Ilana Levine starred on Broadway in Wrong Mountain; You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown; The Last Night of Ballyhoo; and Jake’s Women. Films include Anything but Love, Kissing Jessica Stein, Storyteller, Just Looking, Roommates, Me and Veronica, Looking for an Echo, and Drop Back Ten. Ilana made her television debut in Robert Altman’s HBO award-winning series Tanner ’88 and in 2004 filmed the miniseries for the Sundance Channel of Tanner on Tanner, the companion piece to the original series, co-starring with Cynthia Nixon.
Other television credits include Law & Order, The Buried Secrets of M. Night Shymalan, Seinfeld (the infamous episode, “The Contest”), Partners, Hope and Gloria, NYPD Blue, Lois and Clark, Hudson Street, The Job, 100 Centre Street, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and numerous pilots. She can be heard on the original Broadway recording of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.
Ilana produced the original productions of Stephen Belber’s Tape in New York, LA, and London. More information is available at https://imdb.com/name/nm0505818.
I think we are driven to be actors because we’re storytellers. We had actors come in at the start of class at Naked Angels to talk about their experiences because that humanizes the experience for us. This was a three-hour scene study class, but in the first half-hour, I had someone from the business come in and talk about how they got started as an actor. Everyone was nervous, no matter who they were. They’d want to know, “Who cares?” and, “What do I have to say that would be interesting?” And, similarly, I was thinking things like that in the car on the way over here for this interview. But ultimately, each interview was brilliant. There was a humility about it all.
When did you know you wanted to become an actor?
I would say that I knew I was interested in it when I took my first acting class. And I went to my first acting class because I had a crush on a guy. I had gotten a haircut by this guy who was completely Warren Beatty in Shampoo. He was this unbelievably handsome, sexy haircutter. He had a play on his station—one of those Samuel French plays. I don’t think I’d ever seen one. We had read plays in high school, but they weren’t in the Samuel French binding that we’ve come to recognize as a play. I think I picked it up and started asking him about it while getting my hair cut, trying to take as long as possible to stay in that chair. We started reading it together. And he said, “You’re good! You’re a natural! Your hair may not be, but your talent is!”
He invited me to come to the Terry Schreiber Studios in New York City to their one-night-a-month evening where you can audit a class. There was a teacher in there, a woman named Gloria Maddox, who has since passed away, and I immediately thought what was going on was fascinating. I thought the work was interesting. I thought the people were interesting. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. They were doing sound and movement exercises and sense memory stuff. She was a really inspirational person. That was my first mentor in the business. She had a light about her. She was also an actress and became a teacher at Terry Schreiber’s studio. It was a place where I walked in the room—and I think people who come to religion as adults have the same feeling—it was like, “Oh my!”
I was just starting Fordham University at the time. My interest had originally been in advertising. I changed my major that summer. Some of the inspiring people who were there in classes ahead of me were John Benjamin Hickey, Patricia Clarkson, Julie White, and John Melfi (now a fancy TV producer). That was my first community. So, it was less of a “moment” in which I knew I wanted to be a professional, but I knew it was something I wanted to continue studying. And it was the first sort of “lesson” that I stayed with. I had done piano, ballet, a million things as a kid and never sort of stuck with it, but the minute I got into that room and got up on that stage, that was the beginning. I got a BFA in Theatre.
Was your family supportive?
Very much so! They were. I think that was a very lucky thing. I had an older sister who was a dancer and who I think was a trailblazer in my family that way. She opened doors for my parents and for me in terms of going a less-traditional route in life. Having her was a really important thing because she’s the one who said, “Follow your dream.” Having a sibling that was older and artistic was a really important thing.
What was your first paid gig?
What was kind of amazing was that, in the middle of all this, I got a job. It was also sort of why I committed to it as a career because I had something happen very quickly. I got Tanner ’88, the Robert Altman series, which has kind of come full-circle right now because we just shot Tanner on Tanner. So, every fifteen years I work!
While I was in this acting class, some of us got together and put on a play. We did the Mamet play Edmond and for some reason, an agent named Steven Hirsh came to see that show. And it turns out that Steven Hirsh—who is now at Gersh—had been my boyfriend in camp, when I was eight years old. He became my agent.
I’m a freshman and I’ve got an agent. Now, at the time, the way things were cast in Robert Altman’s world was his producer was the casting director and she would call a couple of agents that she knew—that she’d worked with before—and an actor who was with my new agent had just done The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial with Robert Altman. So she called my agent and said, “Cynthia Nixon may not be able to play the candidate’s daughter. We need some young, eighteen, nineteen-year-old girls in case she can’t do it. Do you have anyone?” And they did. They had me. So I was at the Terry Schreiber Studios and I called my service—of course, this is in 1988 when you had a service—and there was a message: “You gotta go right now to meet Robert Altman.” And I called back and said, “I can’t. I’m doing a scene today in class. I can’t go.” I had no idea who Robert Altman was. I was going to do The House of Blue Leaves in class and we had worked to get three people together and we brought all the props. I called my agent and I said, “I can’t do it today.” I happened to see Terry Schreiber and I mentioned to him that I was supposed to go to this audition and he said, “Oh, no. You’re going to go.” I said, “Okay, but I’ll be back in time for the scene.”
So, I went uptown, I met Robert Altman’s producer, she thought I was really charming and funny, and she said, “Why don’t you come back this evening and meet Bob?” And I didn’t know that “Bob” was the same person as Robert Altman but I said, “Okay.” I rushed from the Upper East Side back to the Lower East Side, did my scene—it went very well—I went back uptown going, “I rocked my scene!” It was so casual. I basically sat in the waiting room and then met Bob and talked about art for an hour. We talked about Modigliani and these painters that I really liked and that he really liked and we talked about acting and food and I had no idea what the project was.
It turns out that Cynthia could do the part, but Bob was so enchanted—as I was with him—that he had Garry Trudeau write in a role for me; a kind of a kooky campaign aide that I had no idea whether would be in one episode or what. It turns out that I went from New Hampshire, where we shot the first episode, to a nine-month gig, all twelve episodes for HBO. It was HBO’s first series. It was very exciting and I made a lot of money, having never had a job before. I think I made like five thousand dollars an episode and it was amazing. So, here I was thinking, “Wow, this is easy.” I went from that to doing Under-5s on All My Children. I thought, “This is so interesting. Life is very complicated in this area.”
Right after Tanner ’88, I auditioned for the nonunion summer company at the Berkshire Theatre Festival and worked with three amazing directors. One of them was Michael Greif, now of Rent fame. That fall, Michael was going to be doing a play called Machinal with Naked Angels and he cast me. As an actor, you do this non-Eq thing and you just never know where it will lead. Through Machinal I got connected with these people at Naked Angels and I now realize that was the beginning of my New York life and my artistic life. The people I met through that production are still my closest friends.
And if that was the beginning of my life, Tanner ’88 was the beginning of my professional career. Michael Murphy who worked on Tanner ’88 with me said, “It’s never gonna be like this again.” It’s true. When your first job is with Robert Altman, who is unlike any other director, you’re spoiled. The man loves actors and you think then that everyone who is a director will love actors. His interest is in what you bring to it, much more than the script, much more than anything else. He creates an amazing world. Immediately you’re having dinner at his house. It’s all about a party. By the time you start work, you are so relaxed and so comfortable in the presence of each other, and that’s what being in a theatre company is like. So, it flowed from Altman’s world to the Naked Angels. And college is like that too. It made me realize that working with people that I know is an amazing thing. And now that I don’t have that, it’s harder. It’s much harder. Usually you don’t have that, but it has remained a constant for me, to always have that to come back to. Without that, I don’t know what would’ve happened. Had I not always had a theatre that I could do work with when I wasn’t being hired to do work, I would’ve really atrophied.
How has your affiliation with a theatre company allowed you to expand as an actor?
After Machinal, I came out to LA to do a TV show called Second Chances with Connie Sellecca. Soon after I came out, I had a recurring role and I thought, “This is so great.” Once again, “I’m so lucky.” And then the show got cancelled after I did three. It was gone. I thought, “Wow, that was really painful. I just spent a lot of money thinking that I was going to be on the show for a while. Luckily, the tags are still on the stuff!” I did a bunch of pilots and none of them got picked up. That was also a very strange phenomenon; to do all of this work that no one saw. I felt like I was working, and delighted to be making money at it, but it was all sort of going into a vacuum. Suddenly ten months have gone by and you’ve been on hold for six of them. I did five pilots in a row and I had tested for seven pilots before I got one. Talk about feeling like, “I don’t get it!”
Every time I tested, I was so nervous. I really thought, “The only way I’m going to get one of these is if I just calm down. I have to figure out a way to fool myself into thinking that it’s just not a big deal.” But every time I saw the contract, it would freak me out! And the truth is, when I did get my first pilot, I was just as nervous as I had been every other time. There was no trick, but I really thought there was something I could master. And that’s when I realized, “This has absolutely nothing to do with me. It’s not because I’m nervous that I’m not getting jobs. It’s not because I’m nervous that I am getting jobs.” There was something so liberating about the fact that I was just as much of a freak going into the one that I got as I had been every other time I thought I’d derailed myself. That was really important.
Either I’m right for the part or I’m not. For me, either what I do is the right fit or it’s not. If it is the right fit, nothing I can do can get in the way of that. If it isn’t the right fit and I get the part, I have fooled them and then I have gotten fired. Maybe I do something really quirky, funny in the room to kind of deflect the fact that I’m not really the right one for it, but ultimately there’s something they need to hang onto that the show needs in that character. Ultimately, if I’m not that person, it doesn’t work. Twice now, I remember I was cast in something and they were like, “You’re like the Betty White of the show.” There is nothing Betty White about me. I can give you a little something funny and make you think the material is working even if it’s not, but ultimately, it’s not working.
The “I was not Betty White” thing happened when the one pilot I did finally got picked up. Basically, I couldn’t make the material fit at all. It was a square peg and a round hole, trying to make it fit. I sort of rewrote it a little bit and I went into the audition, did all of these funny lines I had written. And they decided to test me. We got to the test and the casting director handed out some revisions for the character. The revisions were the lines I had done at the audition! I was like, “Wait a minute! That’s my edge! Now all three of us are going to go in doing my thing?!?” And I looked at the casting director and asked, “I’m not crazy, right?” He kind of looked at me and said, “Don’t worry about it. No one else is going to be doing your material.” I got the job since no one else had a handle on it like I did and we got to the read-thru and I made a joke: “Am I going to get writing credit?” And the exec went, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Well, I’m very flattered that you put what I wrote into it.” He was like, “You didn’t write that.” I had actually just been teasing—it was only about three sentences—but that was the beginning of a rough, rough scenario. We got through the pilot but ultimately my character didn’t make it into the series. It was a perfect example of something not working and a committee trying to decide what it should be instead of just letting me do what I do, which is what they had been attracted to in the first place. The whole thing was hard and I was humiliated that I had been let go, but I did get some solace when I called an executive at NBC to try to get my job back. He said to me, “Ilana, why would you want to be on that show anyway? It’s awful.”
So, I went back to New York after four years and there was a play being cast on Broadway—replacements—for The Last Night of Ballyhoo. There was a part in it that I was really right for. I asked my agent to get me in on this thing. The role is a Southern, Jewish girl called Lala Levy who is very awkward and has a hard time in the world and has a real artistic light about her. She’s just misunderstood and she’s just living in the wrong time. I saw the play and I really responded to the character in a way that I thought, “I cannot believe I can’t get an audition. This is crazy!” And my agents were like, “We’re sorry. We can’t get you in. Jay Binder won’t see you.” So, I finally decided that I was going to call Jay Binder myself.
Many years ago, Jay cast me as an understudy in a Neil Simon play called Jake’s Women. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be an understudy and Jay called me at home and convinced me I should take the job. He promised me I’d get to go on because the woman I’d be understudying had a deal to do a TV show and he knew she would be leaving. It wasn’t a quote-unquote regular understudy gig. Ultimately, I was mostly glad that I took the part. So, I left him a message in his office saying, “Years ago you sort of called me at home and made it personal and I’m going to do the same now. Will you please see me?”
He actually didn’t see me. He had his associate preread me. I went in at nine in the morning and read for his associate but got called back and that afternoon I went in and had the job. I had played a very different part in Jake’s Women and I think, in his mind, I was not Lala Levy. Thank God I was right! The question is, “How many times can you cash in chips?” I feel like you’ve got to choose when you do it. I’ve definitely gotten in trouble from it, but I figure, “What do I have to lose? I’m not working anyway. What’s going to happen? He’s still not going to see me? Okay, he’s really not going to see me now!” I think what’s complicated when you do this career for a long time is that you become friends with the casting people and it’s really awkward. When is it okay? When is it not okay? Why do people you know really well suddenly get weird on you? “You’re the one who said if I ever needed anything, call. Did you not mean it? Then why’d you say it?” It’s all messy. You just have to trust your instincts and sometimes you’re right, sometimes you’re not right.
But that started me on a four-year tremendously exciting run on Broadway. So, thank God I made that call. It went from there to You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. And I don’t sing, so that was a really big thing! Michael Mayer, the director, had seen me in Machinal. There was some quality about the character I did many years before that Michael thought was right. It’s fascinating how you just have to trust that you keep doing what you do because you don’t know where it’s going to come back. The play for no money turns into a starring role in a Broadway musical. That’s what’s exciting about what we do.
How can an actor best handle bitterness?
I am so glad I was born with a sense of humor. You either are or you’re not and I feel so grateful. It may make you lazy in certain areas, and maybe I’m less disciplined because I know my humor allows me to get away with certain things. But it really makes it easier. I know a lot of bitter people. The thing is: authenticity. At the end of the day, whatever you do, whatever your thing is, you just have to be authentically that. If you’re truly bitter—I mean truly bitter—really own it. I think when I have embraced my envy or bitterness or jealousy and really let it just eat me up alive, I can get through it. It’s when I pretend it’s not happening that I’m a little out of control. If I really go there, and really feel the loss, I’m okay.
You have to trust that your path is your path. After Tanner ’88, Bob asked me if I wanted to do this film called The Player. I had agreed to do a play at New York Stage and Film. My boyfriend ran the place at the time and he was directing a play that he had written for me. It was a really big deal in our relationship. I turned down The Player, which became Bob’s biggest hit at that time and put him back on the A-list of directors. That was one of the times that I made a choice to honor a commitment. I understand why I did it, but everyone from that movie you can kind of track from that. Who knows what would’ve happened? You don’t know. You just don’t know. And that’s what’s really hard.
Sometimes you’re right, but again, you have to do what’s right for you at the moment. I look at that time and I say, “I’m a relationship person. I loved this guy. He wrote me this play. It was very romantic.” It’s not bad to be loyal. It just doesn’t always get you stardom. It doesn’t not get you stardom, but it’s just a different way of operating. It is what it is. That is definitely a moment in my life that I replayed many times.
Do you ever feel like giving up?
I feel like, in some ways, I have expanded what I do into different directions, such as producing. I produced a play in New York that we ended up doing in LA and London. It’s much easier for me to do these things that aren’t about me. I couldn’t ask for money if I were in the play. That’s just me. I don’t have that in me in some way. You make calls that you would never make for yourself. Being a woman is a very tricky thing. I feel like there are a lot of ways in which I have tried to not always be a grown up in my role as a female actress. I’ve tried to remain really young. There’s a lot of ways in which the male/female dynamic comes up in casting situations, in social situations, in all of it—it’s business. I never feel, in my role as a producer, that I have to think about who I want to be. Which Ilana do I want to be in this situation? Am I young Ilana? Old Ilana? Flirty Ilana? I’m just so completely myself and able to be a smart, whole, opinionated person. As an actress, sometimes you have to be a bitch or a diva or difficult. I’m not saying something new; it’s just amazing how true it is!
A good producer ultimately gives people environment and opportunity to do what they do and to do it well. It is such a gift to get to do that: to give people opportunities to just be genius at what they do. Having had so many experiences from almost every audition I go to, almost every job I’ve had, where the environment is so set up for failure, and not to be creative and not to feel safe to do what you do—it’s a great thing to be able to produce differently. It’s a great thing when actors direct because of that. It’s a great thing when actors write. It’s a great thing when actors do anything other than act, because they bring so much generosity to it. It is so hard to do what we do and we don’t want to recreate that nightmare for anybody.
What impact has acting had on your personal life?
I married an actor and it’s been interesting, seeing the process. It’s not that different for any of us. And falling in love with an actor is complicated. But you just fall in love with who you fall in love with and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. So, I married an actor and we have a daughter, Georgia. I’ve had a lot of great jobs since Georgia was born. I did The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan, which was really interesting. This Tanner on Tanner with Bob came back again. I would say that the lucky thing is that both of these jobs were predominantly improv because learning lines for me right now is really hard. I’m so distracted. It takes really good writing to interest me more than playing with my daughter. It’s really hard for me to focus on material that’s not inspiring. I’m really aware now of having to choose how I spend my time and what feels worth it.
This interview was conducted on October 8, 2004, and it originally appeared in Acting Qs: Conversations with Working Actors by Bonnie Gillespie and Blake Robbins, available at Amazon.