Actress's journey to the Tonys began in Norfolk

MANY YEARS AGO, people in downtown Norfolk used to see her riding her bicycle to rehearsals at the Wells Theatre.

As this week began, Marcia Gay Harden could be seen stepping onto the stage of New York's Radio City Music Hall to accept Broadway's coveted Tony Award as best actress for her role in the savage comedy "God of Carnage." This, added to her best supporting actress Oscar for "Pollock" (2000), makes her indisputably the most honored alumnus of the Virginia Stage Company.

Harden was a 30-year-old fledgling actress when she came to Norfolk in 1989 to appear in the play "Les Liaisons Dangereuses."

"I played the naive virgin," she emphasizes today, "not the villainous, other role - which, actually, I wanted but didn't get." Casting directors tend to view her as dark - "that is before they get to know me. The label they usually put on me is 'tough, yet vulnerable.' "

She's played everything, though, since her beginnings in Norfolk. She's done comedy ("Flubber," 1997) with Robin Williams. She's starred opposite Julia Roberts in "Mona Lisa Smile" (2003). She's done the Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Angels in America" on Broadway (an earlier Tony nomination). She's even played screen legend Ava Gardner (in the four-hour TV miniseries "Sinatra").

"I'm really a stage person," she said the last time we talked with her. "In spite of the experience I now have, I'm still uncomfortable around that little box - the camera. I look at it as if it were a proscenium arch and there are people out there."

When she got the job in Norfolk, it was considered a break for the young Marcia Gay. In any case, it was work. She had come to New York from Texas after BFA and master's degrees. In her Tony acceptance speech, she thanked her mother for helping her lug her suitcase up the five flights of stairs to her first New York apartment. A self-proclaimed military brat she grew up all around the world, as her father, who was a Navy captain, was transferred from Tokyo to Paris and Greece. "I'd change my identity from country to country. No one knew me when we moved."

It was during the local run of "Dangerous Liaisons" (playing the role that Michelle Pfeiffer played in the movie version) that she got a call from the Coen brothers to come to New York to audition for a part in their movie "Miller's Crossing." Her understudy went on in Norfolk while she took the night off.

She assumed the mischievous director-writer brother team would go for a big name for the role of Verna, a tough-skinned, sexy gun moll in "Miller's Crossing," which was to star Albert Finney and Gabriel Byrne. They went, instead, for her. The movie opened the New York Film Festival in 1990 and went on to become something of a cult classic in its genre. "I owe a lot to the Coens. They are unique, and I like unique people," she said.

She surprised the forecasters by returning to the stage in New York, taking almost two years to appear in "Angels in America." Backstage at the theater during its run, she mischievously gave me a big hug and kiss as she told her bystanding boyfriend that "he's my critic in Norfolk. I have a lover critic in every city. That's how I get such good reviews." Not really, but it is an interesting concept.

She co-starred with Brad Pitt in "Meet Joe Black" (1998).

"Well, I didn't have any love scenes with him, but I was there," she said. In "Used People" (1992), she co-starred with Shirley MacLaine, Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates. "I was easy to find because I was the one without an Oscar," she said. Her part, though, was the best in the movie, as a schizophrenic woman who alternately thought she was Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Jackie Onassis or Anne Bancroft.

Her casting as Ava Gardner in the TV drama "Sinatra" (1992) came as a surprise to her. Gardner, who attended high school in Newport News before her discovery as an MGM star, was, according to Harden "the most beautiful woman in the history of movies. And I'm going to play her? I looked at all her films. 'On the Beach' was my favorite. My costumes were fabulous. For me, it was a matter of finding Ava's essence - that raw, gutsy quality she had. She was the love of Sinatra's life, but they went over the top with each other."

"Ava was very European in a way," Harden said. "She wanted out of America and ran off to live in Spain. She was a liberated woman long before women were liberated. Playing Ava was a matter of finding myself and my sexuality - and then slowing it all down. After all, she was a Southern girl."

She played Lee Krasner, the wife of artist Jackson Pollock and shocked even herself by winning the Oscar. "The Las Vegas bookies gave me a 12-to-1 chance to win," she recalled. "I wish I had bet some money on myself." On Oscar night, she wore a strapless red gown that made all the morning newspapers. "I modeled it after Ava," she said. "It was a night for old Hollywood and I thought, 'Ava would wear something like this.' "

We met her most recently in the hot tub at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, where, in the bubbling water, she gave us a hint as to how competitive she really is. She had just come from the Broadcast Critics Association Award ceremony, in which she was nominated for her performance in Clint Eastwood's "Mystic River" (2003) but lost to Renee Zellweger in "Cold Mountain." (She also was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for that role, but lost to Zellweger there, too.)

"I don't get it. Now, Mal, you are a critic. You tell me, what was so great about that performance in 'Cold Mountain?' I mean, I'm sure Renee is a nice girl, but I thought her bit was from another movie - a separate movie."

"It was like 'Annie Get Your Gun' but without the music," I agreed, "but, Marcia, you've won the Oscar before. It's hard to win the second one."

"It shouldn't matter," she said. "It's better to win."

Her category at the Tonys, presented last Sunday, was the toughest and most discussed of the night. Her competitors included Jane Fonda, making her first Broadway appearance in more than 40 years, as well as the two British stars of "Mary Stuart." She walked away with the trophy.

It was a walk that went through Norfolk. "Oh, I never forget beginnings," she said. "I never forget a role. Once I've played a part, she's a part of me forever. Yes, there's a little of Ava here. She's with me."

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com