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Frances McDormand's maternal instincts, on screen and off

McDormand currently stars opposite Michael Douglas in "Wonder Boys"

By Donna Freydkin
Reporting for CNN Interactive

April 3, 2000
Web posted at: 4:20 p.m. EST (2020 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- With her rumpled hair and comfortable clothes, Oscar winner Frances McDormand looks like a mom on her way to Ben & Jerry's for an ice cream cone, not an A-list actress promoting her new movie.

But that's because home is truly where the theater and film veteran's heart is these days. McDormand, wife and mother, has duties beyond the screen.

"I'm a homemaker," she says. "It's my hobby. And now that I'm a mother, it's not a hobby anymore. I really have to go buy groceries, because somebody else needs to eat, and he doesn't make any money. But that's what I do. I love to do that."

For now, McDormand has other work to do. She's sitting in a midtown Manhattan hotel room to talk about her film "Wonder Boys," the screen adaptation of Michael Chabon's acclaimed novel about a faded, failed novelist. In the film, Michael Douglas plays the disheveled, perennially stoned washout writer Grady Tripp; McDormand is Sara Gaskell, his eminently respectable, married -- and very pregnant -- girlfriend.

"It was an excellent job," says McDormand. "I like the idea of playing a 42-year-old woman -- actually, 41, I was 41 last year -- who was pregnant and has to face it. "

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Theatrical preview for "Wonder Boys" Windows Media 28K 80K

Home and hearth

In real life, McDormand has been married for more than a decade to director Joel Coen, one-half of the inventive Coen brothers filmmaking duo. The two have an adopted son, Pedro, and live on New York's Upper West Side. Her husband has directed McDormand in such out-of-leftfield hits as "Fargo," "Blood Simple" and "Raising Arizona."

McDormand's made a name for herself in a career that's spanned more than 15 years by playing memorably weird characters -- most notably that of a small-town, massively pregnant police chief in 1996's "Fargo," which won top honors with an Oscar and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Yet the role that really made her a household name in the truest sense, says McDormand, was that of Miss Clavel, the sweetly stern headmistress in 1998's "Madeline," the movie adaptation of Ludwig Bemelmans' classic children's tale of life in a 1950s Paris school. With that role, says McDormand, her son realized what his mother did for a living.

"It really helped, because we read the books and I knew he got it when one of his friends said, 'Your mom is Miss Clavel,'" laughs the actress.

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The daughter of a preacher, McDormand was raised in rural Illinois and Pennsylvania. She got into acting, she says, after falling in love with the written word.

"I can remember, in the summer between second and third grade, the local library had this 'If you read so many books a summer, you get your picture up on a bulletin board,'" she says. "And I was determined to get my picture up on the bulletin board, but it was more about reading the 20 books. I got hooked and I really loved biographies."

The reading bug matured until it emerged, brilliantly, as the acting bug. For McDormand, the stage gave her a chance to share with others her appreciation of words.

McDormand has made a career out of playing quirky characters including her award-winning characterization of a pregnant police chief in 1996's "Fargo"

"Here was a way to actually do it with other people, instead all by yourself with a book," recalls McDormand. "Here you can get together, read a play, memorize it and put it on stage."

Never one to do something halfway, McDormand studied drama at Yale, also the alma mater of Jodie Foster, Meryl Streep and Angela Bassett.

McDormand insists membership in the so-called Hollywood A-list isn't her raison d'tre, though it is a departure from her theatrical origins and her history of acting in sparsely attended, low-budget films. The best thing about winning a Oscar? "It makes it easier for directors to hire you."

Yet having that statuette, she says, does have drawbacks. Reporters continually ask that infernal question: Where does she keep it? "On the bookshelf."

"I don't mean to blow it off -- it's certainly a great acknowledgment -- but the most rewarding one for me was the SAG awards, because that's from my peers," she says.

Mommy dearest

In an age when cagey Hollywood celebrities zealously guard their privacy, reluctantly revealing even the most mundane details about their personal lives, McDormand is something of an anomaly. It seems that the actress would almost rather chat about her cooking -- her specialty this year is penne risotto -- and her young child than her career.

Her maternal instincts apply to the big screen, too. She's playing a mom in her next film, Cameron Crowe's (who directed and wrote "Jerry Maguire") untitled project for DreamWorks SKG. The film, about a high-school boy given the chance to write a story about an up-and-coming rock band, is slated to open this month.

"I played his mother, so that was kind of fascinating," says McDormand. "I met her, she had a small part in the movie, and he adores her, so I was really lucky."

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