PRESS ARCHIVE
George- May 1999
CALISTA BITES BACK
Ally McBeal's Calista Flockhart has been called a poster girl for anorexia and the fall of feminism. She’s suffered through thick and thin but can still make light of it all. By Lynn Snowden, Photographs by Stephane Sednaou.

Calista Flockhart in someone you either love or hate, but probably for the wrong reasons. Since becoming the vehicle for the pop culture phenomenon known as Ally McBeal, the wafer-thin 34-year-old actress has been blamed for turning back the intellectual tide of feminism toward flightiness and self-obsession, and for encouraging women to diet to a dangerous degree and to wear microminis to work. Flockhart's face graced the cover of Time magazine last summer with the headline IS FEMINISM DEAD? even though she neither created the character nor wrote a single script nor designed the costumes. Not since Dan Quayle attacked Murphy Brown for setting a poor moral example by choosing single motherhood has a female character on a television show become such a political and cultural lightning rod.

Now in it's second season on Fox, Ally McBeal attracts some 15 million Gen-Xers, who gather each week around the nation's watercoolers to debate the torrent of social issues that the show confronts – sexual harassment, interracial dating, and the Biscuit's obsession with fresh toilet bowls in the unisex bathroom. Originally conceived as part of a She-TV lineup opposite Monday Night Football, the series, created by legal eaglet David Kelley (whose credits include The Practice), revolves around a Harvard-educated, Kiehl's-loving, sexually aggressive lawyer clad in Tahari suits whose deepest desire is to get married, her biological clock interrupting any serious thoughts of career goals. The show offers its rabid fans (40 percent of whom are male) the sort of "safe" feminism that doesn't threaten the male power structure and a lead character who manages to make even the least competent woman feel on the ball and empowered.

But the raging debate as to whether McBeal is a worthy role model for modern-day women (spunky Mary Richards never had it so bad) has focused more often than not on Flockhart herself. Like the fantasy sequence in which McBeal is riddled with arrows, the too famous and too thin Flockhart has become the St. Sebastian of celebrity and easy fodder for the tabloid-driven media that feast on her frail appearance.

A classically trained actress, the wide-eyed, shy Flockhart grew up ill-equipped for life on the center stage of a pop culture maelstrom. After a childhood spent shifting around the suburbs of the Midwest (her dad was an executive for Kraft Foods), Flockhart graduated from Rutgers University and moved to New York City, where she acted in soaps and on Broadway in Chekhov's Three Sisters before Kelley, after auditioning hundreds of actresses, cast her as McBeal. Fame quickly proceeded to crash in on her like an unwelcome party guest.

Flockhart, who stars in the upcoming film adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, took a rare day off from the McBeal set to meet in the lush seclusion of the dining room of Los Angeles's Hotel Bel-Air to talk about life under the microscope. Dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved gray sweater, she cheerfully put away a large chicken sandwich and a couple of (nonfat) cappuccinos. She unflinchingly clears the air about the anorexia rumors, her role as a feminist icon, and the perils of being in the public eye. But setting the boundaries for her constant companion, her terrier Webster, was not so easy: A waiter stopped by to inquire about Webster, even though the mutt was conspicuously absent. One thing’s for sure: Tabloid rumors concerning Webster's anorexia are, Flockhart swears, completely false.


Lynn Snowden: I recently read a story about the new man in your life.

Calista Flockhart: Let's talk about that! Nothing [about the media] is open for discussion anymore. The two of us when to a coffee shop, and afterward we were walking up and down the streets of Beverly Hills. Apparently, we were being followed, and pictures were being taken of us. "Calista’s secret lover!" [Laughs] he was a reporter from In Style who was interviewing me. He was one of their own.

So now I’ll be named as your new lover?

Yes, I'll read that we're dating. I'm old, and jaded, and I'm not shocked by anything the media say anymore. A lot of people have said to me lately, "You poor baby, you've been so abused by the media. The media just suck." I don't think so. Some journalists are indeed irresponsible, and the tabloids are the tabloids – that's what they’re there for. It really comes down to some journalists. And most people would say they're just doing their job. I don't have a problem with that: I'm on a television show, and therefore I'm going to be written about. I can accept that. There's nothing I can do about it.

Which is why you have to accept it.

Yes! Exactly! I don’t think you're all evil, but the words sources say disturb me. I think that's unfair – these unnamed sources – and nobody ever says that what the unnamed source said wasn't true.

It was strange that your picture was on the cover of Time as an example of the new direction of feminism.

It's astonishing the image that people create. That should have been the face of David Kelley. It has nothing to do with me. But I don't particularly feel like a victim. The reason you act is to reach people. So all the controversy that has come out of that says to me that it's hitting home. When people talk about feminism and ask, Is Ally the Antichrist? Is she the woman of the new millennium? that's all good. It’s provoking discussion.

Are you so identified with Ally that you've become a poster girl for the modern woman?

I really don't know what people think. Most are intelligent enough to realize that I'm an actress playing a character.

Do you think Ally represents women in the 90s? Is she the modern-day Mary Tyler Moore, or is she whiney and weak?

Who cares! She doesn't represent anything. She's a TV character; she's fictional. She doesn't represent all women. This is not how all women behave. I don't think David Kelley intends for Ally to represent all women. But men, women, both genders can identify with her.

What do you think about the future of feminism?

What do I think about the future of feminism? I can only speak for myself. I certainly can't predict the future, but I don't feel that it’s dying or that it's dead. I have no intentions of letting my own feminism die.

A lot of people still believe that being a feminist means you hate men.

Or that you can only wear pants, and you can't wear makeup. Or you can't be a housewife. I think the good news is that feminism embodies a bigger group of people. I don't think it's limited to women. It includes anybody who fights oppression. To me, I think feminism is choice. I can feel good about whatever I choose to do.

It's unacceptable to have a workplace that discriminates against women, but it exists, in very subtle ways. I especially find it in men over 50. I'm going to get in trouble for saying that, but it's a whole new world to men in their 30s, who were probably raised by less traditional women. But I don't want to make a gross generalization.

No, that's my job.

[Laughs] All men are pigs!

Your show features a unisex bathroom. With the Equal Rights Amendment, people feared we would all be forced to share the same bathrooms, where everyone can eavesdrop.

We're all a bunch of spies. Ally has said things like, "Can you please turn on the faucet? I can't pee while you're standing there listening." I think going to the bathroom is a very private event. I don't want men or women involved.

What's been the reaction to the interracial relationship you had on the show?

I had an interracial kiss. It's been mixed. Some people took issue, and some were very encouraging.

I once read that you didn't really have a lot of friends in Los Angeles. Have you managed to make any yet?

God, these things get so distorted. It's very interesting to me to constantly read untrue things that have nothing to do with me. It's astonishing. I mostly try to ignore them and maintain my sense of humor.

An interview with People asked whether you were anorexic. And you actually listed what you ate at mealtimes.

That was an incredibly vulgar interview. I could never even begin to articulate what that was all about. That was disturbing because… I'll just say it: I was blackmailed. I was told that I could either cooperate or not, but that it would behoove me to cooperate.

In that story, someone you went to high school with was quoted as saying that he had once seen you eat. It seemed a little scary that they went back that far into your eating habits.

It was an investigation. It was as if I'd committed some heinous crime. And God forbid I did have a disease! What does this say about our world? That there is a relentless, virulent pursuit for the story. The exploitation without compassion and the cruelty level was enormous. I thought they couldn’t truly believe I have an eating disorder, because if they did, they wouldn’t do this. It's too heinous.

According to one story you once lived on a can of ravioli a day.

See, that's another one. It's something so exaggerated and blown out of proportion.

But it's the root of your so-called eating disorder.

One can of ravioli a day! I had more than one can a day, and I had more to eat than ravioli.

But the press does tend to hound celebrities unwilling to come forward about an illness. In you case, maybe it’s the idea of Karen Carpenter all over again.

Right! Well, maybe. I think that society's obsession with weight has a great deal to do with this.

When it comes to women in the public eye, if you're too fat, you're out of control and deserve contempt and pity. If you're too thin, you're perceived as controlling.

So if you're thin, you somehow have it together, and that makes people mad. There's the ambiguity of this disease. It's twisted. Just because you're thin, doesn't mean you're diseased. If you're thin, and you're healthy, there are certain people in the world who are going to be pissed off about it. It's discrimination. There's a double standard. In my life, a lot of people have said, "Uchhhh! You're skinny!" As if they're just disgusted by it. But nobody would walk up to someone who's overweight and say, "Ughhh! You're so fat!" It would never happen. It's a pathology.

You can't be too rich or too thin.

And I'm both! [Laughs]

Now we should really hate you. In Hollywood, if it isn't about your weight, it's about your breasts.

Yes! If I had big boobs, none of this would have happened.

As long as they're looking at cleavage…

They're happy.

Howard Stern commented that you were constantly stuffing food into your mouth whenever you were on camera during the World Series last fall. Did you make a point of constantly chowing down as a way of thumbing your nose at the anorexia rumors?

I was chowing down, and the cameras found me. You don't know when the camera is on you. I got a lot of flak for that. People said, "Oh, she's doing that on purpose, eating in public!" I'd like to be able to say that it was a really intelligent, smart plan, but there's no way for me to win. So I take the Zen approach and say, Who cares? They’re going to say what they want to say anyway.

It probably doesn’t help that you once played a bulimic in an HBO movie.

Go figure. Women can play drug addicts, and no one thinks they’re drug addicts. People would never think I'm a prostitute if I played a prostitute. Well, maybe they would, if it made a good story, and they could turn a profit.

You’re often confused with the character of Ally. It reminds me of when Dan Quayle criticized Murphy Brown. It was almost as if he were attacking Candice Bergen.

Yeah. She became that character. I'm not sure a man would be under such scrutiny. It's not the norm to have a woman protagonist. It creates a fervor. On top of that, Ally is somebody who wears her heart on her sleeve, so it's easy to confuse that because the nature of Ally is so personal. She tells her intimate secrets; she's vulnerable; people want to take care of her, protect her – or kill her. [Laughs]

One offshoot of the public's insatiable appetite for celebrity news is the rise in stalking.

Now the government's getting involved. Finally, they just passed a law [in California] that says you can't take pictures of someone on their private property. And thank God, because I'm –

Regularly sunbathing in the nude?

Yes. I have really strange rituals, and if anybody found out, it would ruin my career! [Laughs] But I have been followed. A lot. You often wonder, Is that a photographer? Or is that somebody who wants to harm me? Why is this person switching lanes along with me? They're following me! But I'm so proud, because I’ve been able to get away from so many. I feel like I could be a spy now.

You can't trust anybody. It's very isolating. You can't have any adventures, because you have to be so vigilant.

Tell me about the Screen Actors Guild Awards last March. Everyone was commenting on how you looked so out of sorts when you got up to accept an award.

People are so mean-spirited! That hurt me because it's so untrue. There's context here: We won. You realize suddenly that you have to get up and go onstage in front of all of your peers, and I’m shy! It’s nerve-racking to speak, and I have no idea what I'm going to say. I remember feeling a bit embarrassed because at the beginning of the show, I was twirling around, laughing, goofing off. So that's another example of not checking the facts. I'd like to know if they really did watch the show. You have a reaction [to this sort of press] for about five minutes, and then you don't care.

Is working 17-hour days preventing you from having a love life?

No, no. Don't you read? I'm having so many affairs with so many people! I'm the lonely girl who has no friends, and yet I'm having these affairs. I'm living vicariously through my rumors, and I'm having a damn good time. But once again, the truth comes down to being somewhere in the middle.

I notice you’re always very cagey about saying how old you are.

I don't think my age is a big deal, but people started asking me about it. For some reason, it strikes me as a rude question. It again has to do with perception. You want to be a chameleon and play a lot of different roles, so it's important to maintain some ambiguity.

Of course, age is especially tricky for actresses in this town.

It does stink. There's no solving it. It's part of our society. We don't write roles for women the way we write them for men. There are probably demographics proving to these people that men sell and women don't. Writers are encouraged to write great scripts about men. People are afraid to take risks because there's a lot of money involved.

What's the biggest misconception about you?

We'd have to be here all day. I think everything is a misconception, because it's someone else's perception. You have to consider the source, the history of the person who's doing the talking. They come with their own Samsonite.

It's not surprising that so many actresses – you, Madonna, Meryl Streep – were once cheerleaders. Any cattle-call audition pales in comparison to the Darwinian horror of trying out for the squad.

Yes, tryouts were pretty brutal. But you've really opened my mind. [Laughs] I have to figure out what the repercussions of being a cheerleader are.

Look at porno movies: Who are the about? Cheerleaders!

Cheerleaders are sluts.

The popular girls are never in the marching band.

Well, that's not always true. When I lived in Albany, New York, the band was really hot. I played the flute. But now there'll be 40 articles talking about how "Calista is obsessed with being a cheerleader." There was a story in the tabloids that alleged that not only was I an anorexic but that I was turning my dog into one, too. Amazing, isn't it?
Date of this item added :
2007-09-02