Joan Allen

Peter J. Owens Award

The Peter J. Owens Award, named for the longtime San Francisco benefactor of arts and charitable organizations (1936–1991), honors an actor whose work exemplifies brilliance, independence and integrity.

A Good Midwestern Girl

by Emanuel Levy

It’s hard to think of an American actress more deserving of the prestigious Peter J. Owens Award than Joan Allen. Over the past two decades, she has demonstrated a remarkable range, versatility and subtlety in both Hollywood and indie movies.

Whenever Allen is onscreen, her riveting presence and acting command you to watch, but she is doing it without tricks or flashy technique. More than any other actress, she has applied to her own career Stanislavsky’s motto, “There are no small parts, only small actors.” Whether in a lead or a secondary role, Allen is not only a skillfully accomplished performer but often the emotional center of gravity of her films.

By her own admission, Allen endured a pathologically shy adolescence, finding the courage to come out of her shell onstage. Theater allowed her to express sorrow and joy—to be everything she could not be as a “good Midwestern girl.” Allen recalls, “I was very shy but was desperate to meet boys, so my sister told me to be a cheerleader. I didn’t make cheerleading squad, so I thought, why not try out for a play? As soon as I did, I found I absolutely loved it. I could express all the emotions I felt. I could cry and laugh, but in a controlled environment.”

While attending Eastern Illinois University, the tall, angular Allen attracted the attention of John Malkovich, who invited her to move to Chicago and join the famed Steppenwolf Theatre. Allen developed a restrained acting style that enabled her to disappear completely into her parts. She has always shown a penchant for subtext, projecting much more than the written script would suggest.

Allen won a Tony for her first Broadway appearance, in Lanford Wilson’s Burn This! The following year, she played the appealing feminist in Wendy Wasserstein’s Pulitzer Prize–winning The Heidi Chronicles, garnering a Tony nomination. Recognition for stage work opened doors in Hollywood, and Allen made her feature (Compromising Positions) and TV (the miniseries Evergreen) debuts in 1985.

Allen’s stature rose gradually with memorable turns as a blind girl who humanizes the killer in Manhunter (the movie that introduced Hannibal Lecter), and as one of Kathleen Turner’s classmates in Peggy Sue Got Married. She then excelled as Jeff Bridges’s wife in Tucker: The Man and His Dream and as the sympathetic mother of the young chess prodigy in Searching for Bobby Fischer.

Allen’s breakthrough came with her on-target performance as Pat in Oliver Stone’s Nixon. With a striking resemblance to the former first lady, Allen gave a sympathetic turn, for which she earned her first Oscar nomination. She was once again the moral center in The Crucible, as Daniel Day-Lewis’s unforgiving wife, garnering a second consecutive supporting actress Oscar nomination.

Allen then landed a major role opposite John Travolta and Nicolas Cage in John Woo’s smash hit Face/Off, in which she gave a typically understated performance, leaving the scenery-chewing to her cohorts. That year, she received critical acclaim as Kevin Kline’s estranged wife in The Ice Storm, Ang Lee’s stark and complex look at American suburban mores.

For a long time, Allen was the preeminent interpreter of noble, intelligent, long-suffering wives, enacting the rage, grief and unrequited passion of troubled women. She began to break the mold of her typecasting in Pleasantville, in which she begins as a repressed June Cleaveresque black-and-white mom and gradually transforms into a vibrant, colorful woman, discovering in the process both her art and sexuality.

In The Contender, Allen received her first lead actress Oscar nomination, as a vice-presidential nominee embroiled in a sex scandal. One sensed complete identification with the part: Though the scandal threatens her political future and personal life, she remains calm and self-contained, refusing to give in, demonstrating courage and heroism based on firm commitment to moral principles.

Last year, in the adaptation of the best-selling novel The Notebook, Allen characteristically nailed her role in brief but brilliant scenes as Rachel McAdams’ disapproving upper-class mother.

This year, Allen will be seen in three widely divergent roles: In Off the Map, set in rural New Mexico, she plays the archetype of an earth mother, married to a depressed husband. In Sally Potter’s ambitious Yes, she plays an unhappily married scientist who falls for a Lebanese cook. And in The Upside of Anger, Allen gives her most fully realized performance to date, as a bitter alcoholic matron, in a performance that’s already generating Oscar buzz.

“I love my work,” Allen said recently, “but being seen at the right parties and playing the Hollywood game has never been my thing. I’ve never known how to do it, and have no desire to learn.”

No need to worry, Joan. Over the past decade, you have established yourself, without any fuss or fanfare, as one of our most gifted actresses. And you earned it in your own quiet way.

Copyright © 2005 San Francisco Film Society

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