NEWSWEEK: Emmy Roundtable

NEWSWEEK: Emmy Roundtable

'Ugly Betty' Star America Ferrera Says She Once Went as Far as Bleaching Her Hair and Wearing 'Lily-White Powder Makeup' for a Role She Didn't Get

First-Ever Emmy Roundtable Brings Together Nominees to Talk About Careers, Missteps, the Red Carpet and Who They Are Taking to The Emmys

NEW YORK, Sept. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Early on in her career, America Ferrera, the star of the hit series "Ugly Betty," bleached her dark hair and tried to lighten her skin color with lots of makeup, all to get a role she desperately wanted, but was still turned down, she tells Newsweek in the current issue. The Emmy nominee, however, is not the only one who has gone to great lengths for their craft. While trying out for the 1976 film, "Stay Hungry," Sally Field heard the director yell that he had "better things to do than see Sally Field!" The Oscar winning actress recounted the story during the first-ever Newsweek Emmy Roundtable, which appears in the September 17 issue (on newsstands Monday, September 10). Field realized people go with whatever they've seen you in last. "Because they have so little faith in people knowing how to act. So I had to convince them that everything they had seen me do before was acting and what I really am is this absolutely sleep-around tart and, gosh, that Flying Nun sure was hard for me to pull off because this is who I really am ... Oh, yeah. And I straddled the guy I was reading with. I, like, sat on him."

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Field, Ferrera, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Masi Oka and Jeremy Piven spoke candidly with Senior Editors Marc Peyser and Devin Gordon about the red carpet, success, characters and typecasting. These are some of the highlights of the two-hour conversation:

On taking mothers to the awards show:

Piven: I take her all the time ... I think she's over it. She said to me, "You know, Jeremy, I think it's time for you to take someone else." So basically she turned me down. It was awkward.

Field: Maybe you'd like to take me.
Piven: Absolutely! We're all definitely going, right?

Oka: I want to take my mom, but I can't get her to come ... She's very shy. She doesn't like cameras. I can't convince her. She says if I force her to come she'll fly to Japan.

On the red carpet:

Ferrera: The red carpet is the most nerve-racking, isn't it? The focus is all on something I'm just not comfortable with. The whole point is to stand there so people can criticize you -- What are you wearing? It's a meat market.

Louis-Dreyfus: My sister said to me, "I think you should just keep wearing the same dress over and over."

Field: I think we should just rebel and all go in sweatshirts and jeans and say, This is it, folks!

Oka, on getting roles as an Asian-American:

For me, being a minority has made it easier to break in, to be perfectly honest, because there are a lot of small parts that go to the minority of choice because of affirmative action or something. "Oh, we want to show diversity, so we'll give this small part to him." But the ceiling is very low, without a doubt.

On going to great lengths to get a part:

Ferrera: I had a friend who is a writer, and he wrote this beautiful, beautiful script and I fell in love with it. I said, this is me, I have to do this. For a while it was a possibility and then it was, like, Well, listen, the producers don't want-they're looking for someone who's blond and who has, you know, lighter skin. And basically that was it. I didn't even get to fail on my own. It was the first time I felt really angry. And so I went out and bleached my hair ... I was 17, and it was the first time I'd done something out of anger. I bleached my hair and put on lily-white powder makeup- whiteface, I guess. But my friend called me up and was, like, "I get it, I understand that it's warped and twisted and it sucks. But you still don't have the part."

Piven, on playing Ari:

I knew that Ari's energy was so interesting that if I did it right, then I could make it something bigger. There's a reason why certain people are blowhards and want to take up all the space in a room, you know? At some point in their lives they were crushed and they had to overcome it. I remember I had this mantra for Ari: $40 million by the time he's 40 or he'll kill someone.

Piven, on Ari's back-story:

That's something I keep pitching to our writers. I came onto this show late in the game as a hired gun. So I would love to be more a part of ... Oh, I'm saying all the wrong things now ... I don't care about titles or whatever, how you're billed on the back of your chair, any of that stuff. I just like to be in the mix, you know? So you asked: what is Ari's secret pain? I think this show can keep exploring these characters. Like, for instance, what is Passover like at Ari's house? Why does he desperately need to prove himself? It's kind of tragic. I mean, when people meet me, they're usually surprised that I'm so calm. They're disappointed that I don't bark at them.

Louis-Dreyfus, on the "Seinfeld" curse:

I thought it was just so absurd, and I still do. I think there's the curse of showbiz, which is to say, it's really hard to hit it out of the park. It wasn't a "Seinfeld" curse -- it was a "Seinfeld" blessing. Lots of people have success in their lives and then try to have it again, as they should. And sometimes they get it and sometimes they don't. And that's life.

On the risks of being candid:

Louis-Dreyfus: It's a whole new universe. In the last 10 years the celebrity culture has utterly changed. It's jaw-dropping.

Oka: Especially with the Internet. And blogs. Things spread so quickly. We're all humans. We all make mistakes. But it gets difficult when you have cameras everywhere. It's part of our job to be in the public. I accept that. But at the same time, I don't want to think of being human as a job.

Ferrera: Anyone with a phone is a paparazzi. They sit there and take pictures with their phone and they think you don't see them. They don't even ask. Sometimes you feel like an animal in the zoo.

(Read entire roundtable excerpt at www.Newsweek.com)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3037855/site/newsweek/

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Source: Newsweek

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