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By Woodrow J. Hinton
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Newfound action heroine Julianna Margulies battles
scary monsters in the haunted boat movie Ghost Ship.
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"Are these cough drops?" Julianna Margulies asks, as she reaches into a bowl and unwraps a candy. "I'm losing my voice."
It's been two years since Margulies played nurse Carol Hathaway in the popular TV medical drama, ER. Since then, she has paired her dark Eastern European looks and famously arching eyebrows with performances in the TV film, The Mists of Avalon, and onstage work at Lincoln Center in Ten Unknowns. Margulies recently completed the most unusual role in her career, playing the action heroine in a big-budget horror movie. She couldn't be happier.
"Death Ship?" I ask her. Margulies corrects me instantly.
"Ghost Ship," she says, laughing. "Sea evil. That's why I'm hoarse because I've just looped nine hours and, when you loop a thriller, you scream a lot. I play the hero. Never in a million years would I compare my character to Sigourney Weaver's in Alien, but she was in the same situation with the same thing. She has to take on the bad guys."
Margulies has other films in theaters. In The Man from Elysian Fields, Margulies plays the unsuspecting wife to Andy Garcia's husband, a struggling writer who joins a male escort service to earn extra money. In the family melodrama Evelyn, Margulies plays the girlfriend to Pierce Brosnan's single father, who's trying to raise his three kids in 1950s Dublin. These are the types of dramatic roles audiences expect from Margulies.
In Ghost Ship, Margulies gets to flash her muscles. She also finds herself in a potential movie franchise. Margulies plays Maureen Epps, the leader of a salvage crew who finds the Antonia Graza, a luxury ocean liner, missing at sea for more than 40 years. Inevitably, there is more to the empty liner than meets the eye.
"I was doing Evelyn when I got it," Margulies says, speaking recently in Toronto. "I was like, wait-a-minute, Warner Brothers is allowing me as their lead, their action hero in this huge movie? OK. I better start pumping iron. I've never done a thriller, but I think they have a built-in audience. At worst, it's a great popcorn movie. At best, it's going to be one of those movies you have to see over and over again, because you can't believe what you're seeing because the special effects are so unreal."
Jamie Lee Curtis began her career as terrorized babysitter Laurie Strode in Halloween. Recently, Ralph Fiennes plays the key villain opposite Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon. Naomi Watts follows her acclaimed performance in Mulholland Drive with The Ring, a horror fantasy about a cursed videotape that kills its viewers. Appearing in a horror movie can boost an actor's profile if it's classy and successful. There's a thin line between pulpy fun and lowbrow trash. Remember: Sigourney Weaver spent a good deal of Alien in her underwear.
"I didn't have to run around in my underwear," Margulies says, laughing. "But believe me, had I suggested it, they would have been very happy. The way I look at it, it's a haunted house movie on a boat. I like to see it as The Shining meets Dead Calm. I'm on the boat that finds the ship and then things start to go crazy. I yell, 'We have got to get off this boat now!'
"I figure, hey man, make it the best it can be. That's all I have. Can it make you or break you? I don't believe in that. People get lucky. If it goes well, we'll get lucky. There's no way to know."
Margulies' most significant role continues to be ER's hard-working Carol Hathaway. While she has found other parts that take full advantage of her earthy good looks -- The Newton Boys, A Price Above Rubies and Traveller -- it's hard for her to compete with the critical acclaim and pop-culture stardom that surrounded her ER character.
Other TV stars struggle to make the career leap out of the small box and into feature films or theater. Friends' star Jennifer Aniston is gaining strong notices for playing a small-town wife who has an affair with a younger man in the indie comedy The Good Girl. Still, Aniston's success is matched by the stumbles of fellow TV actresses Jenna Elfman and Katie Holmes.
Margulies takes none of her success for granted. Her stint on ER was originally scheduled for one year until the show's writers decided to let her character live. Margulies takes the career ups-and-downs in stride. A globetrotting childhood taught her to be flexible. Although they were separated, her mother continued to follow her father while he was relocated from New York City, to Paris, then London. She cultivated her love for acting in England and honed it at Sarah Lawrence College. Some TV guest spots followed, but Margulies says it was restaurant jobs that paid her bills until ER came along. In fact, if her acting career were to take a nosedive, the 36-year-old actress says that she can always go back ... not to ER, but to working at restaurants.
"Let me tell you something, I made good money as a bartender. I was good at it. I enjoyed it. You're behind a bar, so you have power because everyone wants alcohol, and you're the one giving it. Once you support yourself in other ways, everything becomes less nervous.
"When I was a waitress, if I had a crystal ball and I could have seen that I would be financially fine and have a job and have done well, I actually would have enjoyed my waitressing days. I would have had fun. I was working in the hottest restaurant in New York, and I was hanging out with great people. I was always nervous about my SAG card and other things. If I only knew. I could have enjoyed it. Why not live your life like that? So I'm just going to assume that (Ghost Ship) is going to be a really fun movie and that people are going to enjoy because I have no control over it."
For the time being, Margulies plans to rest her ghost-busting muscles. Her hoarse throat is just for starters. There are also cuts, bruises and rashes on both legs. Being the action heroine is hard work.
"I was standing in water for hours. I had these fabulous pants but you can't breathe in them. I was allergic to my pants. They gave me a rash." ©
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