Marsha Mason
TheCelebrityCafe.com: I know you’ve played roles on television shows, including As the World Turns and Army Wives. Can you tell me about some of those roles? What was your favorite?
Marsha Mason: Well, actually I’ve done a lot of television. Years ago, I did a series that wasn’t successful for Jim Brooks, called Sibs, and I had a great time doing that. And Army Wives was wonderful too. I mean, I think the fun – it just depends, like [in] Army Wives we were talking about some sort of serious problems (I was playing the mother.) It was more about a family problem – with my husband and her father and stuff. So, that’s like a completely different thing. It just depends on, you know, what kind of character I’m playing. And so, The Middle is kind of fun because the first one that I did for Mother’s Day presented a kind of crazy, wild person. And I loved the development of the relationship with Patricia [Heaton, who plays] Frankie, the daughter, and the difficult, sort of mother-daughter issues that can come up and grandparents issues and stuff. So, I’ve had a really good time with that. And so I find that one very interesting as well.
TCC: What about some of your film and theater roles? Do you have any favorites?
MM: You know, it’s such an interesting – I’m always asked that question and I’m not quite sure why that question is so important to people. But, because each job or each character is unique and wonderful to do, and so it’s really tough. If I say, “All right, what movies do people remember the most?” I would say probably The Goodbye Girl, but, you know, some of my favorites in terms of the work that I did were also Only When I Laugh or Max Dugan Returns. So, you know, I can’t really answer that question.
TCC: How did you initially get involved in acting?
MM: I discovered acting in high school, in my freshman year of high school, and I fell madly in love with it almost immediately and thought, “Oh, I have to do this!” And then from then on I had a passion for it that just never has ceased. And so I’ve always been very grateful that I had a focus and a clear idea of what it was I wanted to do because I know it’s so difficult for young people if they’re unsure about what they want to do. And there’s such pressure to make decisions about those kinds of things so early in terms of their education and parents’ pressure and job pressure – all that. It’s really tough, you know? But I love acting and I love the theater and I love, you know, making magic. So, it’s really great.
TCC: Out of all the experiences you’ve had so far as you’ve grown as an actress, which has been your favorite and why?
MM: I suppose being nominated for an Academy Award for Cinderella Liberty right out of the box was probably, you know – that was a once-in-a-lifetime, kind of extraordinary experience. I was doing repertory work at the time at ACT in San Francisco and I thought I was going to do that forever. So, the whole film thing was not something I really planned. And that was just destiny that led to that, you know? [Cinderella Liberty] and Blume in Love – those two pictures were done in the same year and they were sort of piggybacked onto one another. I was doing Blume in Love and Mark Rydell was looking at my footage and that’s how I got Cinderella Liberty. And he came up to ACT and saw me in a play and I was shocked at the size of the role when I looked at the script and everything. And then both to have 20th Century Fox feel so strongly about the movie that they put extra editors on it to make it eligible for that Christmas. So, it was a very big whirlwind kind of time.
And I was then also doing a play in New York, The Good Doctor, and I met Neil [Simon] and got married. So that was a huge, big shift I think in terms of that. And then, I think, Neil and I had a wonder professional and personal relationship for the 10 years we were together. And especially the work because we had such mutual respect for each other and he wrote such wonderful material for me to do and it also helped us to be able to stay together and raise the girls, his daughters, and it was a really terrific time.
And then, I think, coming to New Mexico and drawing up the pieces of my life in a way because the business had changed. I was getting older and the parts weren’t coming as much as they used to. And I realized that my personal sense of my own identity was so wrapped up in the work that if I wasn’t working I felt bereft of some kind of an identity. And, it’s not really a good thing. The work is the work, you know? And you are a full person, not just what you do.
So coming to New Mexico gave me an opportunity, I think, to, without even me being totally conscious of it, of being able to explore other aspects of my own personality. I mean, I became a manager, I became a farmer, I became an entrepreneur, put out a product line. It’s a functioning certified organic farm. I was appointed by the governor as the chairperson for the New Mexico Organic Commodities Commission. And at the same time, I continued to work.
And also in that interim period between after the divorce [with Neil Simon] and before coming to New Mexico, I raced cars for seven years. I did a lot of things that probably I couldn’t have done if I was married and also couldn’t have done if I only just stayed acting, you know? And the girls [daughters] grew up and went off on their own and we still have a close relationship and so my maternal urges were, you know, assuaged by our relationships to this day. So all of that I think is part of having a full life.
TCC: I know you have a line of organic wellness sprays and body-care products called Resting in the River.
MM: Yeah, it really came out of me needing certain things. For example, the water is hard [in New Mexico] and the land is not easy, so my hands were getting really messed up in the planting and harvesting. And so we were selling wholesale to a master herbalist down in Albuquerque, Mitch Coven at Vitality Works, and I talked to him one day about making a salve for my hands and I had read up on some herbs that we were growing. One of them in particular –Spilanthes. And so we concocted a salve for my hands and that was the first product.
And then it was a question of seasonal changes, wanting to have alternatives to regular medications, so we came out with the Boost Juice and Superior Support and Mitch made all of that.
And I wrote a book, I wrote a memoir and I went on a book tour in 2000. And so I knew I would have to have something that would help me to stay focused to be able to talk to people and I was going to have to talk about myself, which is not easy, so I needed something that was going to help me stay focused, not sleepy, but also keep me sort of chilled out. So that’s how we developed the chill factor.
And then the throat therapy came out because I went to London to do a play. I did Prisoner of Second Avenue at the Royal Haymarket and I knew I was going into a 400-year-old theater and God knows what was in the walls. So, and also a big shift in climate and everything, so the throat therapy really was great. And the Spilanthes was really proven as a terrific, ingestible, as well as topical herb because then if my glands got swollen or my throat would get really sore or whatever, I would use the throat therapy and then I would also take extra drops of Spilanthes in straight tincture to combat getting sick, so I never got sick.
And then, you know, your skin is so dry out here in the Southwest, so we took the basic formula of the salve and put it into a different delivery system – Shea butter for the body butter and then a lotion for the body lotion, but it’s basically the same formula and it’s all medicinal and unscented. And the body butter and the lotion are some of our biggest sellers.
TCC: Do you only ship your organic products or do you have a store in New Mexico?
MM: No, we ship to places and we’re online and we’re in whole foods [stores] – Wild Oats and Vitamin Cottage, mostly in the southwest area. I have been developing some relationships with independent vitamin stores in New York City when I’m there, and just trying to get the word out. And then also, you know, doing advertising and interviews in nature magazines and onsite things that talk about holistic and healthful ways of living.
TCC: Do you have any plans to expand the Resting in the River product line?
MM: Not right now, I don’t think. But I have been thinking about maybe putting the body butter into a tube form, as well as a jar, so you can have it in the car and you can maybe travel with it a little bit easier. So I’m thinking more about delivery systems if you will. And we change the formula a little bit to make sure that we come as close as possible to all of the NOP [National Organic Program] standards for organic.
TCC: I know you’ve also done some directing. Can you tell me about your experience doing that?
MM: Well, I really like directing a lot and it’s sort of, you know – actually building the farm, I thought of it as preproduction. And it’s a very detailed, you have to be able to make quick decisions, you have to be flexible, you have to work with personalities, you have to be kind of a father and a mother to everybody and also somewhat of a dictator.
And I love the whole creative process of trying to find ways to bring out whatever qualities you’re looking for in the piece from the actors. And I try very hard to remember all the things that I did or did not like as an actor when I’m directing because I think, personally, that every director should act once, every actor should direct once and everybody, actors and directors, should write once. You don’t have to have it published, but to sit down and attempt to write something, you gain such a respect for the person that can write if you walk in their shoes a little bit.
I gained an enormous amount of respect for other directors once I had directed. I just think it’s so important for, especially the young directors in film, often times have no vocabulary with which to speak to an actor. They’re only interested in pictures and it really is a necessary element, I think, to becoming a really good director.
TCC: Do you have any current acting projects?
MM: Not really because I just literally finished The Middle. You know, now it’s kind of quiet time. I’ve been talking to some people about some plays and stuff like that, but nothing definite yet. I do love the theater a lot, so we’ll see if that breaks out.
TCC: You do deserve some down time!
MM: I know. I’ve been on the road for months because I did this play off-Broadway in New York at the beginning of the year, I Never Sang for My Father. Then I was here in New Mexico just for a couple of weeks and then – boom – was in Washington from August through October and then finished on the Saturday, flew to L.A. on Sunday and started work on Monday. And then spent a couple of days with the girls [daughters], Ellen and Nancy, and then, you know, went back to New York to try to organize everything and now I came here [New Mexico] for Thanksgiving and I’m going to be back in New York for Christmas.
TCC: I know that you touched on this earlier, but I read that you left Hollywood for some time to pursue racecar driving. Can you tell me about that?
MM: I didn’t leave Hollywood, I was still there because we stayed in the South Pacific division, so I raced in Willow Springs, you know, tracks in California all the way to mid-Ohio. That was a trip, that was great. I did that for about seven years, so that was wonderful. Made the national runoffs. Great time!
Image by Mark Seliger