PASADENA, Calif. _ The future didn't look promising when Amanda Peet first thought she wanted to be an actress. While she's gone on to impress in shows like "The Whole Nine Yards," "The Good Wife" and "Brockmire," which returns Wednesday for its fourth and final season, she suffered from paralyzing stage fright.
When she attended Columbia University, she failed at every single audition.
"I'm not bitter about it," she shrugs. "I think I was offered some kind of handmaiden type of role in 'Romeo and Juliet' but I swear to God that was it," she says.
A self-confessed "class clown," Peet explains, "I did all the school plays in my tiny little Quaker school in Manhattan growing up. I was the star of a lot of those plays. But then when I got to Columbia, I think I was probably a little too cocky coming from that tiny little school.
"And no one would have me, which was good for me to go through that before being tossed out into the real world, where I got rejected every five seconds."
Every five seconds for sure. She tagged a few commercials, managed some off-Broadway stuff, and was supporting herself by nannying and waitressing. But she was still incapacitated by stage fright.
"I was very scared, even if I was shooting a commercial," says Peet. "I was usually trembling and couldn't catch my breath. My experience of doing any tiny little thing was as if I was doing a movie with Robert De Niro or something like that.
"So I started just saying 'yes' to everything. Everything I got, I would just do it so I could try to feel less precious about it. After a while, it started working, and I started to feel a little more comfortable when I saw the camera, when I knew it was my turn for my coverage. I started to learn to breathe."
She confided her fears to veteran actress Anne Meara (Ben Stiller's mom). "She was smoking a cigarette and looked at me and said, 'As soon as you want to be good, you're dead!' It was an important moment and I've held on to it," says Peet.
"There are different degrees of nervousness," she says. "You can be paralyzed. I couldn't stand it when people said to me, 'That's a good thing! That means you love it.' No, I'm talking about paralysis or diarrhea _ either way I can't function."
The 48-year-old admits she may have suffered from attention deficit disorder, too. "I think I did have ADD, but I'm sure I was not diagnosed," she says.
"If you try to become an actor, it's a pretty good fit for someone with ADD. You can work in spurts. I think that's a good thing for someone like me."
After college, she rented a studio apartment in New York while she looked for work.
"It was on the ground floor so it had bars in front of it, so it kind of resembled a jail cell," she laughs.
"It wasn't cheap ... it was across from the Palladium, so drunk people used to come and pee through the bars so it kind of smelled like urine. So I have a funny memory of my mom leaning her arm through the slots pouring vinegar to try to get the smell to go away."
Married to writer David Benioff (he co-wrote "Game of Thrones"), Peet is the mother of three: daughters, 13 and 9, and a 5-year-old son.
She says Benioff has been guiding her efforts to become a writer.
"For a while I thought about going back to school, but it wasn't really feasible ... so he's been a mentor to me," she says. "Sometimes I get really scared about what would've happened if I hadn't met him _ because for so many reasons.
"When I met David he started saying, 'Don't take that role. The writing isn't there.' And I'd say, 'But it's such a big movie. It's going to be so HUGE.' He'd say, 'So what? No one's passing you the ball; there's no role here. You're just the wife _ there's no story here. You're playing the same note over and over again.' It wasn't until I had children that I started really saying no," she recalls.
"Having children has made me more flexible. I have a wonderful therapist who told me: 'As a mother, strive for mediocrity.'"
Peet confides she's sad that IFC's "Brockmire," which features Hank Azaria as an uncensored sports announcer, is ending.
"I guess I loved the fact that my character was a raging alcoholic, owner of a minor league baseball team, not interested in having children, pushing 50," she says.
"It's one thing to get a part like that in your 30s, but I liked that she is just unapologetically single. And I hadn't read something like that. And I'm pretty crass, I have a bawdy sense of humor, so that appealed to me. And I love Hank."
WIITHERSPOON IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT
Ever since she captured the audience with her savvy high school candidate in "Election," Reese Witherspoon has been riding a speeding bullet to independence. She's produced such projects as "Truth be Told," "Big Little Lies" and "The Morning Show."
On Wednesday she's back as executive producer for Hulu's "Little Fires Everywhere" and is costarring with Kerry Washington. "Choices used to be made for me a lot," she says.
"I think...I made a conscious decision about eight years ago to start my own company, because I wasn't happy with the choices that were being made for me, and I didn't see a place to exist within the industry that we had," she says.
"There just wasn't a spectrum of storytelling for women that I felt like was representative of the world that we walk through and that our daughters are seeing on film and television. And I think the emergence of streaming _ the confluence of deciding to start a company, I guess I was psychic or something.
"I had no idea the whole world would open up for us. But it has changed my life. The ability to work with different kinds of storytellers, to be able to option books and partner with other people I respect and admire, who also have a perspective that is not my own but is just as valuable, has changed my entire experience," she says.
"And now I primarily generate everything that I do, but I have the gift of having companies like Hulu let me be this woman in this leadership position, which wasn't possible eight years ago. I have to say every woman that I've been working with in the past three years _ whether it's Nicole Kidman or it's Jennifer Aniston _ we all remark about how much things have changed and that we are put in a position of respect for our ideas. And that is a new world for us ... "
DAMIAN LEWIS UNCOVERS REAL-LIFE SPIES
After his role as the enigmatic Nicholas Brody in "Homeland," Damian Lewis is revisiting the surveillance world, but this time it's not fiction. Lewis is hosting a new show on the Smithsonian Channel about real undercover espionage in "Spy Wars with Damian Lewis," premiering Sunday.
The show will take viewers through the dark alleys of sleeper cells, demystify the Iran hostage crisis and plumb the corridors of covert intelligence.
The British Lewis first drew America's attention when he costarred as an American soldier in "Band of Brothers."
"After 'Band of Brothers' I think it was expected of me to be in L.A. and make movies," he tells me.
"I made one movie called 'Dreamcatcher' and it did not go well particularly. And I think I was a bit scared off of the experience. And I just wanted to make sure I was going to follow good writing _ whatever it was in _ whether it was film, TV, or theater and try and focus on that. So I've been doing that and hopefully proving to others, but most importantly proving to myself that I am an actor first and foremost and that I can be asked to turn my hand toward a variety of different things because of my craft."
ROBERT ENGLUND HOSTS 'TRUE TERROR'
Freddy Krueger is back, ready to scare the wits out of us again with spooky stories from the past. The Travel Channel has conjured a new show starring Robert Englund (who played the heinous Freddy) titled "True Terror with Robert Englund," beginning Wednesday.
The headlines were just as juicy in the olden days as they are now, so ripping stories from them should prove horrifying and tingle a few spines. "We're delighted at the Travel Channel to have the true icon of horror films, Robert Englund, take a 'stab' at leading our viewers through these hair-raising tales," said Matthew Butler, the network's general manager.
"In his signature spooky storytelling style, Robert resurrects the creepy and odd of America's past, bringing viewers real stories that reveal sometimes our fears aren't mere figments of our imagination after all."
Although we know him from "The Nightmare on Elm Street," Englund tells me he started years before that.
"I was 12, my parents had separated. They got back together but that summer, my mom's best friend had the most beautiful daughter, and she was in this children's theater in L.A.," he recalls.
"They had huge budgets, had the guy who flew Mary Martin, flying people. I was tagging along with her (the daughter) and wound up getting all the leading roles _ Pinocchio, Peter Pan. The first night I got a laugh, and when I repeated it the next night _ which is training in the theater _ that was a great esteem and confidence thing. I understood I was born with timing. When you can repeat it and get a laugh in the same way, that's a confidence-builder. And (it was) the first time adults took me aside and said, 'Hey, between you and me, you can do this if you want in real life. But you'd better go to college first.'"
