Jennifer Beals: It's Showtime!
Male and female, gay and straight, TV audiences are being seduced by Showtime's latest original series, The L Word, which chronicles the lathery lives of A-list lesbian ladies in Los Angeles. At the center of the capable cast of desirable and daring actors is Jennifer Beals. Twenty years after her explosive debut in the faddish '80s fiction Flashdance (and subsequent status as an icon of fashion of the time think frayed fleece) the actress is proud to be a part of another mainstream media milestone.
"I love the show," she exclaims. "It has its own identity. It normalizes what society has characterized as perverse or unacceptable. It makes you realize that at the end of the day, it's about love."
Love. And sex. The initial buzz and provocative pilot tantalized potential viewers with full-frontal nudity, louche liaisons and colorful conversation; featuring homosexual, heterosexual and bisexual relationships; monogamous and promiscuous pairings. Later episodes further explore the depth of the connections in a subtler tone and style.
Beals is Bette, a type-A workaholic in a seven-year relationship with Tina (Laurel Holloman), who has taken a hiatus from work in order to conceive a child through artificial insemination. Their cohorts include Shane (Katherine Moennig), a free-loving, loose-living hairstylist; Dana (Erin Daniels), a professional tennis player who's yet to exit the proverbial closet; bisexual journalist Alice (Leisha Hailey); Marina Karina Lombard), a beautiful, brilliant woman who owns the West Hollywood cafe where the gals assemble a la Friends; and Bette's half-sister, Kit (Pam Grier).
Into this world comes Jenny (Mia Kirschner), a gifted young fiction writer who moves to Los Angeles to live with her college boyfriend, Tim (Eric Mabius), whose neighbors are Bette and Tina. Amid denial and confusion, Jenny starts to question her sexual orientation and her love for Tim when her attraction to Marina proves irresistible
To be sure, the show and its players are all beautifully appointed, fabulous and fascinating, but a varied sample of viewers on the Women.com message boards generally agree that The L Word delivers both entertainment and social value.
"I think people who are critical of the gloss factor of the show have to remember that it represents women who are living in Hollywood," says Beals. "And in Hollywood, by and large, women are very self-aware. It's a fictional show; it's not a reality show."
To critics who bemoan the cast's core of lipstick lesbians, Beals responds: "You know, the women on Sex and the City do not represent all heterosexual white women in New York; The Cosby Show does not represent every black family in America. It's like a picture of a jar; it's not the jar itself, but gives an idea of what the jar is."
Ultimately, Beals hopes the show will satisfy critics by its sheer presence on a major network. "It's so valuable," she says. "Especially now when one feels like the administration has sucked the life out of the issue of validating gay relationships. I hope The L Word gives people an idea of a group of people they know nothing about. And for that group of people, some representation in a world in which they are largely invisible."
Despite the relative invisibility of her own work, the actress is unperturbed by the public's perception that her career has been less than flashy. In fact, Beals was only 19 when she wowed the world with her portrayal of willowy welder Alex Owens and has worked steadily since then averaging about one film or TV project a year.
"I didn't have a set idea of what my life would or wouldn't be [in 1983]," says Beals. "All I thought was that I wanted to go to college." After completing Flashdance, Beals returned to Yale University. "Right now I have no vision of what my life will be. I have no idea what's going to happen in the next five minutes."
The philosophical performer has cultivated a circle of friends whose creative contributions often aim at the fringes of Hollywood; among Beals's close comrades are director Quentin Tarantino and actors Jennifer Jason Leigh and David Duchovney (a Yale classmate). Beals married French filmmaker Alexandre Rockwell in 1986; the union lasted 10 years, and Beals appeared in Rockwell-directed films Sons (as a transvestite) and 1992's In the Soup, a critically acclaimed independent film released amid the height of the American indie era.
Beals' resume also includes various French film and television productions, as well as better-known U.S. projects like Vampire's Kiss (with Sting), TV series 2000 Malibu Road (costarring Drew Barrymore), Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (with Leigh), Tarantino's Four Rooms, Devil in a Blue Dress (costarring Denzel Washington), Twilight of the Golds (a telefilm with gay themes) and The Anniversary Party (which pal Leigh cowrote and directed with Alan Cumming). More recently Beals appeared in Runaway Jury (pictured), and while her next foray, Catch That Kid, has been described as a Mission Impossible for kids, the academic actress intellectualizes it:
"It's really about, what would you do if the person you loved most was dying, and you could save them with an operation, which you had no money for. And how would you do that if you were 10, 11?"
In 1998, Beals wed again and became a stepmom of two, but she won't discuss her family, except to say her husband is not involved in show business and they live in a rural community 300 miles from Los Angeles with two large, playful mutts.
While the decision not to dwell in the City of Angels was very deliberate, the actress doesn't disdain Hollywood red carpet events so much as regard them as certain toil.
"I don't avoid them but I consider them work. It's not as if I go to a premiere and think I'm actually going to have a fantastic time. I realize that I'm going to work. And every now and again, I'm surprised when I have a fantastic time... I like it best when I get to go with friends; I got to go to the Golden Globes with Mia Kirschner; it was really fun, very girly. I've gone to events with Jennifer Jason Leigh."
Beals is genuinely enjoying her experience filming The L Word, and personal fulfillment -- not to mention fun -- has always been key to her career choices.
"My hero as a child was Secretariat," she muses. "I went with my father to Louisville, and we watched the Kentucky Derby. And I think the most important thing I gathered from that was the joy with which he ran. He was so happy racing. It was like he wasn't working.
"I go where I want to be in a story, whether that's in Berlin or the Phillippines or New York or England. I just follow the story."
