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People Are Stopping Me In The Street Again Jane Leeves Has Struck Sitcom Gold Again
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'People are stopping me in the street again!': Actress Jane Leeves has struck sitcom gold again
By Jane Mulkerrins
Last updated at 12:10 AM on 13th February 2011
As Daphne in the hit US TV series Frasier she charmed audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Now British export Jane Leeves has struck sitcom gold again with new show Hot in Cleveland. And, as Jane Mulkerrins discovers, she’s as fabulous – and funny – as ever
'To have four women of 40-plus being funny together is incredible,' says Jane
It's Friday night in Studio City, Los Angeles, and one of our most successful British exports, actress Jane Leeves, is camping it up centre-stage in a satin nightdress, while the studio audience loudly shows its appreciation. I’m on the set of Hot in Cleveland, a soft-centred, female-led sitcom that has already scored a surprise hit in the US and will arrive on UK screens this week. From my seat among the fans, Jane – who found fame as Daphne Moon in the award-winning comedy Frasier – looks incredible, with glossy, chestnut locks and lean dancer’s legs.
The following week we meet back on set, in the warm Californian winter sunshine. Clad in black jeans and a grey cardigan, Jane, who will turn 50 in April, looks fabulously (but not unnaturally) youthful. ‘I haven’t succumbed to the scalpel yet,’ she confirms. And as she approaches the milestone birthday, she is also enjoying a career renaissance, thanks to the success of Hot in Cleveland. The show’s (admittedly slightly improbable) premise has three female friends of a certain age – Joy (played by Jane), a celebrity eyebrow technician; Melanie, a recently divorced writer (played by Valerie Bertinelli), and Victoria, a soap star whose series has just been cancelled after 27 years (played by Wendie Malick) – leaving Los Angeles for a holiday in Paris. When their flight is diverted to Cleveland, they find their sexual stock is far higher there than in body-conscious, youth-obsessed LA, and decide to stay, renting a house from an elderly Polish landlady, played by octogenarian Golden Girls star Betty White.
Jane is clearly relishing her role. ‘Joy is most famous for plucking Oprah’s eyebrows, but all her clients have started cheating on her with other beauticians, and she’s about to be deported back to the UK because of a problem with her green card. Joy is complex,’ she explains, with a tiny transatlantic twang born of spending almost
30 years in the US. ‘She makes wisecracks, but she’s actually rather messed up. She had a child when she was 15, who she gave up for adoption, so she is carrying around a lot of baggage and is trying to find herself. She’s sad, but she’s a survivor.’
There has been an overwhelming response to Hot in Cleveland in the States. ‘And not just from women of our age, but from a surprising cross section of ages and both genders,’ says Jane. ‘People are stopping me in the street again, even more than they did during the Frasier years. I don’t know if that’s because Hot in Cleveland is more accessible. Frasier was a bit highbrow – sometimes even I didn’t understand the jokes.’
Pick of the bench: Jane (third from left) with her Hot in Cleveland co-stars
Frasier followed the fortunes of radio psychiatrist Frasier Crane (played by Kelsey Grammer), his buttoned-up brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce), their crotchety father Martin (John Mahoney) and his jack russell Eddie. Jane played Daphne – Martin’s physiotherapist and housekeeper to the Crane men – who ended up marrying Niles.
The show was both a critical and commercial triumph, with a record 37 Emmy wins and armies of ardent fans around the world. But British to the end, Jane bats away hyperbole. ‘I remember being on Oprah, and she asked us what it was like, being famous. I had to admit that apart from people stopping me to say they enjoyed the show, I hadn’t really noticed that much of a difference,’ she claims. ‘I live in LA, where there are so many more famous people than me. I go to the supermarket and there is Clint Eastwood in the fresh produce aisle. And I saw Jodie Foster at the airport the other day.’
While she may brush off the fame factor, by the time her run with Frasier ended in 2004, Jane was reportedly the highest-paid British actress in Hollywood, reputedly earning £20 million for the final three series. ‘Well, that’s what they say,’ is all she will reveal about the actual sum. Such dizzy heights must be tricky for any actress to clamber down from, but she insists that what she missed most was the security provided by her colleagues. ‘We were a real little family, and I didn’t know what
I was going to do without them,’ she says. ‘I’d had 11 superbly happy years, in which I met my husband, had two children – everything great I have was given to me in those years.’ In fact, the Frasier family has managed to stick together: ‘I live next door to Peri [Gilpin, who played radio producer Roz Doyle] – we take care of each other’s children, and she’s cooking dinner tonight. David and I talk all the time – he’s godfather to my son, as is John. And I see Kelsey whenever I can, although it’s hard for us all to get together because John is based in Chicago and the boys are in New York.
Glory days: Jane with the cast of Frasier
‘But knowing I wasn’t going to see them all every day was immensely sad,’ she continues. ‘You have to just put it in perspective and say, “Right, I have enough money now that I don’t need to worry, and I get to stay at home and take care of my children.” And that is a fabulous opportunity – you never get those years back.’
Not that the decision to stay out of the limelight was entirely planned, she admits. ‘I never actually said out loud that I wanted to take time out to spend with my children. But I did say I wasn’t going to take on anything else unless it was right, and great parts just weren’t coming along.’
There was a time when she wondered if the break would last too long. ‘A few years ago, a director told me, “Don’t worry, when you get to 55, or perhaps 60 or 65, that’s when you’ll start working again.” He said directors want the young babe, or the old lady. He pointed out that Judi Dench and Helen Mirren didn’t start working again until they were in their 50s.’ She looks triumphant and laughs: ‘Ha! He was wrong!’
The second child of four, Jane grew up in unremarkable modesty in East Grinstead, Sussex, the daughter of Ruth, a nurse, and Colin, an engineer. (As Joy in Hot in Cleveland she uses her own voice – unlike the Northern accent she adopted to play Daphne.) At five, she decided she wanted to be a ballerina, and in an early sign of her determination won a scholarship to the local dance and drama school. Her ambitions were thwarted when she fell down some stairs and tore the ligaments in her ankle – she would still be able to dance, but would never be a prima ballerina – so she turned to plan B: acting.
Fresh out of drama school, she decamped to London at 18 and won small (and sometimes scantily clad) roles, appearing on The Benny Hill Show and with Morecambe and Wise, but the dream wasn’t materialising fast enough. ‘I thought, go to Los Angeles, that’s where you go to be an actress. I was 21, I got myself on a plane and I made my way here.Looking back, I think I must have been an idiot. But I was young and blindly believed it was going to work out.’ She credits her parents with being ‘wonderful’ about it. ‘If they’d said tearfully at the airport, “Don’t go, honey”, I’d probably have said, “All right, I won’t”, because upping sticks and moving is scary.’
She spent the first 18 months Stateside in auditions and acting classes, babysitting and selling Hollywood tourist souvenirs to earn money, and for a while she packed nail accessories in a factory – until she was fired for being too chatty. She has called this time her dark period, when she couldn’t stop crying, could barely afford to eat,
and was urged by her parents to return home. ‘But I stuck with it – I knew something would happen,’ she says. She eventually landed a role as wacky secretary Audrey on the sitcom Murphy Brown, then appeared in Seinfeld and, by the time Frasier turned up, had three solid job offers on the table.
While her professional life soared, her personal life lagged behind, and by around 35, single for four years but keen to start a family, she was considering adoption. Then, at the office Christmas party, she met Paramount executive Marshall Coben, one year her junior. They were married the following Christmas; their daughter Isabella is now ten, and their son Finn is seven.
Her domestic setup in the sandy suburb of Malibu sounds idyllic. ‘My husband is a surfer and lives for the water – he runs out on to the beach every morning,’ she sighs, ‘but for me, it doesn’t beat living in London.’ After almost three decades, the call of home is stronger than ever. ‘When I go home once a year to see my parents and my brother and sister who still live there, I just lap up everything English. But I could never drag my husband away from the surf. It’s almost spiritual for him. And all of this is fantastic,’ she adds, waving her arms around the dressing room of her second smash-hit show. ‘But all of that – the family stuff – keeps all of this in check. To have four women of 40-plus being funny together is incredible, and I hope it continues for many years to come, but we all have other very important things in our lives too.’
And with that – back on screen and on top comic form in time for her 50th birthday – she leaves to pick up Isabella and Finn from school and get on with her other very important things.
Hot in Cleveland starts Tuesday, 8.30pm, Sky Living.
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02-13-2011, 06:39 AM
