@EricMontreal22 Found a 1987 interview with KLG
Nyack NY Journal Life After Fever-Lisa Faye Kaplan writes Hot Stuff far these newspapers. A transcript of this interview has been edited far clarity and condensed.
Born Jan.28; Hollywood, Calif
Grew up Manhattan
Lives In Manhattan, Upper West Side
Family Father, Jay, composer of "Brother Can You Spare a Dime"; mother, Sondra, a public relations executive; brothers, Roderic, an analyst, and Daniel, a marketing executive
Pets El Gato, a Turkish Angora cat
Hobbies Painting, reading, writing, playing guitar
Favorite Foods Chicken sushi
Greatest accomplishment Dancing, because it was always very difficult for me to dance.
The last time we saw Karen Lynn Gorney she was partnered with John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever a special film that captured the cultural shape and feel of the late 1970s. Gorney played a social climbing receptionist whose idea of success lay across the Brooklyn bridge in Manhattan. Hers was the leading female role in a hit movie. But Fever turned into Travolta’s movie, and everyone else disappeared in his shadow. Although Gorney faded from view in the past decade, she says she’s been working steadily in regional theater and off-Broadway.
The actress, who spent summers in Katonah as a kid, is currently starring in The Baldwin Theater’s production of Life on the Third Rail, a romantic comedy by Mitchell Uscher that runs in Manhattan through Dec. 6. The Dean's List, Gorney’s new film, will be released early next year. Gorney, whom you may remember as Tara on “All My Children,” recently talked with me in her studio apartment on Manattan’s Upper West Side. The walls are decorated with pictures she’s drawn and painted mainly of her white cat, El Gato. There’s also a black and white photograph of Gorney and Travolta at a ballet bar, the only memento of Fever on view. During our chat, El Gato slept on my coat while Gorney talked about life after Fever and her new definition ofsuccess.
Is this your roommate?
El Gato. Isn’t he something? He’s my model. All these are my paintings and drawings of him. He’s a real inspiration to me.
Tell me about the part you play in Life on the Third Rail.
I play an actress. She knows she’s a star and her dream is to be immortalized in film. So she gets ir. a movie finally, but gets upset when the male star she’s playing opposite pays attention only to himself. In the play she comes to the conclusion that cinema can’t really capture the real her, that she needs a live audience to do her best work.
Any similarity between that character and the turn your career has taken?
I like both.
You made such a splash in Saturday Night Fever and then seemed to disappear.
Not really. I just kept doing theater. I did a play with Cybill Shepherd, Lunch Hour. Then I worked in the Midwest doing Dracula. In New York, I’ve been doing a lot of English plays. I did The Vortex, by Noel Coward. I’ve also been studying for the last five or six years at the Actors Studio. 1 think I’m a much better actress now than when I made Saturday Night Fever. God knows I’m a much better dancer. I was just beginning to scratch the surface of what it means to really act I was playing a lot of things that I had no experience with.
Doesn’t acting mean doing things that aren't in your experience?
If you really experience something, you can act it much better. The more you experience in your life, the better the artist you are.
What did you experience that made you a better actress?
Independence.
From whom?
From the need to be patted on the back.
Don’t you need that anymore?
I need it, but not as much as I did when I was younger The character I played on “All My Children," Tara, was really me. She was a goody-goody. All I’d do on that soap was serve coffee, cry, get pregnant and be comforted. I support myself now. I’m an independent woman. I don’t lean on anybody.
Weren’t you supporting yourself before?
I still didn’t have the sense that I really was in control of my life. I’d be getting lost in, “Oh, I’m so in love with this one,’’ “Oh, Mommy doesn’t like the dress I wore.” Nonsense.
How did you get away from that?
I think I got away from it by taking risks and experiencing the terror of disapproval.
And what happened after you experienced it?
You get freaked out. And then it goes away and you go on and take a bigger risk. Once you can actually face being alone and people’s disapproval, then you’re strong, you’re really independent Those are the two most horrible things for women — disapproval and being alone.
Did you think Saturday Night Fever was going to make you a star?
Naaaahh. I’ve always thought of myself as a star ever since I was a little girl. To me, it was normal (Laughs.)
Do you think you’re a star now?
I’m just one of God’s little creatures.
What’s your definition of success?
Being alive. Just being able to walk and talk is my definition of success. What did Bob Dylan say” “There’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all.” You’re successful if you keep growing, changing.
What more would you like to accomplish?
Nothing really. All the things I’ve wanted to do I’ve done. And all I want is to be able to go from one play to another, one film to another. I just want to keep acting and growing.
Do you want to have a family?
No. That's not in the cards for me. It’s not something I want. I tried to take in another cat and I was going crazy with two cats. How am I going to deal with children?
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