Marlene Forté – It Wasn’t Too Late to Follow Her Dream
Marlene Forté has been acting since 1988. She starred in “Lost,” “The Unit,” “My Wife and Kids,” “The George Lopez Show,” etc. The film Adrift in Manhattan, where Marlene is featured along with Heather Graham and William Baldwin, recently premiered at Sundance Film Festival and was a big hit. She has produced and starred in several of her own productions, including Lena’s Dreamsand Cuco Gomez-Gomez Is Dead. Hers is a face you will immediately recognize. When asked how she broke into acting, her answer was surprising and encouraging.
How did you know you wanted to be an actress?
I always wanted to act, probably since I was ten. I started acting at almost thirty years old against everybody’s logical advice: I was too old; lived in Jersey, etc. Eighteen years later, here I am. I starred in my first movie, The Bronx War. I played a stripper. As a young Latina actress at the time, you pick and choose. Even though The Bronx War was not a great movie, it moved my career and the director’s career forward. I learned not to take anymore stripper roles. I did it early. I got all that stuff out of the way early in my life.
You are a very animated person. As an actress, how are you able to use that personality in each role?
I’m very bubbly and I can be on stage and 800 people can see me, but when I’m in front of a camera and TV, it’s very different. My challenge is to sit still and let that bubbly personality come out through my eyes and my voice and the words that I’m saying. Being in front of the camera is a big challenge for me.
What’s your favorite role?
They are all my favorites when I’m working on them. I become the person, and there’s no judging the character. So at the moment, they’re all my favorites. Right now my favorite is “Lost” because I just finished. I played Detective Murphy. I’m dying to play a cop on TV, little girl with big gun. I am hoping it will lead to more of that.
Tell me about your personal life. Have you been married? Have any kids?
I have been married several times. I just got remarried July 2, 2006. I married a lovely man called Oliver Mayer, and yes he is my third husband. I am a hopeless romantic. But I finally found my partner. You know, that prince in the Cinderella story, it does exist, but they don’t tell you that you have to kiss a lot of toads before you actually find him. I have an amazing 26-year-old daughter, Gisella Rodriguez, who lives in New York, and now she’s acting and lives in my old New York apartment.
Highest High
I remember the first time I booked a legit job. I ran a video store for six years. I am submitting myself to Backstage. I get a call to do stand-in work for Talia Shire in New York Stories. Coppola was directing. I was ecstatic! I remember hanging up the phone in the video store and I was just so happy. I told my actor friend that I was doing stand-in work for Talia Shire, isn’t that fantastic? And she asked me if I knew what stand-in work was? I said, “No! It doesn’t matter. I am going to be on the set with Coppola and [Vittorio] Storaro.” That’s all I knew! I have not matched that feeling yet. Every time I book a job, I get that high of “Oh my god I’m gonna work one more day.” That moment stands in my head so clearly, and when I tell people that it was stand-in work… but it didn’t matter. I worked two weeks, and everyday Storaro put a light meter in front of my face, and I said it’s gonna happen some day again.
Lowest Low
Telling my dad I was playing a stripper for really not a lot of money (laughs). Nothing harder than that has ever happened to me.
Have you ever turned a role down?
I turned down another stripper role. And even now, I am part of LABrynth Theater Company back home, and I find myself having to turn down a lot more theater work these days, just because it just doesn’t pay as much. And I’m not in a position yet where I can take off three months and not work. I’d like to be in that position where I can go home and work at LABrynth for $200 a week and do eight shows. Somehow the money doesn’t work out. $200.00 at eight shows a week, and six weeks of rehearsal, and three months of your life where you can’t audtion for anything else. Or you go and do a week on “The Unit” and make $7,000,00. It doesn’t weigh out.
You’ve been acting for eighteen years. Would you say that the industry has changed since you started? And what do you think about the Indie revolution?
Yes. It’s slow. It’s like the ant rolling that big boulder up that hill. But it is changing. When I started acting back in 1988, submitting myself (booked The Bronx War through Backstage West, by the way) I ‘m still married and my name was Rodriguez, my husband’s name, I’m in Jersey with this little Jersey management that is telling me Rodriguez is so Latin., and that I can pass. I should change it. [I ended up with Forte’.]
There was a slow period where I couldn’t even get arrested in New York as a legit actress. I was working with LAByrinth Theater Company, which was not the phenomenon that it is now. I was doing really well commercially and doing a lot of theater work. Thank god because I needed insurance. I couldn’t be a starving actor. I had a kid to feed. I did a lot of production work, too, and I met Gordon [Eriksen] and Heather [Johnston], and they were doing this very low budget independent movie. This was 1989, and they hired me to be a PA for $200 a week, plus room and board in Queens on location because somebody had to stay with all the equipment at night. So here I am living in this big house in Queens with the condition I can go in and out of the city and audition. We started doing this movie, and shot it on 16-mm… and an exhausted cast and crew… I had all these crazy stories about being an actor and they kept saying they were going to write me a story and they did, called Lena’s Dreams in 1995. This film brought me to L.A., and put me in the eyes of the independent world.
What do you think about the “Indie” revolution?
The “Indie” revolution is old for me. I think the digital world has brought accessibility to people, which is wonderful. But it has dropped the quality of stuff. Anybody can become a filmmaker now. But it has opened things up. If I had the digital capabilities back then, wow! We shot Lena’s Dreams on a short end [A short end is a partial roll of unexposed film stock which was left over during a motion picture production], because they lost all their money on that other movie, by the way. $61,000.00 we raised, selling $2500 shares after six readings. The odds were so against us! And yet that’s the one movie that really brought them a lot of attention as filmmakers, and it really put me into the “Indie” scene, and that was in 1996. It’s an old revolution as far as I’m concerned.
You almost need a name now. If I had done Lena’s Dreams now, I don’t know if we would have gotten as much recognition.
Where do you see yourself in five years? Or do you have a plan?
I see myself working. I don’t have set plans. I think you have to be like a palm tree in the wind out there in a tsunami and just be willing to move. When the doors open, you go that way. I have done a lot more television lately than movies. I love acting… from doing radio plays to commercials, to doing live sitcom comedy [“George Lopez” and “My Wife and Kids”]. I love it all. My plan is to keep working.
I do want to do production, and I do produce. I think that’s really important. Because people aren’t writing for us as much, even though it is changing, we need to infuse the market with more work, more stories—our stories, us telling the stories, directing the stories. The idea is to keep working. And not judge how much you’re getting paid for this, but just move forward, produce, and do, and act.
You didn’t start acting until you were almost thirty. Wouldn’t you say that you probably did well at thirty, and are doing well now because you had those thirty years of life experience?
Oh, absolutely! I hung up my college diploma to wait tables for several years. I met people from all over the world. That’s what I do as an actor. I have to recreate people, live—4-dimensional people, if I can. And the only way of doing that is by living and by experiencing things.
Interviewed by Kaylene Peoples
