Gretchen Mol

Gretchen Mol (born November 8, 1972) is an American actress.

Early life and career

She was born in Deep River, Connecticut where her mother is an artist and her father is a school principal. She attended The American Musical and Dramatic Academy and graduated from the William Esper Studio. After summer stock in Vermont, she took a job for a while as an usher at Angelika Film Center. She was living in a Hell's Kitchen walk-up when she was noticed by a talent agent who spotted her working as a hat check girl at Michael's Restaurant in New York. ^[1] Her first acting job was in a Coca-Cola commercial. In 1994 Mol was spotted by photographer Davis Powell^[2] who photographed Gretchen in New york's Central Park, replacing her unrepresentative portfolio with professional-looking black & white images which landed her on the cover of W magazine within weeks and forshadowed her "It Girl" and "Bettie Page" looks. Shortly afterwards, she ended her brief modeling career and with the help of her agent Larry Taub of the Wiliam Morris Agency, in 1998 she appeared in several notable films including Rounders, starring Matt Damon and Woody Allen's Celebrity opposite Leonardo Di Caprio.

It was in 1998 that she also came to prominence and notoriety when she was featured on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. Her appearance was both a triumph and a failure, as her titilating image became iconic while her movies bombed. Dubbed the "It Girl of the Nineties" by the magazine, her career did not live up to the hype. Though she never stopped working, her early success was not sustained and she faced several lean years before a notable comeback with The Notorious Bettie Page in 2006.

Interviewed by the Associated Press in Baltimore in December 2006, she commented about haow she maintained her confidence as an actor: "It is an ongoing struggle. Confidence is something that sometimes you have and sometimes you don't. And the older you get, hopefully, the more you have some tools to at least fake it." ^[3]

Film roles

While her major roles have been sporadic, Gretchen Mol has appeared in more than thirty feature films. And though the films have often been small, she has worked for a number of important directors. Her first role was in Spike Lee's overlooked film, Girl 6. She said of this role, "I was auditioning for Guiding Light and I was happy I got a Spike Lee movie, which was a tiny part, but all of a sudden I had Spike Lee on my resume. I didn't audition for day player anymore."^[4]

New York filmmaker Abel Ferrara then took notice of her and she appeared in two of his movies, The Funeral (1996) and New Rose Hotel (1998). She had a small role as a girlfriend in in Donnie Brasco which appeared in 1998. By now, however, she was being typecast as "the girlfriend," which she attempted to challenge by her role opposite Jude Law in Music From Another Room (1998), a romantic comedy. Unfortunately, nobody noticed the film.^[5]

Television

Mol had a small role in the 1996 miniseries Dead Man's Walk, based on the Larry McMurtry novel. She also appeared in a few episodes of Spin City. ^[6] She was the star of the short-lived David E. Kelly series girls club (2002), a drama about three women lawyers. The series was not well received and it was cancelled after two episodes. She appeared in two TV remakes of classic films: Picnic (2000), in the role of Madge Owens, and The Magnificent Ambersons as Lucy Morgan (2002). She appeared in a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie in January 2007, starring in The Valley of Light, a story set in post-World War II based on a novel by Terry Kay. ^[7] It was her second Hallmark production. She had also acted in a minor role in Calm at Sunset in 1996.^[8]

Stage

Her acting career had its beginnings in summer stock in Vermont where she played a variety of roles including Godspell and 110 In The Shade.^[9] She played Jennie in Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things on stage in both London and New York in 2001^[10], in a role she reprised in the film version, released in 2003. Of her work in the play (which he disliked), the New York Times critic Ben Brantley wrote, "[Mol] gives by far the most persuasive performance as the unworldly Jenny, and you wind up feeling for her disproportionately, only because she seems to be entirely there, in the present tense."^[11] In 2004 Gretchen Mol spent a year singing and dancing as Roxie in the Broadway production of Chicago.

After a tumultuous three-year courtship^[12] she was married to film director Kip Williams on June 1, 2004.

Trivia

She went to high school with Broadway actor Peter Lockyer. They performed in school musicals and plays together. Her brother, Jim Mol, also works in the film industry.

Partial filmography

Notes

1. ^ Broadway.com interview
2. ^ [1]
3. ^ "Stardom stalled for Vanity Fair 'It Girl'", Associated Press, December 29, 2006. [2]
4. ^ Broadway.com interview
5. ^ NYT bio
6. ^ NYT bio
7. ^ "Hallmark Hall of Fame Presents The Valley of Light, Premiering Jan. 28 on CBS"
8. ^ [http://www.cbs.com/specials/the_valley_of_light/bios.shtml CBS bio.
9. ^ Broadway.com interview
10. ^ http://www.curtainup.com/shapeofthings.html CurtainUp: The Internet Theater Magazine of Reviews, Features, Annotated Listings. Accessed April 4, 2007
11. ^ http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?html_title=&tols_title=SHAPE%20OF%20THINGS,%20THE%20(PLAY)&pdate=20011011&byline=By%20BEN%20BRANTLEY&id=1077011432784 New york Times, October 11, 2001. Accessed April 4, 2007
12. ^ Toro magazine interview

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