Jill Hennessy may be better known for her television roles, but she had no trouble playing the mother of teenage boys in the big-screen indie pic Lymelife.
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That’s because the Edmonton-born actor, who made her mark as Assistant DA Claire Kincaid in Law & Order and as Jordan Cavanaugh in Crossing Jordan has some excellent acting chops.
But it also helps that, like her Lymelife character, Brenda, she has two sons.
“Things would hit me in the middle of a scene,” she recalls as she warms up with a cup of tea at a local Italian bistro after shooting an outdoor TV spot. On another level, dressed in brown suede jacket and near thigh-high boots, she could not be hotter.
“Rory [Culkin, who plays son Scott] would say a line like ‘You shoulda had girls, because they talk to their mothers.’ I’d hear it and, though we’d rehearsed it and blocked it, I was so cut to the core that I cried. It wasn’t what I planned or what Derick (director Martini) wanted, but it was a nice spontaneous moment.”
Hennessy’s boys aren’t yet teenagers. One’s a toddler, and the other at the time of the shoot was an infant.
“Yeah, Rory and Kieran [the other Culkin] and Emma [Roberts, who plays Adrianna Bragg] were the people who were helping me out with my baby, who was on the set.”
She credits her agent for having the good taste to bring the Lymelife project to her.
“The two TV roles I’ve done, one a lawyer and one a coroner, are both single, professional women. This was different. Rarely does my agent call to say he’s just looked at the best script he’s ever read.”
In Lymelife, things are going terribly wrong with the Bartlett family, and Hennessy, as the mum, had to dig deep to get to some of the major emotional moments. Sometimes she mined her own family history her mother split when Hennessy was 12.
“You always draw on that stuff,” she notes, getting a bit misty-eyed as we speak. “It’s one of the things I liked about Brenda. Every family has bits of ugliness that spring up, things you wish you didn’t see, things you wish you hadn’t heard, times when you think, ‘Maybe if I ignore this or pretend it’s not happening it’ll go away and things’ll get back to normal and we’ll be one big happy family.’ It’s easy for me to empathize with a sense of loss and fear, so I guess I use that.”
Hennessy always knew she wanted to be an actor. She had the knockout good looks casting agents crave, but an inspired high school drama teacher made sure she stretched her talent.
“My high school teacher in Kitchener told me, ‘Don’t let them pigeonhole you. Because of the way you look, they’ll always make you play the straight ingenue.’ She kept casting me as the grandmother and in the comedy parts, and I loved that.”
Hennessy’s Net presence is a little bit intimidating: stalker sites, sexy pics and a special collection of lesbian kisses she’s performed in Crossing Jordan and in the film Chutney Popcorn. “I’m proud of that, by that way,” she says, referring to her lesbian fan base, but she says she’s a bit of a tech Luddite and isn’t aware of her cyber-profile.
But she’ll have to get hip to the Web soon, since she’s branching out into a role as singer/songwriter, releasing the CD Ghost In My Head in June. It’s a project she’s tackling almost single-handedly.
“I don’t consider myself a businessperson, but I’m the label. I’m looking at manufacturing, digital rights, publicity, iTunes, Amazon, international, domestic, financing a tour.”
But at 40 years old, she’s prepared for anything.
“It feels great to be 40, except when people ask questions about it and make judgments about the number itself. Me, I’m excited by what I’ve accomplished. I’m happier with myself than I’ve been. I have the fewest doubts.
“Forty’s a milestone number in the media. I remember seeing a feature titled Can You Believe These Actesses Are 40?, as if that’s the end. I mean, I drop my kids off at school with some of the hottest women I’ve ever seen.
“Every year’s an accomplishment. Every year’s an achievement. People didn’t comment when I was 39. I’m still the same person.”
