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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
After making Claire Fisher the most achingly realistic young woman on TV, we can't wait to see what Lauren Ambrose does next.
Aug 10, 2005 | The cast of HBO's "Six Feet Under" is among television's most talented, but still, Lauren Ambrose stands out. Part of it is her luminous, Botticelli-like beauty. But mostly it's the way she imbues her character, Claire, with layers of vulnerability and a mercurial complexity; just as quickly as Claire can slay someone with a caustic one-liner, her pool-blue eyes can well with tears.
The frequently tortured, brutally sarcastic, unlucky-in-love youngest member of the Fisher family could easily be played as slacker caricature. Over the course of five seasons, though, Claire has consistently evolved -- she's searched for her identity in art and in men, tried to make peace with her family's gloomy business -- and yet she hasn't always moved forward or learned from her mistakes. No matter how much she wants to be treated like an adult, she can't seem to forsake her adolescent poutiness.
Ambrose, 27, grew up in New Haven, Conn., the daughter of a caterer father and design consultant mother. She attended Catholic school, had roles in several off-Broadway productions, and studied piano and opera -- even singing arias at weddings and, yes, funerals. Ambrose has had small roles in a series of teen movies ("Psycho Beach Party," "Can't Hardly Wait") and a starring role in the 2000 independent film "Swimming." She married Sam Handel, a photographer (whose photo of his wife accompanies this article), four years ago.
In the final season of "Six Feet Under," Claire is dealing with three issues that have dogged her since the beginning of the series: sex, art and family. She has dumped her live-in bipolar boyfriend Billy, had a one-night stand with a friend of her older brother, Nate, erupted at her mother, and reluctantly taken a temp job at a law firm, where she has entered an unlikely relationship with a young Iraq-war-supporting, pop-music-loving Republican lawyer.
Salon spoke with Ambrose by phone from her Los Angeles home two days after she finished shooting the final episode of "Six Feet Under" -- and before the broadcast of this season's big surprise. As we chatted, she packed boxes for her move back to the East Coast.
So, you just finished wrapping the show?
That's right. The day before yesterday was the last day of "Six Feet Under" shooting.
How do you feel? Was it emotional?
Yeah. We've all been together for a long time and have strong connections to each other. It's going to be such a strange adjustment to not see those people. After five years, the show has become our lives.
Actors always claim that it was "just like a family on set." Was that actually your experience?
There are some people that I've developed really close relationships with, but mostly it was just a really great place to work -- a really great job. And it's just strange that the job is over. It's not like leaving a job where you can go back and visit the office and people are still there -- it's just done. Everyone scatters and goes off and does different things.
Does it feel like the right time to end the show?
Well, it really doesn't matter what I think. It was Alan Ball's choice to wrap things up this year, to find some closure and bring it all to an end -- and thereby that makes it the right choice, because it's his vision. I think it's a testament to his good taste to end it now, rather than carry on and carry on and struggle to come up with new story lines and whatever happens with those shows that go on for a hundred years.
It's sometimes difficult to watch the show week after week, to see so much dysfunction and despair. The first four episodes of this season were especially bleak. How do you deal -- or did you deal -- with the intensity of the material? Was it ever difficult to click back into everyday life?
Well, working with this kind of subject matter is very difficult at times, but it's also kind of exhilarating as an actor to get to deal with the big issues -- death, love and life. So for me it was exciting when I had to work with material that was very sad and dramatic. But there were things that we did this year, especially toward the end of the season, that nearly killed us all -- it was very exhausting and very intense, but somehow it made sense to have it get very difficult and very taxing and really exhausting and tiring and challenging as it ended. And that made it very painful to leave.
But yeah, there have been things over the years that I've seen and done that when I think about it in retrospect, were very hard.
