Rassegna stampa di Jane Lynch

Si è fatta le ossa al The Second City, alla Steppenwolf Theatre Company e in svariati seminterrati di chiese nell'area di Chicago.
I successi cinematografici di Jane includono l'imminente Julie & Julia, The Post-Grad Survival Guide, Spring Breakdown, Another Cinderella Story e Brownie Masters, oltre a film più recenti come The Rocker - Il batterista nudo e il film d'animazione Space Chimps. Tra i film meno recenti figurano For Your Consideration di Christopher Guest, A Mighty Wind - Amici per la musica e Best in Show, oltre a Alvin Superstar, Walk Hard: la storia di Dewey Cox, Ricky Bobby: la storia di un uomo che sapeva contare fino a uno, 40 anni vergine, Bam Bam and Celeste di Margaret Cho, il film di Alan Cumming Suffering Man's Charity, Lemony Snicket: una serie di sfortunati eventi, Sleepover e SurvivingEden.

In televisione ha ottenuto grande successo partecipando a tre serie originali della Lifetime: Lovespring International - Agenzia matrimoniale, Desperate Housewives e Weeds. La Lynch è inoltre apparsa al fianco di Cybill Shepherd in The L Word (stagione in corso). Ha avuto un ruolo ricorrente nelle serie Boston Legal, Two and a Half Men, Criminal Minds e The New Adventures of Old Christine.
Oh Sister, My Sister! è il titolo dell'opera che la Lynch ha portato in scena in teatri come il Tamarind Theatre e il Bang Theater, aggiudicandosi il premio teatrale del LA Weekly come Miglior spettacolo comico dell'anno.

IN the first episode of the Fox series “Glee” there are stirring renditions of classic pop songs (“Don’t Stop Believing”) and funny-but-earnest declarations from angst-ridden high school students. (“Being a part of something special makes you special, right?”)
But the scene that signals that “Glee” would not be yet another sugary “High School Musical” is delivered by a tracksuit-wearing, bullhorn-toting cheerleading coach: “You think this is hard?” she lectures some of her not-up-to-snuff charges. “Try being waterboarded. That’s hard.”
It is a quintessential moment for a Jane Lynch character: an authority figure on an absurd power trip, calmly humiliating inferiors with a well-placed, condescending line.
Ms. Lynch, 49, has honed that skill during 15 years of fleeting guest spots on numerous television sitcoms, from “Married ... With Children” and “Friends” to “Two and a Half Men” and “Party Down,” and in a parade of cameos in movies including “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” and the improvisational Christopher Guest comedies “Best in Show,” “A Mighty Wind” and “For Your Consideration.” In the past year alone Ms. Lynch has appeared in 10 movies, including the film festival cult favorite air-drummer comedy “Adventures of Power,” coming out in New York on Oct. 9.

But with “Glee,” instead of stealing a few scenes and taking off, Ms. Lynch is a series regular. She’d been itching to settle into a role for longer than the few days it takes to shoot a cameo, she said during an interview this summer over coffee in the dining room of her cabinlike home in the Laurel Canyon area of the Hollywood Hills. “I basically do everything I’m offered lately,” she said. “I’m a little tired and I’d love to hang my hat in one place.”
On “Glee,” the musical-comedy series about a struggling high school glee club, Ms. Lynch plays Sue Sylvester, the misfit-loathing cheerleading coach. “I needed a nemesis and I knew right away it has to be played by Jane Lynch,” said Ryan Murphy, a creator of “Glee,” who had kept Ms. Lynch in mind since working with her 10 years ago on a one-episode stint for his series “Popular.” “Jane’s unparalleled at her one-liners.” (Example: “I’m going to ask you to smell your armpits,” she says on “Glee,” as punishment for two of her cheerleaders. “That’s the smell of failure, and it’s stinking up my office.”) Still, he feared Sue would become a caricature, so he added plotlines to humanize her.
“We’ve given her heavy dramatic scenes, and Jane’s spectacular at them,” Mr. Murphy said. Expect flashbacks to Sue’s earlier life, and a tortured romance with a man — a story line bound to fly in the face of assumptions that the butch cheerleading coach is a lesbian.
“The thing about Jane playing Sue is she’s completely the opposite of Jane in every way,” Mr. Murphy said during a phone interview from Rome, where he was directing the movie adaptation of “Eat, Pray, Love,” starring Julia Roberts. “The character is so politically incorrect.” On “Sue’s Corner,” a news segment within the show, she holds forth on issues like discipline (she’s pro-caning) and obesity (she advocates passing a law to keep fat people in their homes).
In person Ms. Lynch is disarmingly unlike her authoritarian characters. She speaks openly and earnestly of how years of therapy and sobriety have helped her “learn how to love and be loved.” Growing up in a Chicago suburb, she found safety in transience. In high school she moved freely from clique to clique: the drama kids, the jocks, the cheerleaders, the stoners. “I traveled within all the groups,” she said. “Started that pattern of don’t stay long enough for anyone to get to know you, to see the chinks in your armor.”
As an adult, after studying classical theater at Illinois State and Cornell Universities and landing a spot with the Second City comedy troupe, Ms. Lynch has continued the pattern, moving from TV show to TV show, comedy clique to comedy clique, taking bit parts in the repertories of Judd Apatow and Christopher Guest.
“I’ve worked with people for two or three days where you don’t get to really see the dark side of anybody,” she said. “It’s kind of all like, ‘Oh, what a nice person.’ ”
Relationships are another thing Ms. Lynch has kept at arm’s length. “I’m just kind of retarded in that area,” she said.
But things have been changing on that front too. “It looks like I kind of had a breakthrough,” said Ms. Lynch, who is openly gay and prefers to keep her current relationship private. No matter how groundbreaking Neil Patrick Harris may be, the prevailing wisdom in Hollywood still holds that mainstream audiences will not accept openly gay actors in straight roles.
Ms. Lynch is equally successful in straight roles as gay ones. (See her pure-bred dog owner in “Best in Show”). “That moment in ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’ when she turns into the seductress” of Steve Carell “is one of the great comedic moments anyone has ever done,” exclaimed Nora Ephron, who cast Ms. Lynch against type as Julia Child’s giddy, visiting sister Dorothy in “Julie & Julia.”
“I honestly think there’s nothing she can’t do,” Ms. Ephron said.” (Ms. Lynch will spend the coming month in New York, performing monologues as part of the rotating cast of the Off Broadway play “Love, Loss and What I Wore’,” written by Ms. Ephron and her sister Delia.)
Ms. Lynch attributes her ubiquity as an out actress to being a character performer. “I think when you’re a leading lady or leading man, you want America to project their hopes and dreams on you,” she said. “We still want our Julia Roberts straight, our Brad Pitts straight.”
With “Glee” Ms. Lynch is thrilled finally to be transcending the cameos that have long comprised her career. “She spoke quite movingly to me about the fact that she is so happy to be a part of a family, which a television show becomes,” Mr. Murphy said.
Ms. Lynch has wasted no time getting comfortable. “I brought a pillow, a candle and a towel to my trailer,” she said.
And now that Fox has given “Glee” a full season pickup of 22 episodes, it just might turn into a permanent home.
Da The New York Times, 27 settembre 2009