In the Hollywood stable of performers, there are the no-talents who want everyone to believe that they are the talented ones. There are the actors who are so dedicated to their "art" that they make life hell for everyone else. There are the unstable artists who are busting their butts trying to make it when they aren't busy screwing up their lives with their attitudes or illegal substances. Then there are the pros, the working stiffs who have their heads on straight, make their calls on time, and get their lines memorized promptly.
Except for the no-talents, there's a little bit of all of the above in Camryn Manheim. She is so dedicated to her art that she goes back to New York every summer and teaches classes at New York University. She's known as a hard, steady worker who gets along with people, and she is a professional in every way. She's also an activist not above grabbing a part without reading the script just because of the great political statement it makes-specifically, her recent role as Snow White in NBC's mega-mini series The 10th Kingdom.
"I wasn't playing your traditional Snow White," said Manheim, who plays the often intense attorney Ellenor Frutt on ABC's The Practice. "I was trying to shatter the image of the traditional Snow White."
Shattering images has a lot to do with who Manheim is as a person and as an actor. Forget the Hollywood attitude. Forget the vaunted soliliquies to "the craft." Manheim is just plain honest and herself. Raised in Southern California, Manheim got bit by the acting bug while working the Renaissance Pleasure Faires back when they were out at the Paramount Ranch in Agoura. Raised by her parents to be a leader, or at least to plot her own course rather than follow the crowd, Manheim was never one to fade into the background.
"I've always been this kind of feisty, sassy outlaw. I was always the one leading the walk-outs at school and holding the picket signs," she said. "I was never asked to jump on other people's bandwagons so I just started building my own and asked people to jump on mine."
One particular wagon, as it were, led to her one-woman show, Wake Up, I'm Fat! Even after earning her M.F.A. from New York University and working with prestigious groups including the New York Shakespeare Festival, Yale Repertory, New York Theatre Workshop, and the Atlantic Theatre Company (with whom she won an Obie award in 1995 for her work in Missing Persons), Manheim still had trouble getting parts because of her size-at least interesting parts.
"I come from a long history of roles where my character didn't have a journey," she said. "I was simply the best friend of the neighbor who just said, "Really? Then what happened?' And so the real star of the show got to go on this fantastical journey and I was really there just so that they weren't giving a soliloquy."
So Manheim put together Wake Up, I'm Fat!, which ran at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York. And in the meantime, she worked in film and TV, guest-starring on several series, including Law and Order, Chicago Hope, and Touched by an Angel. She also appeared in the films Bonfire of the Vanities, The Road to Wellville, and Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, among others.
About four years ago, she got her biggest role yet, Ellenor Frutt. But even then, stereotypes about heavy people still dogged her.
She tells the story of the first day of shooting The Practice. The cast was gathered for a group shot, when someone gave her a doughnut to hold. Annoyed by the stereotype that a person of size must be eating all the time, Manheim says she set up a bit of business with co-star Dylan McDermott that she was actually holding his doughnut and gave it to him.
She removed the bowl of candy that the set dresser had put on her desk. She pushed for a romance for Ellenor and eventually got one. She's also won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her work on the series.
With those kinds of credits, most actors kick back and enjoy. Not Manheim. While her teaching schedule is mostly limited to one big class in the summer and the occasional undergrad classes, she still does it.
Manheim says her classes are less about acting than they are about developing careers-not in the Hollywood sense of agents and the like, but being in the world and drawing from that, as well as the need to give back and doing good in the world, what Manheim calls Mitzvah therapy (from the Yiddish for good deed).
In return, she gets back to what she needs to do to be a complete and whole person, which is being aware of the world around her and doing good things for others, even if she says she does so because she selfishly feels good about herself in the process. Which is so very not-Hollywood and very, very Camryn Manheim.