Illeana Douglas
Saucer-eyed
actress Illeana Douglas (born July 25, 1965(but see 1) in Massachusetts.) has been regularly
appearing in major films since 1987, when she debuted in the Shelley
Long comedy Hello Again.
Born with show business in her blood, Illeana is the granddaughter
of screen legend
Melvyn Douglas and his
first wife, artist Rosalind Hightower. She is the step-granddaughter
of Melvin Douglas' second wife, actress and politician Helen Gahagan
Douglas.
Douglas was born July 25, 1965 in Quincy, Massachusetts, the daughter of Joan Hesselberg (née Georgescu), a schoolteacher, and Gregory Hesselberg,
a painter. Douglas had two older brothers, the late Stefan Gregor
Hesselberg, a technician in the histology laboratory at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology who also trained racehorses in
Verona, Italy, and Erik Hesselberg, a journalist. Douglas grew up in
Connecticut, but said that really she grew up all over, in
Massachusetts (where her father lived), Connecticut (where her
mother lived), and New York (where her extended family lived), going
back and forth between relatives for summers during her youth.
Douglas said that her parents were heavily influenced by the
1970s hippy culture—her father especially by the movie, Easy
Rider—and parented with an artsy philosophy, where the kids were not
pressured to go to college. Comedy albums were really big in her
family. The family would put on dramatic interpretations and
performances.
Douglas' mother's side is Italian and Catholic
and were from Astoria, Queens near Ditmars Boulevard in New York
City. Her maternal grandmother worked at Gertz', in the department
store's restaurant in Astoria and her maternal grandfather was a
welder. Douglas said that her maternal grandmother was a former
Rockette, had really wanted to be an actor and dreamed of being in
show business, so she instilled in Douglas a love for the movies,
taking her to the movies all the time as a child.
Douglas'
father's side is German-Jewish on paternal great grandfather's side,
and Southern on her paternal great grandmother's side. As a child
she would visit her grandfather, the actor Melvyn Douglas, in his
apartment in Manhattan on the Upper West Side as well as his
beautiful mansion on Senalda Road off Outpost Drive in the Hollywood
Hills section of Los Angeles. In contrast to her half summers with
her maternal grandmother in Queens, Douglas said her summers with
Melvyn Douglas were about experiencing with him his love of theater
and elocution and reading, art, and history.
Douglas paternal
grandfather was the actor Melvyn Douglas from his first marriage to
artist Rosalind Hightower. Douglas has said that her grandfather's
performance in Being There, in particular, was influential on her
own career. Douglas said that her grandfather and Peter Sellers both
served in the U.S. Army, had "met in the 1940s in Burma (during
World War II) and met again in London during the '60s.... They often
reminisced about the war days while on the set." During high
school Douglas visited the movie set while they were shooting on
location in Asheville, North Carolina and got to meet Peter Sellers,
a very big deal to her as she was already a big fan of from his
movies. It was the first time she was on a film set.
Her
paternal great-grandfather was Latvian-born composer and pianist
Edouard Hesselberg.
Douglas said that growing up she was both
an insider and an outsider, which is reflected in her career, that
there was a contrast between her working-class Italian roots and the
glamorous Hollywood world of her paternal side of her family. Famous
people like Myrna Loy, Gore Vidal, Gloria Steinem, politicians,
writers, and others were always around in a salon-type world. Even
so, Douglas said she feels more Italian than the other side of her
family, that she developed more "rhythms and ways" from the Italian
side of her family because she spent more time with that part of her
family in Queens, but also had the contrast of a childhood based on
the shoreline of Connecticut, in the Old Saybrook area. Douglas said
it took her a long time to figure out the contrasting diversity, to
put both halves of her family upbringing together.
After her
film debut, the actress worked for years in relative obscurity, at
one point dubbing a chilling scream for The Last Temptation of
Christ.
She frequently appeared in other Martin Scorsese
films, most notably Goodfellas (1990) and 1991's Cape Fear. Her
collaboration with the director also took place offscreen, as the
two dated for years. Following roles in a number of films, including
Household Saints (1993) and Quiz Show (1994), Douglas was cast in
Gus Van Sant's 1995 To Die For.
She won some measure of
recognition and critical praise for her role as Nicole Kidman's
sarcastic sister-in-law, and the following year landed the lead in
Allison Anders' Grace of My Heart. Although Douglas was again
praised for her work -- here portraying a Carole King-like
singer/songwriter -- the film did poorly among critics and at the
box office.
The actress went on to do a number of
made-for-TV films, including the satirical Weapons of M Distraction
in 1997. In 1999 she had a full plate, doing both television work
(appearing as a prostitute on the Fox series Action) and more film
work. She appeared with Kevin Costner in Message in a Bottle before
going on to make the independent film Happy, Texas, the supernatural
thriller Stir of Echoes with Kevin Bacon, and Can't Stop Dancing, a
comedy in which she acted alongside Margaret Cho and Janeane
Garofalo.
Illeana Douglas and the Web go together about as
well as the Swedish and meatballs. After all, the quirky actress
has found a following online with her IKEA-set comedy series, Easy
to Assemble, which [starts] its second season on My Damn Channel
[today]. (Douglas plays a fictional version of herself who, fed up
with showbiz, decides to work in an IKEA store.) And that’s not all:
The actress is hard at work (October 2009) producing a spin-off Web
series, Sparhusen, which follows a Swedish band that plays music for
the big box store.
At one time (pre-2002), she was married
to producer Jonathan Axelrod.
Notes:
1. I am told that 'Illeana lies about her age'.
Illeana was born in 1961.
On page 105 of the 1979 Opticon yearbook for Haddam-Killingworth High School, a photo of Illeana Hesselberg is displayed
in the lower left-hand corner as a graduating senior:
https://www.classmates.com/yearbooks/Haddam-Killingworth-High-School/82172?page=105
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