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Lainie Kazan For Real There’s no mistaking that full-throttled laugh that undulates in sensual waves even over the phone. New York native Lainie Kazan’s deep, husky tones float through the airwaves loud and clear – even 3,000 miles away on a car phone en route to getting her nails done. This is one busy Lainie. Not that she wasn’t hard-working before. But this philanthropic mega-talent (who’ll be performing May 31 at Westbury Music Fair) is juggling much more than usual these days. Except this mid-week day, she’s running around for personal, rather than professional, purposes. After dropping her granddaughter Isabella off at toddler-karate class, Kazan was ready for a mini-respite from her over- scheduled work week. “I’m on my way to get my nails done and I’m not working this week,” she confided during a recent interview wedged in between chores. “And I’m leaving for a little R&R so I can just breathe, take a massage, take a mud bath, anything like that,” she sighed in anticipation. “No activity, I just want to go into a pretty space because my brain hurts,” she laughed. What kind of special treats was she looking forward to? “Everything. I like acupressure and acupuncture and foot massage. I love it all,” she said enthusiastically. Where was she off to for this much-deserved three-days-of-divine-decadence? “I’m not telling,” she laughed. This zaftig, Brooklyn native has been multitasking before there was even a word for it during her still-going-strong 35-year career. But now, the California transplant has to carefully orchestrate every task down to the nanosecond for one simple reason: My Big Fat Greek Wedding. LIW Digital Edition Bonus Pages ethnicity is Greek. Kazan was barely taking a breather from her whirlwind television and touring schedule when the phone rang. “There I was at home and the call came asking me to read for the part of Maria in an independent film to be financed by Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson. I was asked to do what is called a ‘table-read’ of a script that was maybe going to be made into a movie,” she continued. “Tom said, ‘Listen, if we ever make this into a movie we want you for the mother.’ And I said, ‘yeah, sure,’” she laughed, figuring that would be pretty unlikely. No one thought in their wildest dreams that the slim tale would have such legs, she added. With the movie having grossed more than $100 million, and video sales and rentals racking up even more profit, everyone involved was understandably thrilled with the little-sleeper-that-could. The victory is even sweeter, Kazan said, since first-time critics thought the movie a sentimental, albeit well-made, television-type treacle with a terrific cast. So much for the discernment of critics. The public’s reaction was a different story, as everyby Naomi Serviss “I love Long Island. Some of the best years of my life were spent there.” The stratospheric popularity of this little indie movie about an ugly duckling with a fairy tale ending, took everyone involved by surprise. Producers Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson deigned it a labor of love after Wilson saw the one-woman stage version of the story in Los Angeles. But not even Nostradamus could have predicted the meteoric success of the sweetnatured romantic comedy about an over-involved Greek family. In the movie and television series based on it, Kazan plays Maria, a broadly-drawn ethnic character steeped in maternal love and simmering with familial devotion. Except this time, instead of her tackling the Jewish or Italian mother stereotype, the Lainie Kazan interview from Long Island Woman May 2003
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