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   Chicago Tribune   
   Copyright 2004, Chicago Tribune. All Rights Reserved.   
      
   Thursday, December 16, 2004   
      
   Tempo   
      
   Leoni shows off darker side; Actress excels at playing a spoiled,   
   neurotic and unhappy rich girl in 'Spanglish'   
      
   MICHAEL KILIAN.   
      
   One of the unfortunate deprivations of our modern era, I've long   
   thought, is that we've lacked a Carole Lombard. We've had many fine   
   comedic actresses, but none quite with the scene-stealing presence,   
   daffy irrepressibility and galumphing spirit of that 1930s and   
   1940s movie queen, who died tragically in a plane crash in 1942.   
      
   But this assertion, I come to realize, is nonsense. We have Tea Leoni.   
      
   If you doubt the comparison, go rent Lombard's "My Man Godfrey,"   
   a Depression-era film in which she plays a spoiled, indolent,   
   unhappy rich girl who brings home a man fallen on hard times and   
   turns him into the family butler.   
      
   Then go see Leoni's latest movie, "Spanglish," which opens everywhere   
   Friday and also stars Adam Sandler. Leoni plays Deborah, a spoiled,   
   upscale Westwood celebrity chef's wife who reaches into Los Angeles'   
   Mexican community for a housekeeper (played by Spanish actress Paz Vega)   
   and then proceeds to wreak havoc on both their families and lives.   
      
   'A narcissistic wench'   
      
   "Deborah's the darkest character I've ever played," Leoni told me in an   
   interview last week. "She's probably the most neurotic character I've   
   ever played. I see her as a bipolar, egomaniacal, narcissistic wench.   
   She's a victim and her own assailant."   
      
   And yet you end up cheering for her in the end, a trick that Leoni   
   attributes to the genius of writer-director James Brooks, who pulled   
   off something similar with a misanthropic Jack Nicholson in the film   
   "As Good As It Gets."   
      
   "Spanglish" addresses the social issue of the great divide between the   
   Spanish and Anglo communities, including places such as Los Angeles,   
   where Leoni lives and where Hispanics are 48 percent of the population.   
      
   "It's about time someone wrote something about Spangland," she said.   
      
   In New York, her native city and real home, "You encounter seven   
   different colors and seven different accents in every block,"   
   she said. "It's one of the great assets of New York."   
      
   In New Mexico, the thorough mix of Hispanic, Indian and Anglo cultures   
   "is New Mexico," she said. But not so in L.A.   
      
   "When I had kids [she has two], I thought, 'I can't have children and   
   raise them with the constant complaint that I don't like where I live,"'   
   she said. "I had to explore Los Angeles better than I had for the first   
   10 years.   
      
   "We reach a point where we wake up and discover that the greatest   
   culture in Los Angeles is the Hispanic culture, yet we live so   
   separately. I feel that's changing. Maybe this film will help."   
      
   Leoni is filming a project that confronts her with another gap: that   
   which divides Jim Carrey from pretty much everyone else on the planet.   
   The movie is a remake of the 1977 Jane Fonda and George Segal comedy   
   "Fun With Dick and Jane," about a couple who go broke and turn to   
   robbery to pay the bills, a Lombardesque part perhaps wasted on the   
   ever serious Fonda.   
      
   Asked if Carrey was an unusual guy to work with, Leoni replied, simply,   
   "He's an unusual guy.   
      
   "Someone described him as once having made a play for normalcy. He   
   has a great heart, an enormous amount of energy, and he's very kind,   
   but he's quite a presence to be reckoned with. You have to be careful   
   you don't slip out of your character to watch his."   
      
   She said at one point in the filming she had to walk out of the   
   shot because he made her so hysterical she couldn't stop laughing.   
   Leoni has had one very serious role, dying in the arms of her father   
   beneath a 500-foot wave in the disaster epic "Deep Impact." She has   
   another in a much smaller film coming out next spring, "House of D,"   
   written and directed by and starring her husband, David Duchovny.   
      
   Then it's not back to comedy but back to New York, where she'll go   
   for the summer.   
      
   "I never work in the summer," she said. "I use the three months to   
   get my kids out of this place and take them to the East Coast and   
   feed their minds."   
      
   Fear of live audiences   
      
   Leoni said she has no plans to emulate so many movie stars these   
   days who try to spend a little time between films doing Broadway   
   or off-Broadway theater.   
      
   "I've always suffered from stage fright," she said. "When I taped   
   the first sitcom I did on stage before a live audience, the prop   
   master used to hang air sickness bags behind the scenery so I   
   could purge myself of the butterflies."   
      
   Oft described by movie writer hacks as a leggy blond, Leoni got her   
   start in television and modeling. But it might have been otherwise.   
   Granddaughter of Polish-American stage and film actress Helenka   
   Adamowska, who once headed UNICEF, a product of the Putney School   
   and Sarah Lawrence College, Leoni planned to go on to Harvard   
   and become an anthropologist.   
      
   "My father said, 'Before you run and commit to that, would you   
   attend a cocktail party filled with anthropologists for me?"'   
   she said. "That was really all he had to say."   
      
   And if she had gone to Harvard?   
      
   "My life would be a lot less chaotic," she said, "but I'd be hard   
   pressed to say I was having as much fun."   
      
   PHOTO: Tea Leoni portrays a celebrity chef's wife who hires a   
   housekeeper who wreaks havoc on both their lives in "Spanglish."   
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