Variety
crowned her “the queen of independent cinema” and there is a consensus among critics that her presence improves any story.
However, the career of Lili Taylor (Illinois, 57) is not at the height of her talent, perhaps because, as Isabel Coixet, who directed her in
Things I Never Told You
(1996), stated, “she deserved to have things "They were better, but it's still too weird for Hollywood."
A physique that Hollywood does not know how to handle and her lack of interest in conforming to the canons of the industry have also influenced her.
When one of her first agents suggested she get a nose job she refused.
“Hollywood's beauty standard is very strict and if I'm not her ideal, it doesn't affect me.
“I have a feeling that the guys who handle the money in this business are the same guys who didn't find me attractive in high school,” she told
Entertainment Weekly
.
It didn't take long for those boys to make it clear to him what roles awaited him.
In
The Last Stand
, one of her first films, she was hired to play the ugliest girl the protagonist could find.
Curiously or not, the queen of independent cinema, an actress who has worked with directors such as Robert Altman, John Waters, Abel Ferrara or Jim Jarmusch, was never in the orbit of the supposed godfather of
indie
cinema , Harvey Weinstein.
"He hated me.
People told me they didn't even want to see me.
“I was never able to get a job at Miramax,” she told
The Guardian
.
When the producer's abuse stories came to light, she wasn't surprised: "I always knew he was a pig, but I didn't know he was a serial rapist and abuser."
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“I would have been happier out of the closet, being free.”
Richard Chamberlain, the king of television who lived in hiding
She witnessed a supposed golden age of independent cinema, before it was devoured by the
majors
and fell victim to the voracity of multiplexes that leave no room for films that do not secure the box office from the first weekend.
Despite being one of her most recognizable faces, she does not idealize him, because “he was riddled with sexism.”
Lili Taylor photographed in 1993.WWD (Penske Media via Getty Images)
He doesn't think things have changed too much.
In 2016 she wrote an article for
Time
in which she denounced the scarce presence of women behind the cameras and how that fact influenced how insubstantial female roles were: “When a woman is in front of the camera, she is often partially dressed and apparently unemployed.”
Yes, there have been changes in other aspects: today it is difficult for an actor not to suffer a case of harassment, but the same did not happen in 1997, when Taylor's ex-boyfriend, actor Michael Rapaport, was arrested for harassing her.
She pleaded guilty and received a restraining order and was required to attend therapy for a year.
A conviction that did not affect her career at all.
Phoebe's police boyfriend in
Friends
is one of the most prolific actors in both film and television.
The actress, generally jealous about her private life, has mentioned it once: “That was difficult.
I don't blame myself, it's not my fault that I chose that person, but when it happened it made sense to me on a psychological level: I underestimated myself so much that I didn't know I had a right to my privacy.
That's low self-esteem.
Since then I have tried to get some self-esteem, which has been quite difficult.”
Now she can see photos of the actor in the press without it affecting her, “and that's really great, because there were moments when I felt like that would never happen.
And yes, things end up happening.”
Julia Roberts, Lili Taylor and Annabeth Gish in 'Mystic Pizza'.Michael Ochs Archives (Getty Images)
Lili Taylor has also spoken about her health problems.
She is bipolar, a disorder she inherited from her father and of which she was unaware until in 1997 when she got stuck on stage during a performance of
Three Sisters
.
"The only phrase she remembered was: 'I want to go to Moscow.'
Amy Irving looked at me and yelled, 'Get a replacement right now!'
“I have suffered, but life has been less hard since I started taking the medication.”
“You are a prisoner”
She always knew that she wanted to be an actress and when she finished her studies she enrolled in the theater academy, but they kicked her out for lack of attendance.
On the boards she showed that she already knew enough.
Her first relevant role came with the story of three friends who work in a pizzeria.
Mystic Pizza
(1988) has become a small classic and has fulfilled the prophecy made by critic Roger Ebert: “Someday it will be known by the actresses who participated in it before they became stars.”
Next to Taylor was a young woman named Julia Roberts.
They became friends and stayed in touch.
Taylor never understood why she accepted the role of
Pretty Woman
(1990), a story that offered a sweetened vision of prostitution.
“Are you kidding?” she snapped.
“And are they doing it nice?
She was furious.
She was then in her twenties and she was full of hate.”
She met Roberts again in Robert Altman's
Pret-à-Porter
(1994).
“I remember being in the back of the car with her and the paparazzi were chasing us.
She was lying in the back seat.
I told her: 'You are a prisoner.'
“She looked at me out of the corner of her eye and just nodded.”
Lili Taylor, Robert Downey, Jr., Christopher Penn and Jennifer Jason Leigh in 'Crossed Lives'.Photos International (Getty Images)
Although Lili Taylor is not a movie star, her face is recognizable to anyone who has seen a significant number of movies.
She has participated in films that are small classics, such as
Un gran amor
(originally
Say Anything
, from 1989).
Although in Spain she went unnoticed, this was not the case in the United States, where she is a reference in teen cinema.
The image of John Cusack holding a boom box playing
In Your Eyes
by Peter Gabriel over her head has been parodied dozens of times.
Not even the irreverent Deadpool has resisted.
Get a load of the #Deadpool photobombs on iTunes Movies.
pic.twitter.com/DaveqJUz1e
— Deadpool Movie (@deadpoolmovie) April 28, 2016
His path crossed that of another icon of independent cinema, River Phoenix, in
The Last Bet,
where he was aware of the problems that were beginning to threaten the actor.
“He still didn't do drugs, he just drank a lot,” he recalled.
“It was difficult for him to enter a role that was very difficult for him because it was radically different from what he was.
He was a hippie playing a marine.
It caused him a lot of discomfort.”
Her first major leading role came with
I Shot Andy Warhol
(1996), the best example of what for her were the good times of independent cinema.
Director Mary Harron thought she was best suited for the role and there were no impositions from the studios or suggestions from the producers to look for a higher-grossing star.
It was not a kind role, on the contrary: she played Valerie Solanas, the author of the SCUM manifesto (something like Organization for the Extermination of Man) and in 1968 she shot Andy Warhol twice at point-blank range.
“It's one of my favorite roles, but it was also difficult because it set the bar so high.”
She won a well-deserved Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, but it also had its negative counterpart.
“I had to realize it wasn't personal when that kind of paper didn't come back.”
Lili Taylor and Catherine Zeta Jones in 'The Haunting'.Archive Photos (Getty Images)
In 1999 he did what was least expected: star in a commercial film with a huge budget and disastrous reviews, the horror film
The Haunting
.
“I try to keep a balance,” she justified, “because I usually do a play in the winter and that only brings in about five hundred dollars a week if you're lucky.
“The movies I like don’t pay the bills.”
It is easier to imagine her on the set of
The Addiction
(1995), Abel Ferrara's languid vampire story, or as part of Isabel Coixet's
troupe
in the delicious
Things I Never Told You
, the Catalan director's second film.
The Ann who records the things she never said to the boyfriend who just abandoned her, who tries to commit suicide unsuccessfully and who breaks down in a supermarket due to the lack of Chocolate Chocolate Chip (no, the Cappuccino Commotion is not the same) is a one of the best performances of her career and no one who has seen it can help remembering it when entering a laundromat.
There are roles that eluded him: for years he tried to make a
biopic
about Janis Joplin.
It's hard to think of an actress who would have been better suited to play her, but she never found financing.
That the names that were later mentioned to star in the project were Michelle Williams and Amy Adams explains many things about female roles in cinema.
Lili Taylor during a conference in 2022. Jon Kopaloff (Getty Images for Amazon Studios)
Taylor is not self-deceived, she knows that her physique has been decisive in her career and also in that of the rest of the actresses in an industry that has problems with something as natural as the aging of women.
“It's a big problem,” she acknowledged.
“She's getting to the point where I wonder if we're ever going to know what an older woman is like.
It's really upsetting and disturbing to me on so many levels.
In 10 or 15 years it's going to be very scary because then we'll see what happens after you've had all this plastic surgery.
“We all know it doesn’t get better, it only gets worse.”
Taylor has always stated that she will not undergo surgery, and so far she appears to have stuck to that.
“When you look at someone like Diane Keaton, so beautiful, you go: wow!
A woman with wrinkles!
We need actresses like that so that a woman can say: I have wrinkles and I am normal.”
Taylor has found in television the possibility of developing characters in depth.
In
Six Feet Under
she played the elusive and dark Lisa Fischer, perhaps one of her most popular roles.
We also saw her in
The X-Files
and her appearance in the
American Crime
anthology made everyone wonder why she didn't do more films.
She will return in the second season of the intriguing
Outer Range
and this month she has arrived on Apple TV as Mary Todd Lincoln in
Manhunt
, the series about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
His face is one of the best known among unknown people, which allows him to lead a moderately relaxed life.
She is married to the writer Nick Flynn and they have a daughter, with whom she goes to soccer games or bird watching in Central Park.
Ornithology is more than just a
hobby
: she brings her 600-euro binoculars to all her shoots, writes about the subject, and is part of the American Bird Association and several birdwatching and conservation groups.
One more layer of an exceptional actress who turned out to be “too strange for Hollywood.”
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