Kyra Sedgwick

Closer Encounter

After years of jumping from one part to another, Kyra Sedgwick is happy to have settled down in her title role in the hit crime-fighting series “The Closer”— for now, anyway.

by Michael Bandler

WHEN YOU’RE A sunny blonde with deep dimples and a wide smile, it’s natural that the people who call the shots will want to typecast you as the girl next door. Not so for Kyra Sedgwick, now in her fourth season on TNT’s “The Closer,” in which she plays the relentless deputy chief of an LAPD homicide unit. On the contrary, she’s spent more than 20 years building a career without allowing herself to be pigeonholed.

“When I was younger, I told my agent I couldn’t play ‘the girl,’” she says. “I didn’t think I could do it, honestly. I always felt I’d look like a big fake if I did something superficial.”

The New York City-born actress got a big break in 1989, when she played Donna, Tom Cruise’s girlfriend in the Vietnam-era biopic Born on the Fourth of July. Naïve at the outset, Donna was transformational, turning herself—and Cruise’s character—into antiwar activists. “She was very passionate about the darkness that surrounded her,” Sedgwick says.

A few years later, the actress was central to the ensemble cast of Singles. She played a young Seattle environmentalist who struggled with issues of trust and self-doubt.

THROUGHOUT HER career, Sedgwick has doggedly sought to show, as she puts it, characters’ “complexity and potential for darkness”—most recently in such movies as The Woodsman and Loverboy—even when, on the surface, the women she plays appear bright, genial and optimistic.

“As an actor, I’ve stretched myself, and that’s empowering,” she says. “When you push yourself to those places, you learn more about who you are. And I’m comfortable with the choices I’ve made. I feel like I can defend any character I’ve ever played.”

Sedgwick is equally steadfast in her private life. She and actor-director Kevin Bacon will celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary next month, with their son, Travis, 19, and daughter, Sosie, 16.

Family is an incredibly important part of Sedgwick’s life. Except for a few major-studio productions early in her career, she has avoided “going Hollywood,” opting instead for independent films with minimal location shooting. The couple has even had the opportunity to work together on various occasions, as actor-actor and actor-director.

They do have an unwritten rule, though, which they’ve only broken once: Don’t turn the kids into actors. Three years ago, Sedgwick starred as the possessive, perfectionist mother of a 6-year-old son in Loverboy, which Bacon directed. He cast their daughter, then 13, as a younger version of his wife in a flashback sequence. “Once Sosie was in it, we gave Travis a small part,” she says.

So, with such emphasis on family life, why did Sedgwick travel across the country from the East Coast (where she divides her time between an apartment in Manhattan and a farmhouse in Connecticut) to take on the roll of Brenda Leigh Johnson in “The Closer,” which, for the past four springs and early summers, has found her in Los Angeles? As Sedgwick says, the decision wasn’t easy.

“My manager kept pushing me,” she says. “I said, ‘Don’t even send it. I won’t go to LA to work.’ She told me it was just for 15 episodes, and that it was really good. Then she said, ‘It’s a little like “Prime Suspect” [a British police drama]. Well, she caught me with that line. It’s always been one of my favorites.”

Although Sedgwick was hesitant about taking a role with a cross-country commute, she received encouragement from Bacon: “He said, ‘Why can’t you? You can, and you should. Just do it.’”

IN PLAYING THE FEMALE lead in a primarily male cast, Sedgwick has the opportunity to stand out. The golden-tressed deputy chief is all smiles as she strides into the squad room, scattering her Southern “thank-yeeewww..rdquo; like magnolia petals. But as she deals with criminals in the interrogation room—her face tightening as she eyeballs a likely perpetrator across a bare table— look out. Her character trusts no one.

The part also brings out Sedgwick’s idiosyncratic side. Brenda noshes any chance she gets, can’t find her way around LA and leaves an array of objects in her wake. To varying degrees, those things can be said about Sedgwick, too.

“I get followed around the set by people picking up my phone or tape recorder or script that I’ve left somewhere. And for me, a day without chocolate is like a day without sunshine,” she says. “But in some ways we’re incredibly different. I am much more self-analytical. Brenda’s not one to look inward. She doesn’t have a lot of self-knowledge, nor is she interested in procuring more of it. She’s interested in being insightful and intuitive about the other guy.”

“The Closer” has also given Sedgwick another opportunity to work with her husband, whom she first met when they acted together on public television in 1988. He directed an early film of hers, Losing Chase, and the more recent Loverboy, and costarred with her in The Woodsman, a courageous portrait of a recently released criminal (Bacon) reemerging into society; Sedgwick plays the hardened forklift operator who helps his rehabilitation. Bacon has also directed two episodes of “The Closer,” and is on tap for one more this season.

Of working with her husband, Sedgwick says, “It’s a breeze, a breath of fresh air. He really understands actors and cameras and is very specific about it. He knows when he’s got it. When he first came onto [‘The Closer’] set, I wasn’t worried about him being able to deal with it, but I wanted everyone to think he was as great as I did. And of course they did.”

As enjoyable as such collaborations are, they try to keep them to a minimum. “They’re constantly sending scripts [for us] to work on together,” Sedgwick says, “but we don’t want to push that to the point that people will see us like Hepburn and Tracy in the old days.”

AS ENTHUSIASTIC AS Sedgwick is about the characters she’s embraced over the years, her role on “The Closer”—and the Golden Globe she earned for it last year—has given her heightened visibility as an actress. And after years of moving from part to part, she has found that playing the same character for an extended period of time is a joy.

“I want her to continue to be complicated, struggling with her issues, whether it be chocolate or commitment,” she says. “I want her to continue to be the complex, multifaceted woman she is, who never apologizes for her power.”

As comforting as a constant role can be, Sedgwick doesn’t rest on her laurels; rather, she continues to improve Brenda. “At this point, because I have such confidence in my knowledge of Brenda, I learn the lines and show up, and then the character takes over,” she says. “I don’t really know what’s going to happen when I get to the set, except that something new and surprising will come out. I just improvise. That’s what’s so constantly exciting here, consistently fulfilling for me as an actor, to let things happen that are not planned—to be surprised.”

No matter what’s in store for Brenda—and Sedgwick—it’s bound to be compelling.

Six Degrees of Sedgwick-Bacon

It’s been proved that any actor can be connected to Kevin Bacon in six steps or less. Having worked closely with her husband on exactly six projects, Sedgwick may just be the key.

LEMON SKY, 1988
Sedgwick: Carol
Bacon: Alan

MURDER IN THE FIRST, 1995
Sedgwick: Blanche
Bacon: Henri Young

LOSING CHASE, 1996
Sedgwick: Producer/Elizabeth Cole
Bacon: Director

CAVEDWELLER, 2004
Sedgwick: Delia Byrd
Bacon: Randall Pritchard

THE WOODSMAN, 2004
Sedgwick: Vicki
Bacon: Producer/Walter

LOVERBOY, 2005
Sedgwick: Producer/Emily
Bacon: Director/Marty

Family Tree

The Sedgwick lineage is scattered with notable people, including a judge, an author and several politicians. Kyra’s also not the only Sedgwick to grace the silver screen.

BROTHER:
ROBERT SEDGWICK
(1961 - ) Has appeared on both TV and film. His first role was on, “Another World,” just like his sister

COUSIN:
EDIE SEDGWICK
(1943 - 1971) Worked on several projects with Andy Warhol in the 1960s, including Poor Little Rich Girl and Outer and Inner Space

DISTANT COUSIN:
EDNA SEDGWICK
(1915 - 2002) Ballet dancer who appeared in You’re a Sweetheart (1937), Red Barry (1938) and Swing, Sister, Swing (1938)