The word on Parker, 38, is that she’s extremely private and quite shy. Private is accurate. We’ll get to that. But shy? Ah, no. To be fair, Parker’s outburst didn’t come until about two hours into a long interview at a cafe in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. By then, she seemed good and cozy. Typically, Parker says, she’s most at ease when she’s acting–specifically, acting onstage. If you’ve seen her only lending a sonic charge to “The West Wing” then you’ve seen just a hint of what she’s capable of. For nearly a decade, the actress has been a Broadway golden girl, winning a Tony in 2001 for her dazzling work as a gifted mathematician’s daughter in David Auburn’s “Proof.” She’s popped up in some nice film roles over the years–“Fried Green Tomatoes” here, “The Client” there. But now, finally, she’s getting her moment on screen, big and small. This week she rejoins the “The West Wing” cast for 10 episodes. And starting Friday, she has a small but pivotal role in the Hannibal Lecter prequel “Red Dragon,” in which no one, we’re pleased to report, eats her brain.
Parker, who also stars this month in the indie film “Pipe Dream,” won’t be buying a ticket to see “Red Dragon”–too scary. But she’s long adored “The West Wing.” Her character, Amy, is the kind of cheeky, whip-smart type who wraps guys around her finger like pipe cleaners. In one scene last year, Josh was on the phone trying to kill a bill that Amy supported, and she nonchalantly grabbed a pair of scissors and cut the telephone cord in half. Series creator Aaron Sorkin wrote the part for Parker after she left him an admiring message about the show. The plan was for just one episode. Then he visited the set to watch her shoot her first scene and was nearly tackled by Whitford. “He came running up to me, saying, ‘I love her! I love her! Can we keep her?’ And I said, ‘Well, OK, if you promise to walk her and feed her and everything’.”
So why, if she’s so darn gifted, isn’t she everywhere? Part of it is that Parker’s too good an actress. She utterly vanishes in her roles; movie stars do not. “She’s OK with things in her career that really infuriate me,” says Counting Crows singer and pal Adam Duritz, who met Parker 15 years ago, when both were dirt poor. (The two dated “for a little minute,” she says.) “Like, they’re gonna make a movie of ‘Proof’ without her”–Gwyneth Paltrow may star–“and to my mind, it’s pretty ridiculous that it’s not her.” Parker says she’s fine with it, but she’s not immune to frustration. She claims that, until landing a coveted part in HBO’s version of “Angels in America,” set to air next spring with costars Al Pacino and Meryl Streep, she had never once gotten a movie role she desperately wanted. Even her recent TV success prompts mixed emotions. Parker lives to perform onstage and “more people saw my first night on the ‘The West Wing’ than saw all the plays I’ve done, every night, in my whole life. That’s hard. But that’s what theater is. It’s like a love affair or a kiss. Then it’s gone.”
Parker’s options are also limited, no doubt, by her refusal to market herself as assiduously as most actresses. Early in her career, she actually resolved not to do any interviews. “And my agents said, ‘OK, no one knows who the f– you are. If you were Robert De Niro, maybe. But you can’t do that’.” She softened her stance, obviously, but only enough to get the job done.
Here, then, is the book on Parker. She is close to her parents but won’t talk about them. She was born in South Carolina. High school was rough because she was artsy–enough said–but college at North Carolina School of the Arts was a dream. She’s been dating actor Billy Crudup (“Almost Famous”) for six years, since they met during a Broadway revival of “Bus Stop.” When she’s bored, she knits or cooks or reads poetry. She’s addicted to the ABC show “Alias.” “She really geeks out on Jennifer Garner,” says Duritz. And it is clear, just by her tone, which of these subjects are open for further probing and which are not. “I’m not trying to be cryptic,” she insists. “There are just things I don’t like to talk about. They might be simple things to someone else, but to me they’re important. It would cost me more than anyone would gain by reading it.”
After nearly three hours of talking–shy?–Parker borrows a cell phone to call Crudup. It’s pouring outside, and she’s forgotten an umbrella. She hangs up–he’s on his way–and makes up her mind to break her own rules. “OK, I’ll tell you this, and it’s all I’m going to say about Billy. I never even say this much. The first day on ‘Bus Stop,’ the whole crew was buzzing around, saying, ‘Oh, Billy Crudup! He’s so handsome, blah blah blah.’ So I meet him and he’s cute, sure, whatever. Then he started to read the first f–ing act of that play, and I was like… ‘He is cuuute.’ My next thought was, ‘He’s a better actor than me. I don’t know if I like that’.” Parker laughs. Minutes later, Crudup arrives. As they walk off, he puts his arm around her and she nestles into his shoulder. Now, come on, if this was your life, would you share it with the rest of us?
