All Hail Hallie Foote
By Harry Haun
Hallie Foote in Dividing the Estate with Elizabeth Ashley photo by James Leynse
"In some ways, people think of me more like Lucille," admits Hallie, who certainly has played her share of dear hearts and gentle people for her dad. "After I read over the play, I asked him and Michael [Wilson, the director] if I could play Mary Jo. I think they were a bit surprised. Both parts are great, but there was something about Mary Jo that I related to, something that resonated in me. Mary Jo seemed just a little outside the box for me. And there's something sorta liberating about that.
"I admire Mary Jo. There's a straightforward quality to her. She does what she thinks. I like that. I don't think she's nasty at all. Money is a great leveler. It's the thing that can terrify people, and Mary Jo is a survivor. She's highly pragmatic. She loves her husband and her kids, and she will do whatever it takes to make it work."
The actress in her has fun playing a spiky, spiteful person at the same time she's trying to hide it. The trick, she believes, is to come to characters sympathetically and show the needs that govern their deeds. "I think you have to do that. Otherwise, you end up resenting what you're doing. I always try to find a way to redeem a person."
Mary Jo needs redemption more than most, but Hallie knows her way around these Foote hills and valleys by now and can apply human makeup to glaring blemishes. She has been at it a quarter of a century, and, although she does do other authors, she's considered the foremost interpreter of her father's work — his in-house voice.
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She's the keeper of other flames as well. Abner, who plays her nephew in the play, is in real life her husband and a screenwriter. Donning her producer's hat, Hallie is planning a movie of
My Father's Song , his script about composer Charles Ives. Her sister, Daisy Foote, who has written two plays that Hallie appeared in, is also a screenwriter. Her latest project is
The Church of the Dead Girls , which Ted Hope will produce. Then there is
The Widow Claire , which Hallie played Off-Broadway in 1986 and is now trying to produce as a film with a new widow Claire. The project was on Robert Altman's plate before he passed away, and now James Ivory has taken over the direction.
Chances are you'll see it onstage first, it being one of the nine plays constituting Foote's juggernaut, The Orphans' Home Cycle . The playwright and his current director, Wilson, are sculpting and condensing all nine into a Coast of Utopia -type saga that will launch at Wilson's Hartford Stage Company in the 2009 season.
That should keep "Daddy's best girl" spinning plates for a spell. Ye-e-esss!
Hallie Foote and Horton Foote
photo by Aubrey Reuben
