Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
NEW YORK -- Julianna Margulies spends her nights at perhaps the most warped dinner party in town. And in her spare time, she peddles real estate to mobsters.
Well, that's her life on stage and small screen, at least, thanks to her starring role on Broadway in Festen and her three-episode run on HBO's The Sopranos, airing Sunday, May 7 and June 4 (9 p.m. ET/PT).
"I might be tired, but I'm in heaven. And I'm home!" a smiling Margulies, 39, says over a double espresso at the Mercer Kitchen.
In the sinister play Festen, which opened April 9 on Broadway, Margulies is Helene, the least-troubled member of a family twisted enough to make David Lynch blush.
They gather for a birthday party, only to be confronted with a nasty secret. Helene, Margulies says, "is a live wire, a woman who's trying not to open Pandora's box. Every family has its own dynamic. I'm the youngest of three sisters, and it's always a dynamic. I'm always the baby, no matter what."
For Margulies, who is perhaps best known for her six-year Emmy-winning run (starting in 1994) as efficient Nurse Hathaway on NBC's ER, playing Helene "is a little bit life-altering."
The subject matter is so intense that it's driving the cheery, chatty Margulies to seek a little relaxation.
After the show, she says, "I'm always out with the cast. There's a bar I won't name, because it's the best-kept secret on Broadway, that we all go to afterward because you have to have a drink after this show."
She has no shortage of drinking buddies. "I have friends in every single play across the street, between Ralph Fiennes, David Schwimmer, and Julia (Roberts) and Paul Rudd. The New York theater community is a dream come true."
Festen has received mixed reviews, but Margulies says she hasn't read any of them because "if you believe the good, you have to believe the bad," she says. "What I don't know won't hurt me, and then I can continue doing the work for the 1,100 people who pay to see me every night."
During her days, Margulies, who won't discuss her personal life, goes running and has lunch with friends. She walks 50 blocks to the theater six days a week, listening to The Ricky Gervais Show on her iPod, because it's her way of "emptying out" her head before going on stage. And to relax, the neat-freak Swiffers her downtown apartment, which defies Manhattan's grime by having white carpets.
She's still tight with her former ER paramour George Clooney and called him the day he was nominated for this year's Academy Awards. "I learned how to be on a set through George. He taught me everything I know about work ethic," she says. "He's a movie star for a reason, and not just because he's talented -- it's because of the way he treats people. That's who he is. George truly is one of a kind, and old school."
Margulies put that work ethic to good use during long days on The Sopranos set, playing a real estate agent.
"I work for big corporations, and I'm trying to buy out property and start to develop New Jersey -- and that's all I can tell you," she says. "I'm sorry."
And she's in the final episode of the series. How much cash has been dangled to entice her to reveal the ending?
"Let's just say that if I had talked, I wouldn't have had to rent my house in L.A. out for the summer," she laughs.
To see more of USAToday.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.usatoday.com
© Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
