Judith Light

Judith Light
Time for a Different Tony
by Iris Wiener
Judith Light is most well-known for her two-time Best Actress Emmy
award-winning turn as Karen Wolek on One Life to Live and as Angela
Bower, Tony Danza’s sparring partner and “boss” on the hit comedy series
Who’s the Boss
Judith Light bears a very appropriate name. Her peers and colleagues
know her as a warm-hearted, compassionate person and Light uses her
celebrity to raise awareness for a long list of charities, all of which she
holds close to her heart. She recently made a lasting impression in the New
York theater as well, earning her first Drama Desk and Tony nods in 2011
for her role in Lombardi as Marie Lombardi, the famed football coach’s
wife. 2012 brought Light her first Drama Desk and Tony Awards for her
memorable work in the Lincoln Center Theater production of Other Desert
Cities as Silda, a screenwriter freshly dried out after a stint in rehab. Amidst
the onslaught of awards season events and getting the new Judith Light
Jewelry Collection off the ground, she reflected on her career past, present,
and future.
“If we let ourselves know
each other, we’ll have
compassion and love for one
another.”
How was being an only child helpful on your path to becoming a professional
actress
I had incredibly supportive parents who spent a lot of time and focus on
me. They didn’t enable me and they made sure I was extremely disciplined in
everything that I did, including my schoolwork and in the show business path
that I was taking. They were really thrilled about my acting because that was
something that they really wanted to do.
My dad, who was an extraordinary man, recently passed away. He modeled
for me the kind of discipline that one had to have in any field. He was in the
food business and he used to have to get up at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning in
order to get to work, and then he would get home at 6 o’clock and would go to
sleep. When I started doing plays and community theater, he would drive me
45 minutes to rehearsal, sleep in the car, and then drive me home. If you have
other children it makes it much harder to be able to do things like that.
The other important piece of being an only child is that I didn’t have a lot of
friends or people around me, so my joy and my pleasure came from books and
plays, and those characters became my friends. I remember when I was quite
young sitting in my room just reading O’Neill and Shakespeare, and connecting
to those characters. If you have a lot of other people in your household you
tend to be more distracted, but I wasn’t. Those were some of the things that
really helped to focus my work that has been coming to fruition now.