As previously reported, Maria is featured on the cover of the May/June issue of Philadelphia Style magazine, and the interview and accompanying photos have now been posted on the magazine’s official site! The photoshoot is a new one, and is absolutely gorgeous! *wow* View the photos in our Gallery and click Read the full story » to read the full interview. Hopefully we will have scans of the magazine soon …
The Good Life
For Norristown native and Hollywood actress Maria Bello, living well means loving deeply, giving back, and visiting Philly as often as she can.
For many people, there’s nothing like returning to old familiar places to reconnect with oneself and take stock of life. For Maria Bello, those sacred spots are Philly and the Jersey Shore. “We go to Sea Isle City,” she says. “We’ve been going there for years, and my family used to own this pizza place [down the Shore] called the Charcoal House. My son, he’s eight years old, and he loves seeing his grammy and poppop, and all his aunts and uncles and Philly cousins.”
Family ties, she says, have always been this strong. Bello, a grad of Archbishop Carroll and Villanova, grew up in Norristown in a tight-knit Polish-Italian clan, the daughter of a construction worker dad and a teacher mom. One of four children, she was on the varsity cheerleading team at Carroll, majored in political science at Villanova, and had dreams of going to law school. By her account, it was a joyful childhood made special by a close community and solid bonds.
“We have a very beautiful extended family in the area, and where we come from, the culture of our town is very focused on family and commitment to the family,” she says, calling from her bungalow in Venice, California, where she lives with her son, Jackson. “No matter what, you stick together. That idea is so very Philly, and Philadelphia is such a big part of my life.”
Bello’s efforts to stay connected with her local roots began 20 years ago when she left home to pursue an acting career. “I went to New York City with two trash bags full of clothes and 300 bucks,” she recalls. “I would come home all the time just to say hi and to get food, and my mom would send me back with Genuardi’s bags filled with meatballs and sauce and cookies and toilet paper.” It was spartan living, she says.
BIG BREAKS
Bello tended bar for years to pay the bills while honing her acting chops in numerous Off-Broadway productions. At 28 she landed a role on a TV series and moved to LA. The spy show, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, bombed and was canceled after a few weeks on the air, but bigger gigs soon followed. In 1997 she scored a star-making 25-episode run as Dr. Anna Del Amico on the medical drama ER.
Years later a few forgettable films gave her entrance into the movie business—2000′s awful Coyote Ugly and Duets were among them—but her commendable performances in those box-office duds gained the attention of respected producers and casting agents, people who would eventually get her work in better pictures. In 2003 Bello struck gold with a role in the critically acclaimed indie flick The Cooler. Starring as William H. Macy’s tortured-soul love interest in a film that costarred Alec Baldwin, she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Film writers adored her pithy, raw, and compelling portrayal of a Vegas cocktail waitress, while female fans lauded her for unabashedly flaunting a fuller figure—most memorably a bare and less-than-perfect post-baby butt in a steamy sex scene with Macy. Two years later she was nominated for a Best Actress Golden Globe for her role as Viggo Mortensen’s on-screen wife in A History of Violence.
Philadelphia Inquirer film critic Steven Rea, who has twice interviewed Bello and written about many of her movies during his time at the paper, says the actress’s smarts and focus allow her to succeed amid challenges that would cause others to falter.
“Whenever I see that she’s in something I’m always interested. She’s really well read and thoughtful and she brings that intelligence to whatever she’s doing. But she has the same plight as a lot of actresses: The leading parts just aren’t there. You’re either the hooker or the wife. Movies, generally speaking, are not being written for women, so actresses end up taking a lot of supporting roles. She’s taking what she can get and making the most of it.”
Her strongest performances, Rea says, show grit and a capacity to uncover and embrace a character’s dualities—vulnerability and strength, piety and shame.
“Permanent Midnight really sticks out in my mind,” he says. “She plays a recovering addict, and it’s just a very sharp performance. For the most part, she does bring something exceptional to what would otherwise be plain roles. Her role in The Cooler was such a clichéd character, but she brought something to it that made it really different. To me, it’s a sign of her adventurousness and her willingness to take risks and to do something that is a little bit edgier.”
The acclaim from Rea and countless other critics has solidified Bello’s reputation as a heavy hitter, a sought-after thespian who can win weighty parts other actors would kill for. “But the thing is, I’ve always held onto my social justice and political leanings,” she says. “[At Villanova] my concentration was in a program called Peace and Justice Education. I had always planned on going to law school to get into politics or to become a women’s rights lawyer. I had no idea what acting was about until I took this class [in college]. I knew at that point that I had to do it. I sort of knew it was a part of my destiny.”
Bello’s experience in that drama class may have uncovered a talent and sparked an interest in the arts, but her other studies at the service-oriented Jesuit school helped to crystallize a passion for charitable work that has kept her active in community outreach since she left the campus in the late ’80s. In 1992, while struggling to get her first break in New York, she cofounded Harlem’s Dreamyard Drama Project, a mentoring initiative that partnered working actors with at-risk youth; in 1998 she embarked on a hurricane-relief trip to Nicaragua sponsored by Save the Children, the beginning of a long-term collaboration with the foundation. And in more recent years Bello has lent her support to Save Darfur as well as to outreach groups that assist women in the Congo. “You see all these problems in the world and you say, ‘Oh my God, what am I supposed to do about it? What can I do?’ But the one truth I’m trying to live is the motto, ‘Just do one little thing; just do what you can.’ I think it’s so important to be of service.”
Her fervor has apparently inspired others in Tinseltown to give back—and fight against the idea of Hollywood as a purely superficial fantasy world. “I’m getting asked all the time by younger actors and actresses and their agents about how to get involved,” Bello says. “That part of Hollywood is really opening up to the idea [of service]…. The truth is, like in every business, every family, every community, maybe half the citizens are interested in the global community and half aren’t. I think the same is true in Hollywood, but that whole celebrity culture of who’s wearing what and who’s f**king whom has really gotten out of control. I think that we [as celebrities] should use that power, but channel it to do more good.”
Recently, working to improve the global community has become almost a full-time calling. “This year, it turns out, I’ve been doing more humanitarian and political stuff than acting,” she says. “[Not long ago] I was in DC, lobbying Congress on behalf of the women of Darfur. I met with [California Senator] Barbara Boxer, the National Security Council, and [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton’s advisors. A lot of stuff came out of those meetings.” Calling political conferences from inside the Beltway may be something that Bello hopes to be doing much more of in years to come, she reveals. “I feel like that’s the second part of my life,” she says. “I think in 10 years I’ll live in DC and go back to politics, where I started. I like the fact that I have one foot in Hollywood and one foot in DC.”
GOING DEEP
“Living the truth,” doing good, and being good is really what Maria Bello is all about. Self-assured, open, and frank, she’s a lover of philosophy who speaks of her own self-discovery as if it were an awakening or an emergence from a cocoon.
“Two weeks ago I was in a bookstore with my fiancé, and I saw a book by [French existentialist Jean-Paul] Sartre called Nausea, and I said, ‘Oh my God, there’s a book from Sartre that I haven’t read!’ And my fiancé said, ‘You do not want to go there again.’ It’s such a big part of my life, questioning and living the questions. I’m constantly analyzing and trying to learn and become the best I can be. Someone once asked me, ‘What’s your goal in life?’ They said theirs was to be happy. And I said, ‘Well, my goal in life is to change and become and grow into the person I was always meant to be.’ [That clarity of purpose] comes from living and maturing and making mistakes, and learning from them.”
So I beg the question: What have you learned, then, in your 42 years?
“I realized that I’ve lived nine lives,” she replies. “When I think back on my teenage years, my college years, I don’t think I’m a different person, but I’m wiser. I certainly have regrets about how I treated people and how I treated myself. But I do believe in cycles of life. I think that everyone has that opportunity to change. I think a lot of people are afraid to open up to new possibilities and ideas about themselves.”
One of her greatest new possibilities came in 2007 in the form of musician, artist, part-time waiter, and lover Bryn Mooser. Bello—who split in 2005 from former DreamWorks TV execturned- screenwriter-producer Dan McDermott, who is Jackson’s father—met Mooser at a local restaurant in Venice where Mooser was working. She flirted, he flirted back, and an intense romance quickly bloomed based on shared passions. Today they’re engaged to be married, though a wedding date has not yet been set.
“He’s just grateful and joyful for what he is and what he has, and because of that really knows how to love in a big way,” Bello says. “He has added so much joy to my life and to my son’s life.” Bello’s deep and dramatic statements about her fiancé are standard, it seems. Shortly after they got engaged, she told Page Six magazine that Mooser “has more character in his little finger than any man I’ve ever met.”
Her excitement at the prospect of getting hitched may be a part of the personal growth of which she speaks so fluently. For years she’d been anti-marriage, and was quoted extensively in the press as saying that the constructs of the institution were unrealistic. In 2006, on the heels of her breakup with McDermott, she told Esquire magazine, “The whole idea of monogamy is nonsensical to me. I suppose I understand the idea of a lifelong helpmate and friend. But when you have to stay sexually monogamous to this one person, I think it’s usually a big fat lie.”
Before I can delve into the reasons behind her radical change of heart, Bello’s cell service starts breaking up and the call is dropped. She calls back right away, but the connection is still crackling and her usually strong voice sounds distorted and warbly.
“So in 20 words or less, describe Bryn,” I say, hoping to end the interview quickly before the phone service enters a dead zone again. The line rumbles with a throaty chuckle: “How can you explain this man in 20 words? He’s perhaps the most joyful, in-the-moment person I’ve ever encountered. I just feel like the luckiest woman in the world to have met him and to have a best friend and a partner in life.”
Lucky, perhaps. But more likely Bello’s newfound happiness stems from finally knowing herself and being herself—the person she was always meant to be.
