckles, and anyone seeing her comfortably ensconced on a rattan patio sofa might mistake the triple-threat producer, writer and actor for a stay-at-home mom.
Brenneman continues, “We wanted space, and then you start your life with kids and schools . . . you literally put down roots.”
And roots are initially what got us here, in this conversation. Brenneman has become an ardent supporter of all things green, hired perhaps LA’s only mow-and-slow gardener to create a nontoxic yard for her kids’ vegetable garden (see sidebar), and thrown her considerable energy into cleaning up the world for children.
A Near Miss
After touring for five years with Cornerstone Theatre Company, a traveling troupe she co-founded while still a Harvard undergrad, Brenneman had moved to New York, was substitute teaching, and seriously contemplated a career switch.
“I really like acting but I like teaching too,” she says now. “At that time I was such a worker that the idea of waiting around to be chosen felt so uncomfortable. . . I thought I could be a teacher and have my own little world.”
Brenneman passed up a teaching job offer, and despite disses by New York theatre friends, believed she could maintain her artistic integrity in a move to Tinsel Town. “It’s not like I was super-confident, she says. “I was insecure like anybody else, but I kind of knew what good scripts were. I was 28. I’d been doing Shakespeare for five years. I feel like I recognize cheesiness.”
Her big break came with NYPD Blue in 1993, with the character of Janet Licalsi. Whatever her initial insecurity, Brenneman developed enough confidence in the show and her character to shoot her controversial, history-making (for network TV) nude scenes.
She went on to do a number of TV guest spots and modestly received feature films before writing, producing and starring in six seasons of Judging Amy, a series based on her own mother’s experiences as Connecticut’s first female superior court judge.
She’s been nominated for three Golden Globes and five Emmies, and is likely to play a third season as Violet in the recently picked-up Private Practice. Meanwhile she’s creating and developing other projects of her own.
If there is a through line to Brenneman’s work, it’s that her characters all are quirky, thoughtful and “have issues.” She compassionately describes them as “seekers. . . looking for home.”
Home Is Where the Art Is
Balancing work and family is “an ongoing discussion” in this actor’s home. Husband/director Brad Silberling has his own busy career to contend with, and their kids, Charlotte and Bodhi, are young (8 and 4). Silberling has been “crazy lucky” in that all his films have shot in town, but there’s still a lot of juggling.
“We both love the day to day thing,” she says. “We’re driven in some ways but not slaves to our career drive,” and indeed, they find time to bike to Balboa Park, take the kids to the Stand, or catch a movie at the local Laemmle. “And we love to hike in the TreePeople park. My husband proposed to me there.”
But it was Brenneman’s parents who sowed the seeds of her environmentalism. “I grew up in the ‘70s and my dad [an environmental lawyer] was part of the first Earth Day and my mom drove a Renault that got, like, 35 mpg, and ecology was this big thing,” she explains. And then it all literally hit home one day when she called Dewey Pest Control to ask about nontoxic solutions to “some sort of critter” in her home office. While clearing things out in anticipation of fumigation, she had a kind of aha! moment that started her thinking about “the chain of life and chemicals, because of course the cat eats the bugs.”
Once she became a mom, she got involved with Healthy Child Healthy World, a nonprofit dedicated to making the world safer for children. She stopped using yard chemicals and started buying organic, installed air filters and a water filter system that somehow makes Valley water palatable, and ordered solar panels.
Her activism spills over into her spiritual life, a philosophy she shares with her mother, who “basically looks at Jesus as an activist. When I went into studying Buddhism she made cracks about navel crazing,” remembers Brenneman. “But I think what’s great is when you have the introspection and the outer work in balance; you take it in and give it out.”
Where Life Meets Art
As might be expected of a woman who’s been successful in a male-dominated industry, Brenneman is passionate about women’s rights. Eleanor Smeal of the Feminist Majority is one of her mentors, and she’s thrilled that the president has created an office for women and girls.
Asked if women’s roles in the industry have changed over the years—she’s now 44—she’s reluctant to give a broad answer.
“I don’t know how to answer that cause all you know is your own path and experience,” Brenneman says, adding, “There are amazing roles for women in television. Film is sort of a one-off and you’re still dealing with a lot of clichés; they’re not making dramas any more and that’s where good actors can really score. And they’ll make them even less in the next three or four years with the economic downturn [so] the writers and directors are also going to television. . . there’s all of this opportunity.”
There’s also an opportunity to talk about things that are meaningful to her. One of her favorite Private Practice episodes involved women’s personal choices. “The previous year I had said to a writer that I’d love to make my character someone who didn’t want to be a mom, cause I don’t think that’s validated very often,” she says. “My girlfriends who don’t want to be moms take a lot of shit for it.”
Likewise, in another scene about choice, “An issue came up about somebody practicing abortions in our clinic, and a character talks about being Catholic and creating life, at which point Kate’s character reveals a past abortion. And then my character says, ‘I’ve had two and I’m not conflicted at all and it was the right thing to do.’” Brenneman clearly relishes this forum for controversial perspectives.
The actress has starred in several feature films, including Heat with Robert DeNiro. Asked what it was like to work with the film icon, she enthused, “Really fun.” And then, “He’s a pro but he’s kind of flakey, too. De Niro’s like a schlumpy guy from Little Italy. He was so approachable; it’s part of his charm. And when you’re acting with him, it’s very sloppy. He forgets lines. . . He’s so comfortable in front of the camera that he would drop a line and be comfortable picking up a script. He didn’t care if the camera was on or off him. He really taught me that the more relaxed the better, because film stuff is all human behavior so the less you can spit and polish the better. And then you see it cut together and you’re like ‘Oh my God, he’s a genius.’ But to actually be with him, you’re like, ‘Really?’”
In the final episode of Judging Amy, Brenneman’s character was considering running for public office. This wouldn’t be unusual for a Hollywood alum, but unless she’s aiming away from the target again, Brenneman’s name is unlikely to appear on a ballot any time soon. There’s the question of her adventurous youth and several escapades that might not survive the gossipy media microscope. But it’s more that she’s pretty darn happy with the way things are.
“I never say never,” she says, “but there’s a freedom you have when you’re not actually in the political system that feels more comfortable to me. My fame is at a nice level.”
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