An Actor's Actress

Marian Seldes sweeps into the lobby of Houghton-Mifflin. We greet each other; I introduce the Crimson photographer at my side. She looks at him questioningly. "He photographs," I explain. "Kindly?" she asks.

A camera might not be kind to her. Her strong jaw, aquiline nose, and high cheekbones are riveting, rather than cover-girl cute. Much of her appeal stems from her continuous movements: the shrug of a shoulder, the toss of a stray curl, the arch of an eyebrow. Her hands are especially graceful, whether swimming gently in the air to punctuate her speech, or flinging back a scarf in an Isadora Duncan-like gesture. The interviewer drinks in the entire picture--the jawline, the blacks and purple clothing, the dark eyes set in white skin--and a one-word impression forms in her mind: dramatic.

An appropriate word. Long before she saw her first play, Marian Seldes knew she would become an actress. Recently, she became an author as well. The Bright Lights: A Theatrical Life is not the autobiography of a famous person, because "I'm not famous." Nor is it a book of Theatrical Celebrities gossip, though memories of Tallulah Bankhead and Laurence Olivier fill the pages. Instead, The Bright Lights interweaves anecdotes with analysis to describe "a lifetime of work in the theatre." The work ranges from the triumph of Equus, which offered the change to act with three stars--Anthony Hopkins, Anthony Perkins, and Richard Burton--and the tragedy of The Merchant, which died with its first star--Zero Mostel.

The book does not trace her career's development chronologically, but instead juxtaposes incidents by theme rather than by time sequence. While the early chapters describe childhood and adolescence in a fairly straightforward manner--"because my life followed a pattern then"--the later ones, describing her development as an actress, mix past and present, like a mind that jumps spontaneously from one thought to another. "Even if I were to sit down here and describe my career to you," she says, "I wouldn't be precise and orderly; I would go from event to event." Indeed, she attributes her love of the theatre to its quality of "free association."

Nevertheless, some biographical data emerges. Father: writer and critic Gilbert Seldes '19. Knew she would be an actress from the age of six, staring at nightgowned reflection in mirror. Declined admission into Radcliffe College to study acting at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse in late '40s. First role: an off-stage scream in a summer production at the then-legit Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, Mass. Began teaching drama at the Juilliard School, 1968. Has performed in film, on television, on radio (CBS Mystery Theatre), but mostly on Broadway. Currently stars in Ira Levin's Deathtrap. Has no idea what her next role will be, reinforcing comment in book that she has never consciously planned her career.

She did plan the book, though. For 15 years, she kept a notebook on every production, doubting her words would ever be published. The first draft of The Bright Lights emerged over a four-month period of continuous work. Seldes bubbles with enthusiasm for her editor, Jonathan Galassi--"his very youth was an asset"--and for the contributions of an editor in general. In contrast to the relationship between an actor and a director, an editor is "like another self, another set of eyes"; "no interference"impedes his rapport with the writer. An actor and his director, on the other hand, can never work in isolation; the playwright's words always interject the presence of a third person, as do the other performers. The theater remains first and foremost a group effort; otherwise, "the play cannot live."

Seldes wanted to obtain an effect of different "tempos" in her writing, to avoid the monotonous quality she feels many memoirs possess. The tone of The Bright Lights ranges from philosophical to comical to lyrical. In this sense, the book mirrors its author: as The Bright Lights shifts narrative moods in a matter of paragraphs, so Seldes shifts personal moods in a matter of minutes.

"I know some wonderful part will come," she announces with all the awed conviction of a child who knows that Santa will come for Christmas. Her anticipation is boundless when she begins to read a new script--"even the mimeographed sheets smell good." The dark eyes dance; one suddenly sees the little six-year-old who danced in her nightgown before that mirror.

Then, questioned about John Dexter, the unkind director of Equus, the face contracts in remembered pain and somber reflection. "He really frightened me. For the first time in my life at a rehearsal I wondered 'Do I belong here?" A beat, and the muscles set in determined professionalism. "But that's not important. What's important is what happens on stage." She admires the director's work, and cannot ignore his contribution to the play or to her performance. With complete sincerity, she says "I love him."

Love occurs frequently in The Bright Lights. She compares acting to love-making; "to act without love is cruel" is a credo she tries to teach her drama students at Julliard. When Seldes discusses the students, she transforms herself once again; face and voice now radiate maternal warmth. She understands their obsessions, their drives; she sympathizes with the "attempt to create a theater life before the theater accepts you." Such empathy comes naturally to her: "it's not possible to teach without relating to the students as human beings." From excitable little girl to understanding mother-figure, her metamorphosis has come full circle.

Yet she remains a contradictory figure in many ways. One minute she gleefully strokes her copy of The Bright Lights, reveling in the achievement it represents; the next, she is tough and self-deprecating: "Everyone has a book to write." Her attitude toward her craft and her career mark her as a seasoned, matured performer, yet the enthusiasm, the crazy optimism of the naive neophyte surface constantly. By turns exuberant and restrained, she is sentimental and selfless at the same time. And a new one-word impression forms in the interviewer's mind: enigmatic.

The impression grows stronger when the discussion turns to new literary projects. She thinks The Bright Lights has the ingredients of fiction and actually is at work on a novel. She refuses to elaborate, however. She chastises me for my curiosity, teases me about the book's subject, but spills no secrets. I threaten to write that "Marian Seldes betrays a psychotic reticence about future work." She begs me to.