A Field Guide to Allison Janney

Allison Janney has had one busy summer this year.  She starred in the very funny Melissa McCarthy comedy "Spy" as a head CIA operations and in the upcoming animated juggernaut "Minions", Janney voices "Madge Nelson", a mom on the road who picks up hitchhiking minions to take them to a villains convention.  (Cute!  I am seriously psyched to see "Minions".  I am totally an animation geek.)  She also stars on the TV show "Mom" on CBS with Anna Faris which she won an Emmy for in 2014 and the upcoming season of the Fleshbot-loved Showtime series "Masters of Sex" where Janney plays the role of Margaret Scully--a role for which she has already won one Emmy.  She previously won four Emmys for her role as Press Secretary C.J.Clegg on "The West Wing".  That is a lot of one one MILF--who technically is not a MILF, as she has zero children--to handle but she is one in charge woman who has it all together.

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Janney hails Dayton, Ohio. She was always a tall, lanky girl in the back row of every class picture and she was a student athlete who played field hockey, was a runner on the school track team and dreamed of being a champion figure skater.  A car accident in her teens prevented her skating dreams from coming to fruition and made her go seek inward for her other talents.  She went to Kenyon College in Gambler, Ohio where she studied acting and had the opportunity to act in a play that alumni Paul Newman was directing at the college.  Newman and his very sexy wife Joanne Woodward.  The couple encouraged her to enroll in the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City.  She did and later in Newman's life when he directed stage productions, Janney almost always was in the cast.  Not bad at all, right?

Janney had a lot of trouble getting cast for stage productions because of her height.  She is six feet of awesome and unfortunately, that kept her from being cast in a lot of productions during those early theater days to the point where she found herself questioning whether she had made the right career choice for herself or not.  She fought on and did not let her height and people's view of her body get her down.  

She starred in a made for TV movie called "Blind Spot" with Woodward and Laura Linney and from there, she was cast in a ton of supporting roles in many films.  She was a love interest who cooed over Italian food in the fun comedy "Big Night" starring Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub in 1996 and that same year, she appeared alongside Whoopi Goldberg in the Wall Street comedy, "The Associate".  In 1998, she played Jennifer Aniston's sister in the rom-com "The Object of My Affection"  Getting a leading role on stage, Janney earned a Tony nom for her role in the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge in 1998.

From there, she joined the cast of The West Wing and continued to take film roles on the side.  The played Meryl Streep's lesbian lover in 2002's "The Hours" and in 2007, she played Ellen Page's step-mom in the awesome teen pregnancy comedy "Juno".  Janney was amazing in the role of a drunk single mom in super 2011 Sundance indie hit "The Way Way Back"--rent it if you haven't seen it.

She still is not done with the stage and in 2009, she won another Tony nomination for her work in the musical version of the comedy "9 to 5" and the fact that Janney can sing on top of all of the acting she does should not blow my mind, but it does.  She is fifty-five years old in a business that does not at this point in time favor women when they age so you can not blame her for keeping as many balls in the air as she can.  She is not married and credits that to, as she said in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, "falling in love with gay men".  Hey, that's one way to keep your freedom and with all of that acting work to do, there is no way she is going to be alone any time soon.  "Masters Of Sex" is back on Showtime soon and even though she describes herself as being "not comfortable" doing the sex scenes required of her role on the show, damned if you would ever know it by watching her.  Janney's skills as an actress are honed and with gay husband Beau Bridges at her side--or possibly not--in the next season, she will hold us all hopeful that her character finds more sexual and emotional fulfillment.  Her character's emotional and sexual liberation means a lot to a lot of women and thanks to Janney for telling all of these stories.