Marcia Gay Harden is one of the busiest actresses in the movie biz.
She has roles in two films currently in theaters: the Sean Penn-directed “Into the Wild” and “Rails and Ties” opposite Kevin Bacon (pictured below). Marcia also appears in “The Hoax” with Richard Gere, an overlooked but critically praised drama released on DVD a few weeks ago.
When I met the actress recently, I greeted her by saying: “It’s Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden!”
She laughed and said: “Oh, I love the way you just say that.”
The Oscar came in 2001 for her role in “Pollock” and she was nominated three years later — again in the supporting-actress category — for her dramatic turn in the Clint Eastwood-directed “Mystic River.”
I had to know. Where does Harden keep her Oscar?
“It’s in my office, in Harlem,” she said.
So has that golden statuette resulted in this flood of scripts?
“Oh, I get them all the time,” she joked. “You read them while you’re having bon-bons in bed. It’s bubble baths and bon-bons all the way.”
But the actress, who also appears in yet soon-to-be-released “Canvas,” juggles all the work with motherhood. She and husband Thaddaeus Scheel have three-and-a-half-year-old twins (a son and a daughter) and a nine-year-old daughter.
“Life is great,” she said. “I have a bon-bon, go home and change a diaper, that’s what it’s like!”