Derailed Film Stars: The Teetering Career of Tea Leoni

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http://www.twcc.com/articles/2014/08...r-of-tea-leoni

Tea Leoni has always excelled at playing the tightly-wound and slightly neurotic. As Patricia Arquette observed in romantic comedy Flirting With Disaster, "You know, she may be attractive, but she's got a screw loose." Leoni has been making headlines more for her personal life than her professional life following her recent divorce from David Duchovny after 17 years of marriage. With her witty, irreverent personality and enviable figure, Leoni was always leading lady material but wasn't always picky with her roles. For her first project in three years, she'll star in the new CBS fall drama Madam Secretary, where she will play a crisis-plagued politician with obvious Hillary Clinton connotations. But before she slips back onto the small screen, here's a look at some of her career's hits and misses from over the years.

http://www.twcc.com/articles/2014/08...of-tea-leoni.5

ABC's The Naked Truth -- The First Try

Before movie stars were jumping ship to TV on a regular basis, Leoni made the switch from big screen to small screen star with the delightful workplace comedy, The Naked Truth, from Bosom Buddies creator Chris Thompson. Thompson found a fresh face for the show in Leoni, who starred as a former Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer who winds up at a trashy tabloid after a nasty divorce. Having already established herself in film, the zippy sitcom endeared Leoni to the rest of mainstream America as the formally classy professional who gets thrown into sleaze-peddling with hilarious results.

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I was reading comments on why it was difficult for Carrie Fisher to truly breakout of her Star Wars shadow and become a real A-list film star (Carrie Fisher more or less, became a character actress) like her cohort Harrison Ford was able to do. A big part of that could've been how she came across. To put it in another way, because Carrie had an authoritative voice she simply seemed much older than she actually was. Like in the first Star Wars movie, Carrie was about 20 years old but she could've easily passed as being 30.

In the '80s if you wanted a woman you could be tough and authoritative, you usually went with Sigourney Weaver or Jamie Lee Curtis. Carrie couldn't really cross-over into say, romantic comedy territory because they needed women who were a little gentler.

Now as for Tea Leoni, it's arguable that she kind of had the similar problem as Carrie Fisher (though Leoni is a Gen Xer while Carrie Fisher was a Baby Boomer). It wasn't until she landed Madam Secretary years after her Bad Boys/Flying Blind/Naked Truth breakthrough that she finally found the right role came to her at the right time at the right age. In other words, sometimes actresses just fit better in roles as they get older.