especially if you are able to focus on the scenery and set aside the
scores of small children fluttering about on this weekday morning.
As we talk, about a role not taken by the actor who
is best-known of late for her TV work, in “The L Word” and the current
season’s “The Chicago Code,” we sit in two cushy chairs that face
An adorable redheaded boy, maybe 4 at most,
approaches, pressing his face to a glass wall directly behind us, as if
Two People Talking is another exhibit to be studied. Suddenly, Beals’
air, thoughtful, engaging, a little self-deprecating but also quite a
bit cautious, melts away, and she is only a mother.
“Look at — how cute are you? How cute are you? You have red hair. Look at that. Hi! So unafraid, huh? Really sweet.”
Still, even as two adults stare and smile and make
goo-goo faces at him, the boy maintains his frank, open gaze. “I know,”
Beals tells him. “You know, if you could keep that state, it would be
pretty sweet. And painful all at the same time.”
After our talk, she was preparing to head to
to do publicity for “Chicago Code,” whatever she can to nudge it off
the bubble and into the category of “renewed.” The DVR numbers have
been strong, she says, but the ratings only middle of the pack and
pretty much static since the Fox series debuted
“Literally, the other day, I pulled up to this cop
car, and I rolled down my window, and the officer rolled down his
window. And I said, ‘I just want you to know, I love you. I love you.’
And he looked at me a little baffled, then he laughed. I think he
figured it out, or else he was just chuckling because it was such a
bizarre moment.”
What he might have figured out is who Beals is: the person currently starring in “Code” as
a fictionalized version of his boss. The role — of a tough woman who
tamps down her personal life to put everything into the job — has made
Beals more politically engaged, she says, more willing, for instance,
to pick up the phone to call an alderman about trying to get so-called
“crumb rubber” children’s play surface banned.
It has also forged feelings that spill over, she
says, into the real world. “I have a profound love for the CPD now,”
she says. “I just do. I do. I feel like they’re my team.”
She delivered the message to the stunned officer in part to counteract, she says, the treatment she witnessed
“Usually these guys are being spit on during the day, at least in (parts of the city),” says Beals, who grew up in
“I went on a ride-along for the day, and there was no respect. It was
horrifying. You realize there are a minority of officers who are not
behaving in a way that is deserving of respect, but there’s the
majority who are, and they’re having to take the brunt of other
people’s behavior. It’s a brutal job.”
It’s not that she stays in character so much, she
explains, as the characters tend to stay in her a little. Other times,
though, you just have to let it go.
Beals has hung around as an actor — albeit employed
in different ways than might have been expected, given the way she sped
out of the gate. “Flashdance” — chair, water, off-the-shoulder top —
made her a love object of the 1980s, her name invoked by young men of
the era in the same way, for instance, that
But Beals continued at
Her career steered, for a time, toward independent
movies. Lately, as has been the case for so many woman actors in their
40s (she turned 47 in December), the best roles have been on
television:
At a state event on the “Chicago Code” set in September, Beals delivered a nicely crafted speech on what it meant to film in
mostly seemed to want to talk about “Flashdance,” even tying in Beals’
onscreen job as a welder (by day, a dancer by night) with a point about
the importance of union jobs.
Beals was not put off by the politician’s seeming
fixation, she says. “Everybody has their reference point, and it’s
reflective of what their experience is. I went into a meeting in
The producer was talking to me about doing a film this summer. I’m
obviously not sure if I’m available or not, but his point of reference
for me was ‘Roger Dodger.’ And a lot of people come up to me about ‘The
L Word.’ Some people come up to me about ‘Book of Eli.’ There’s a whole
other group of people that’s ‘Devil in a Blue Dress.'”
So looking back over all of that, have things gone according to plan? How does the career look to you?
“I think it’s mostly happy accidents,” she says,
laughing. “It’s really nice that you would even intimate that there
could be any kind of planning going on.”
She thinks again. “It looks like a marathon,” she
says. “And I’m proud that I’m not a DNF (did not finish). I’m not a DNF
yet. I just kept going. I think that’s been the key is just to keep
going and really try to get better and try to be as truthful as I can
and hope that good things come my way.”
She knows that a small-budget, Canadian dark comic
film she was in, “A Night for Dying Tigers,” will be out this summer.
But beyond that, she doesn’t know much. If “Code” is renewed and she is
able to stay in
a little bit. People are talking about Kenwood. I’m not sure. And
that’s kind of like the life of an actor. You just don’t know where
you’re going to end up.
“It’s kind of like being in the circus. Or, at least
in the circus you have a planned tour, I would guess. With television
and films, you know, any moment you can be packing up and going
somewhere else. Eventually we’re going to have to pick a place so my
daughter can have at least some stability. I would love it to be
———
(c) 2011, Chicago Tribune.
Visit the
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
