Celia Weston
About
Biography
Filmography
Notes
"These days, if you're in a hit series, you get your first million-dollar movie deal for the hiatus. Back then, you really closed doors for yourself by being on TV. I have no regrets about doing "Alice", but it took me several years to get beyond it.TV life is enriching in other ways. You have a certain amount of time off, a terrific income, and a normalcy that you don't get very often as an actor. Unless you're Harrison Ford or Barbra Streisand, you can't be in this profession and not have fears about financial security." --Celia Weston quoted in InTheater, September 26, 1997.
"In a movie, you've got to have your stroke of genius on the day they're shooting that scene., There are performances that are saved [by editing] in movies that would be telltale onstage. In the theater, there's time to grow with every performance. At the risk of sounding corny, it's a very spiritual thing to go to the theater and play as an actor, to have a wonderful role and the gifts to realize it for that playwright and that audience." --Weston to InTheater, September 26, 1997.
Biography
A tall, blonde actress adept at both comedy and drama, easily adaptable to playing "real folks" such as frowsy women and po' white trash, Celia Weston is best recalled by TV audiences for the four seasons (1981-85) she served slop at Mel's Diner in the CBS sitcom "Alice." But, since the 1990s, she has proven a formidable character player on stage and in films.
Born and raised in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Weston might have ended up as yet another Southern matron had not her father passed away. Believing he would have disapproved of her career choice and her move first to London to study and then to NYC to pursue acting, Weston originally enrolled in college as a psychology major. By the late 70s, though, she was marking time as a waitress in Manhattan while seeking her big break. Following stints at regional theaters, Weston finally made it to the Great White Way alongside Kevin Kline in 1979 in Michael Weller's play "Loose Ends." She then co-starred with Irene Worth in Edward Albee's "The Lady From Dubuque" before finally succumbing to the lure of the great salary on "Alice." ("I kept turning it down until the money became so phenomenal that I just had to do it.").
While there was an invisible barrier between TV actors and film actors at that time in the early 1980s, Weston contented herself on playing the good old Southern gal, spouting aphorisms. She wisely kept a low profile (and pursued a romance that ended badly) when the series ended its run, gradually emerging as a character actress in 1988's "Stars and Bars" and "A New Life." After a turn as Adam Horovitz's rather unpleasant mother in "Lost Angels" (1989), she went on to appear in "Little Man Tate" (1991) and made periodic forays into theater. 1995 saw her deliver a superlative dramatic turn as the mother of a murdered child in "Dead Man Walking" and the following year, she reminded audiences of her finely-honed comic capabilities playing a spirited woman Ben Stiller believes may be his birth mother in "Flirting With Disaster."
Weston won critical praise and a Tony nod for her featured turn as a Southern matron in Alfred Uhry's "The Last Night of Ballyhoo" in 1997. She had pivotal roles in several 1999 releases, playing the wife of a Civil War-era farmer in "Ride With the Devil," Cate Blanchett's snooty aunt in "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and the bitter Germanic mother of a fisherman thought to have been murdered in "Snow Falling on Cedars." Stanley Tucci tapped Weston to play the efficient secretary/receptionist at he New Yorker in "Joe Gould's Secret" before the actress returned to Broadway as the matriarch in the highly-praised staging of Sam Shepard's seminal "True West" (both 2000).
Filmography
Cast (Feature Film)
Cast (Special)
Life Events
1977
Moved to NYC
1979
Broadway debut in "Loose Ends"
1980
Made first TV pilot, "The Single Life" (NBC)
1981
Acted in the short-lived Broadway play "The Lady From Dubuque", by Edward Albee
1981
Feature film debut in "Honky Tonk Freeway"
1981
Played waitress Jolene Hunnicut on "Alice" (CBS)
1988
Returned to feature films in character parts in "Stars and Bars" and "A New Life"
1995
Had key role in "Dead Man Walking"
1995
Acted in Tennessee Williams' "Suddenly Last Summer" alongside Elizabeth Ashley in Broadway revival
1996
Co-starred in "Flirting With Disaster"
1997
Earned acclaim and a Tony nomination for her turn as an upbeat assimilated Jew in 1939 Atlanta in Alfred Uhry's award-winning "The Last Night of Ballyhoo"
1999
Appeared in "Ride With the Devil" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley"
2000
Co-starred on Broadway in Sam Shepard's "True West"
2001
Had featured turns in "Hearts in Atlantis" and "In the Bedroom"
2002
Appeared in the critically acclaimed "Far from Heaven" by director Todd Haynes
2002
Played Jeff Goldblum's wife Bunny in the indie hit "Igby Goes Down"
2003
Appeared in Ang Lee's "The Hulk" based on the Marvel comic book character
2003
Cast in the Showtime series "Out of Order"
2004
Starred with William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver in M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village"
2005
Co-starred in the southern independent drama "Junebug"; premiered at Sundance
2007
Co-starred with Sam Rockwell in the dramedy "Joshua"; screened at sundance
Bibliography
Notes
"These days, if you're in a hit series, you get your first million-dollar movie deal for the hiatus. Back then, you really closed doors for yourself by being on TV. I have no regrets about doing "Alice", but it took me several years to get beyond it.TV life is enriching in other ways. You have a certain amount of time off, a terrific income, and a normalcy that you don't get very often as an actor. Unless you're Harrison Ford or Barbra Streisand, you can't be in this profession and not have fears about financial security." --Celia Weston quoted in InTheater, September 26, 1997.
"In a movie, you've got to have your stroke of genius on the day they're shooting that scene., There are performances that are saved [by editing] in movies that would be telltale onstage. In the theater, there's time to grow with every performance. At the risk of sounding corny, it's a very spiritual thing to go to the theater and play as an actor, to have a wonderful role and the gifts to realize it for that playwright and that audience." --Weston to InTheater, September 26, 1997.
