Jennifer Westfeldt always wanted to be an actress — of the theater, to be specific. Growing up in Connecticut, she saw herself spending her career on the stage in New York.
“There’s something magical about that one moment in time,” Westfeldt, who visited the District earlier this month, says about acting on stage. “You’re in the moment, you’re not in your head. It’s the same thing when the camera is rolling.”
The behind-the-scenes stuff is another story. “Writing, editing, producing, they’re all jobs that are sort of endless. They say films are never finished, they’re just abandoned. You never feel like you’ve done enough,” she says.
Yet Westfeldt might be known better as a writer than as an actress. With her directorial debut, “Friends with Kids,” getting good press, the 42-year-old might soon be thought of, first and foremost, as a filmmaker.
“It was a funny, circuitous path, really,” she marvels.
She thought she’d act only on the stage, but won a spot on a television series her first week in Los Angeles. But “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place” — also Ryan Reynolds’ first series — got moved to midseason, and Westfeldt had a couple of months with nothing to do.
“I missed New York, I hated L.A., I didn’t know anyone there,” she recalls. With a writing partner, Heather Juergensen, she planned to offer “a night of sketches about terrible dates. It evolved into this linear narrative. At the end of the seven weeks, we asked, ‘Did we write a play?’ ”
They did. It played just three nights in a small theater. But a number of studios wanted to turn that play into a movie. “Kissing Jessica Stein,” her 2001 screenwriting debut about a woman who tries out a same-sex relationship after a series of terrible dates with men, was born. Westfeldt played the title character.
Westfeldt has done other work — on stage, and screens both big and small — and she’s often seen on the red carpet now on the arm of her longtime partner, “Mad Men” star Jon Hamm. He has an important role in “Friends with Kids,” though it’s Adam Scott (of “Parks and Recreation”) who plays leading man to the director’s leading lady.
“This was the role he was drawn to and this is the role I was drawn to for him,” she explains of casting Hamm — but not as the star. I mention one of the movie’s best — and most painful — scenes, in which Hamm’s character speaks harshly of Scott’s and Westfeldt’s characters’ decision to have a child together while remaining just friends.
“Wasn’t he amazing? He’s incredible. Him and Adam squaring off was an exciting notion for me because we’ve all been friends for 15 years. There was a gravitas to it because there’s history,” she says, getting even more animated. “Jon is one of those rare actors who can make darkness and pain so compelling. He’s the truth-teller in the movie, and he’s the voice of the audience.”
Westfeldt describes Washington as a “beautiful city,” and splits her own time between the coasts. “I’m a terrible flyer, so it’s not the greatest of situations. But it’s also lucky, I think, to have two separate lives. Our house and dog are in L.A., so Jon likes to say we live in L.A.” The heart of this triple threat — much like another one, Woody Allen — clearly remains on the East Coast, though.
Kelly Jane Torrance is The Washington Examiner movie critic. Her reviews appear weekly and she can be reached at [email protected].
