The Other Amy Brenneman

US Weekly - June 5, 2000

BY PETER WILKINSON

Her character on Judging Amy may be overwhelmed and underappreciated, but in real life the actress has a man and a plan

ALL LAW-ENFORCEMENT, ALL THE TIME. IF it seems as if there's a crime or courtroom scene on every channel, Amy Brenneman can't complain. The law suits her. Or at least it suits her television career. One of the original cast members of the cop drama NYPD Blue, Brenneman returned to prime time after five years to star as CBS's surprise hit Judging Amy, which is based on her mother's experience during three decades as a juvenile-court judge in Connecticut.

Brenneman plays Judge Amy Gray, recently divorced with a 6-year-old daughter. The two live with Amy's retired social- worker mother, Maxine, played by Tyne Daly. "We are meet- ing Amy Gray when things have fallen apart, and she doesdt know why," says Brenneman. "She fell into this [judgeship]. This is where she's getting reborn." The story of her rebirth — as a judge, a mother and a daughter — resonates with working mothers, daughters and maybe even a few husbands.

But even though she is the creator and executive producer of the show, Amy Brenneman is no Amy Gray, as a visit to the set this spring proves. In her trailer on the Paramount lot us Los Angeles, the 35-year-old fuels upon bottled water and handfuls of granola by candlelight. Cartons of Chinese food go untouched. There's Ani DiFranco, Peter Gabriel and Elliott Smith in the CD player and, stuck to the refrigerator, smiling pictures of her husband, Brad Silberling with whom she shares a five-bedroom lodge-style house in L.A. (along with a basset hound and a Labrador). Unlike the buttoned- up and overwhelmed Amy she plays on TV, the real Amy is opinionated, boisterous, confident, out there. "[My character] is hopeless in a certain way that I'm not," Brenneman says without hesitation, "She doesn't have a spiritual life."

Her costar Dan Futterman, who plays Amps skittish brother, Vincent Gray, a writer, sees another important difference. "Amy Brenneman is less prudish than Judge Amy is. She's more comfortable with crassness, which is all to her credit," Futterman laughs. "I've never seen her blush."

Listening to National Public Radio this afternoon, Brenneman heard a report about a woman busted in Ohio for taking naked photographs of her children. Though she doesn't yet have children herself, Brenneman is outraged. "She took some pictures of her 10-year-old daughter in the shower and got arrested for child pornography," she exclaims. "They're talking about taking her kids away." This, Brenneman knows, sails right into the Judging Amy strike zone. The show embraces controversial subjects and deals with them in ways that don't underestimate the experience of its viewers. "A lot of people have been through custody battles and figuring out money and visitation," says Brenneman. "A lot of people have been through courtrooms like this. That familiarity can work for us."

THE LAW RUNS IN BRENNEMAN'S family. Her mother, Frederica, graduated from Radcliffe in 1947 and was one of the first women to get a degree from Harvard Law School, in 1953. She was appointed a juvenile court judge in Connecticut in 1967, when Brenneman was 3. Her father, Russell Brenneman, also practiced law. Toddler Amy attended her mom's judicial swearing-in. The governor of Connecticut was there, as was the entire Brenneman family. Amy wore a sailor top, and for the commemorative photograph, she looked straight into the camera and made a silly face. "I had this weird sense that I was invisible," she recalls. "This weird out-of-body moment that has been captured for eternity."

Frederica Brenneman now serves as a Judging Amy consultant. And an exacting one at that. "I'm a little scared of her mom, Futterman admits. "She comes to readings and scowls, pretty much, and looks deeply, deeply disturbed at what we've done with her life."

Brenneman was never drawn to the real legal world as her parents and her brother Matthew, 39, who practices corporate law in Maryland, were. (Another older brother, Andy, makes interactive software.) At Harvard she studied comparative religion and became a Buddhist Brenneman made the requisite undergrad trip to Nepal and, like so many other actors and actresses, later took classes with Robert Thurman, Uma Thurman's father, the chairman of the religion department at Columbia University in New York and the founder of Tibet House. Brenneman saw a connection between religion and theater. "Liturgy felt like theater. It's theater with a purpose. How do you lead people into a certain meditative, cathartic state?"

Also at Harvard, Brenneman founded the Cornerstone Theater Group, which produced serious dramas and traveled to small towns around the country to perform them. Brenneman played Juliet to a black Romeo in places such as Port Gibson, Mississippi. "We had a 20-person gospel choir and original music. The first time the white [actresses] saw me and Rnmeo embrace, they s--- a banana. We had a whole bunch of white women drop out. They said, 'Oh, it's not us. It's our parents. It's our husbands.' Cornerstone still thrives today. Brenneman chairs its board of directors.

IF IT SEEMS AS IF AMY BRENNEMAN likes to shake things up, she does. At some point on her show, she wants to pursue a homosexual storyline. "I have a girlfriend who I want to come on, Brenneman announces, with a big gleammg Grin. Have us a little lesbian love affair. Lesbianism's chic. No big deal."

As if to prove the point, when Futterman pokes his head into her trailer, Brenneman fires off an impertinent question: "Are you going to have sex today?"

"Offscreen sex," Futterman reports.

"You are!" hoots Brenneman, banging five times on the trailer door as Futterman retreats.

Brenneman famously became the first woman on network TV to expose her butt, on the debut episode of NYPD Blue. Her Blue character, detective Janice Licalsi, consorted with the dour, disaffected David Caruso until she offed two mobsters, which effectively ended her run on that show. Brenneman met Brad Silberling when he directed some of the series' episodes. "I always got together with people I worked with, so it wasn't a big deal for me," Brenneman explains matter-of-factly. "Brad has a better sense of morality than I do." The two were married in 1995.

A TEARFUL COURTROOM scene involving a custody battle over a Serbo-Croatian boy finishes up on soundstage number i8. Brenneman slips off her black judge's robe and nuzzles the infant daughter of costar Richard T. Jones, who plays Judge Gray's rock-solid courtroom aide. Judging Amy being what it is, a recent episode found the two smooching (if only in a dream sequence).

As Brenneman submits to a hair- stylist, she discusses Daly, her Emmy Award—winning costar who has been acting on stage and screen for almost 40 years. "Tyne's the s---," says Brenneman. "In terms of TV mythology, we're both sort of known for not being female victims. We don't carry that within us. We're both very fierce."

Brenneman is so fierce that she wanted to be Dennis Franz on NYPD Blue. "I wanted to have the lead. I wanted to have what Dennis and [cocreator] David Milch have. I wasn't going to be satisfied, on, a certain level, as a girl on that show. Pretty girl cops are a cliche at this point. There's a lot to overcome.

The decision for Brenneman to leave NYPD Blue was made before Caruso departed to make movies. "Apparently the audience just couldn't deal with the fact that I had killed people and was free," she says. "I was very sad to leave. It was not my choice. I was forced to go have a movie career. A TV series is like a marriage. You really can't do it unless you're ready to settle down. But even though I was having a great time, I was curious about what else was out there. I kind of wanted to have little affairs." So she did. In 1995's Heat, she played Robert De Niro's troubled girlfriend. She was Christina Ricci's mother in 1994's Casper, Paul Reiser's ex-wife in the 1995 film Bye Bye, Love and Aaron Eckhart's frigid wife in 1998's Your Friends and Neighbors before the new TV series came along. This summer, she appears in Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, an engaging story of the intertwined lives of five women, played by Cameron Diaz, Calista Flockhart, Glenn Close, Holly Hunter and Brenneman.

Her career has never been better. And yet "this is a mo- ment when I can do things and all I want to do is take big naps," she says. "I have the ear of networks, but I don t think like a mogul. I want to be interdisciplinary, but I think about dropping out. I'm very competitive in my game, but the more I'm in the game, sometimes I think, just in terms of life balance, about dropping out. The game is fine. The game is being played. And now it's 'Make sure you don't have a nervous breakdown and a cocaine habit.'"

Her hairstylist finishes restoring the Brenneman cascade of curls. She shrugs back into her judicial costume and takes a seat on the bench. Some off-color jokes are told, as they often are on the Judging Amy set, and Brenneman has to try hard to muster her implacable jurist's face. Later tonight, she'll get dolled up for an L.A. awards ceremony. Then she and Silberling will enjoy a quiet weekend together. "We're not going off in these wacky directions where the other can't follow," she says. "He was talking about directing a possible movie where he would be in London for a year. That would be a trick 'Cause I ain't goin' anywhere, man." US


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