Best known for her work in film and on television, actress Margot Kidder, 61, has been making a stage appearance in Toronto this month in Love, Loss, and What I Wore.
In the play by Nora and Delia Ephron, presented at the Panasonic Theatre, Kidder plays Gingy, who tells her life story while drawing and describing the outfits she wore at specific moments. (Her co-stars, who are also rotating out at the end of the week, are Lauren Collins, Wendy Crewson, Cynthia Dale and Linda Kash.) The Yellowknife-born star of the Superman movies of the 1980s and one-time girlfriend of Pierre Trudeau spoke to The Globe and Mail over the phone.
Do you connect with moments in your life through what you were wearing at the time?
Not really. For the last 16 years, I've lived in Livingston, Mont., a place where you wear jeans in the winter and the summer. Unless I'm away in the big city, it's not something I think about very much, although I used to when I was young.
Did you choose the black outfit you're wearing in the play, or was it the costume designer?
We chose it together. My character is basically the narrator and older than the other women - I wanted her very much to look older than the other women, which I do anyway. She wears an Eileen Fisher suit - and Eileen Fisher's made fun of as something only older people wear.
That line Wendy Crewson delivers - "When you start wearing Eileen Fisher, you might as well say, 'I give up'" - is a controversial one.
I cross my arms and snarl. Basically, she's denigrating older women who love Eileen Fisher because it covers all sorts of bumps and still looks fabulous.
And then you stand up for Eileen Fisher later, too. I read that Rosie O'Donnell had the defence added in when she was in the play off-Broadway, because she's a fan.
Good for her. I love that line. I think there's a lot in that line, beyond Eileen Fisher, if you know what I mean. When I say, I love this outfit, I'm saying I love being 64, so there. (I'm 61, but Gingy is 64.) I do find being older very liberating.
Are you enjoying being a grandmother as much as your character?
I have two beautiful grandchildren. They live about three blocks from me and it's about the most perfect, divine set-up any human being could ask for.
Which hockey game did you take your grandson to at the Vancouver Olympics?
The semi-final. My grandson Charlie was initially mortified that his grandmother was yelling. He took a lot of pictures of Sidney Crosby's back. Right there and then, he stopped being a Montreal Canadiens fan and became a Penguins fan.
Oh. Too bad. I was personally very happy when the Habs beat the Penguins in the playoffs this year.
Me too. But Charlie was shattered.
There's a line in one of the characters' speeches about a Habs fan. That must be added in for the Toronto production?
It was. Both Lauren and I are huge Habs fans. When the American director came up, she said "Why don't you say the Montreal Canadiens?" Lauren and I fought to keep that it way.
So there's no outfit that's very important to you - not a costume that brings you back?
Not that I can think of. I got named worst dressed at the Oscar one year, so I know what that dress looked like.
What was it?
Something I grabbed off a rack. I remember Earl Blackwell said, "Her dress looked like an inverted lampshade."
That didn't scar you?
I thought it was pretty funny actually. I used to love shopping, but it's one of those things that you're liberated from when you get older. Unless you're one of those older people trying to look younger, which, boy, to me is too much work.
This interview has been condensed and edited.