“My name is Swoosie Kurtz and I am a workaholic.”
A season ago her character, Alex, on NBC’s dramatic series “Sisters” was diagnosed as having breast cancer. It began a whirlwind up-and-down string of story arcs that has had her in crisis, treated, in remission, then hosting a talk-show and beginning a romance.
Today Kurtz is rolling along in her own career, pausing only to take on more work off the “Sisters” set.
“I am driven-I am truly driven,” the veteran actress said during an interview. “I love it. It’s not by any design, but I do seem to save the best of myself for my work. Some people are like that. It’s not better or worse than any other way to live, but I enjoy it.”
But, she added, only half-kidding, “you wouldn’t want to be around me when I’m not working.”
That doesn’t seem to be very often. In fact, she will admit that her nonstop pursuit of worthwhile new projects on stage, screen and television has colored the framework of her personal life. And the hues are not as bright as they might have been.
Kurtz, 50, has a knack for creating characters who blend seamlessly into stories, such as the role she played earlier this year as Winona Ryder’s mother in the movie, “Reality Bites.” She labels the role, “selfish, alcoholic, very dysfunctional, the worst mother in history!”
For her acting efforts, she has won Tonys and Emmys and numerous nominations of all types. Over the past couple of seasons, in addition to her weekly stint as Alex, she appeared twice on HBO in made-for-cable movies; with Holly Hunter in HBO’s “The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom,” then lending a pivotal supporting part in “And the Band Played On.”
The two roles reflected her range. In the first, she was the wife of the hitman in the celebrated case, a woman who lived in a trailer park. In the adaptation of journalist Randy Shilts’ history of the AIDS epidemic, she played an affluent heterosexual San Francisco woman who was one of the first Americans to contract the disease from a blood transfusion.
And then, there’s the role of Alex, a successful professional woman who, having confronted, battled and overcome breast cancer, is proceeding with her life.
The situations and challenges facing Kurtz’s characters have won her considerable attention and plaudits. Recently, Project Inform, a national AIDS-awareness group, gave her its Tolerance Award for her work on “Sisters” and “And the Band Played On.”
Kurtz inhabits her roles, but she guards herself from going over the line emotionally.
“It’s funny how something physical can come back on you,” she says. “It was very dicey, for instance, playing Alex when she had cancer-especially when she had the chemo. She didn’t feel well, and she’d hang around the house feeling rotten physically and rotten mentally. I had to do that 100 percent-and I also had to stay well to do the series, to show up for work every day.”
The roots of her craft are embedded in a peripatetic childhood as an Army brat. Her father, a U.S. Army colonel, made up her name from the plane, The Swoose (“half swan, half goose”), now at the Smithsonian, which he piloted during World War II. Born in Omaha, Kurtz moved with her parents constantly, attending 17 schools in the Midwest, Florida, Maryland and California before high school.
“Being an only child, and very shy, I had a lot of time alone, where the only thing I could rely on to entertain myself was my imagination,” she says. “I had time to think, to dream, to fantasize, to make up little scenarios.
“And that lack of continuity in my life, being in one group of people and then another, and not having the same house on the same block with the same schoolmates for long, really was great preparation for this life-where you become intensely involved with a group of people for six weeks or a year, or if you’re lucky, three and a half years, and then that’s it. You’re cut loose on your own for a while, until you get another job with another group of people.”
Kurtz was inspired to act by John Engel, her drama teacher at Hollywood High School in California. She went to the University of Southern California for a couple of years and then to the London Academy of Dramatic Arts. Her parents were supportive: “If I had wanted to become a subway-token collector, they would have said, `that’s fabulous-how can we help?’ “
Gradually, she became known in the New York theater world with Tony award-winning performances in revivals of Lanford Wilson’s “The Fifth of July” and John Guare’s “The House of Blue Leaves.” More recently, she followed Stockard Channing onstage in “Six Degrees of Separation.”
“Sisters” marked her first television series since “Love, Sidney,” in which she appeared opposite Tony Randall for two seasons in the early 1980s. In the interim, she became a staple in theater and also had parts in such movies as “The World According to Garp,” “Bright Lights, Big City” and “Dangerous Liaisons.”
Slotted on Saturday nights-a bleak television night-“Sisters” not only has held its own, but has built an audience and heads into its fifth season this fall. Kurtz is not surprised.
“I think it’s real. The basic thing-without which you have nothing else-is that the audience cares about the four of us. It’s funny, it’s got fantasies and memories of our younger selves. Obviously some shows are better than others. But as much as I writhe or protest about certain story lines, when I see it on the air as a viewer, all put together, it always gets me.”
Its validity can be seen, perhaps, in the fact that audiences have difficulty separating reality from fiction. Last year, Kurtz went for her annual mammogram. While she was sitting in the waiting area, in her hospital gown, a nurse came by, saw her, and stopped short. “She gasped audibly, and said, `Omigod! Is everything OK? Are you all right?’ It was so difficult to convince her that I was there for a physical, that it was me, Swoosie, and that everything was fine.”
As potent a character as Alex is, the show is ultimately an ensemble piece. And Kurtz is the quintessential ensemble actress. She admits it.
“If I want to be a movie star, then I’m do something that’s a mistake-I think of the piece first. I don’t think about how I can shine in it, how I can twist the writing to show me off well. I always say, `OK, what’s the best rhythm here?’ A lot of people want more camera time. They want to spread it out. I go, `OK, this part should go real fast.’ I sacrifice the light shining on me in order to improve the orchestration of the piece.”
Still, in much of her work, she has dominated the stage or the screen for significant periods of time. Leading lady to her means “the tone of how the part is played, and how people see me. It can be a supporting part, and I can still be the dramatic leading lady, as opposed to a character.”
Moreover, Kurtz’s choice of roles the last few years has distanced herself from being viewed as a comedian, as she had been, and “metamorphosed” into a dramatic leading lady. “Sisters” certainly has helped. “And nobody,” she says, “can point to me in `And the Band Played On’ and say, `oh, she’s so funny!’ “
One aspect of her life does give her pause-but, she stresses, no regrets. She has never been married.
Today, she is still “sort of looking-but not very actively.” If somebody came into her life now, she thinks, she would encourage them. It wasn’t the case before, when her focus was single-minded.
“What I did for a number of years was say, `OK, get out of my way-career, career, career,’ with blinders on. I really got what I wanted. It was like, `Don’t disturb me, I’m working.’ “
Recently, she’s learned of men who had wanted to date her but had second thoughts because they saw how driven she was.
“One said to me, `I had this terrible crush on you.’ And I asked him, `Why didn’t you say something, or make a move, or ask me out?’ And he said, `Oh, no, you were always rushing from one place to another, and I thought you really had a purpose and I shouldn’t bother you.’ It was true. But I’m getting a little smarter about that.”
That’s the extent to which Kurtz will look back. She’s much more self-assured and confident, taking stock of where she is today.
“I’ve never felt better. I feel like I’ve never looked better, and that I’m growing. I don’t mean to sound like a California ashram person, but I do feel like I am evolving, and learning so much about dealing with people, and why they do what they do, and about myself. Doing the show has taught me an awful lot. I’ve been in plays for a year, or a year and a half, but you come to the theater at 7 o’clock and spend a couple of hours. That’s quite different from spending 12, 14 hours a day with people.”
So what lies ahead, more ensemble work or more of a shot alone in the limelight?
“I’ve never thought about star, star, star,” she says. Then, rethinking it, she added, “I think I have to do that more now.”
