By Ellen McCarthy
The Washington Post
Cloris Leachman talks about her existence with the kind of relish ó the head-back, eyes-closed indulgence ó most of us reserve for a spectacular dessert.
“Ahhhhhh,” she exhales as if words were not enough. “Life is wonnnnnnderful. Ahhhhhh.”
It’s particularly wonderful at the moment, because Leachman is in bed. (“Well, I’m at the Four Seasons, and who wouldn’t want to get into bed?”)
She is 82, the mother of five, grandmother of six, great-grandmother of one. She just stole the show at a roast of Bob Saget, she’s about to become the oldest contestant on “Dancing With the Stars” and she appears on the big screen alongside Meg Ryan and Annette Bening in the X-chromosome ensemble dramedy “The Women.”
She is in the 60th year of her professional career, having thus far garnered nine Emmys and an Oscar. Her single complaint is that there aren’t more roles ó bigger roles ó for folks her age. Regardless, Leachman intends to nab a few more statues before she’s through.
“I kind of saw my life when I was about 6,” she recalls of her start, as a child in Des Moines. “I saw myself standing in a pool of light.”
Two years later her mother would dress her up as a grasshopper in a homemade production of one of Aesop’s fables. Twelve years after that she would represent Chicago in the Miss America pageant. By the mid-1950s she was a television regular and started appearing in films with the likes of Paul Newman. The Academy Award came in 1971 for her work as a supporting actress in “The Last Picture Show.”
Leachman was Mary Tyler Moore’s pushy landlord, the second-string ditzy den mom on “The Facts of Life” and the bitter, chain-smoking grandma on “Malcolm in the Middle.”
These days, it seems, if there’s a role for a zany old woman, she’s got it. Foul-mouthed grande dame? She’s a shoo-in. Deadpanning blue-hair in an apron?
Well, that’s the part she was offered in “The Women,” a remake of the 1939 movie based on the play by Clare Booth Luce about a group of high-society friends torn apart after one of them learns her husband is cheating.
“I had the MOST wonderful time,” she says of filming “The Women,” which also features Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith, Eva Mendes, Candice Bergen and Bette Midler. “The house was so beautiful, so much fun to be in. And the girls were just darling, wonderful women. SUCH good actresses.”
She adored the gig. She always does.
“It’s the MOST fun. I just love it,” she gushes. “It’s not work. It’s fun.”
Fun that she intends to go on having forever.
But between acting jobs, she made time to blow the roof off the Saget roast last month, broadcast on Comedy Central and replayed thousands of times on Internet. (And no, it can’t be reprinted in a family newspaper.)
“Oh, it was so funny,” she says, bursting into giggles on the phone at the thought of her performance. She didn’t actually write the speech but lapped up every word in her delivery. “They were so worried about me because I was laughing so much. … They came and said, ‘Now, don’t laugh when you say it.’ ”
And for the most part, she didn’t.
As for “Dancing With the Stars,” well: “Ahhhhhh, it’s thrilling. Ahhhhh, it’s the most fun in the world,” she says.
“But I don’t know what I’m going to do after this,” she continues. “Well, I have an idea. I think I’m going to do ‘American Idol.’ What else can I do? Then I’m gonna join ‘The Dog Whisperer.’ ”
Point is, she’s not done yet. (“How can you be?”)
She loves it all too much to turn away. Just like in the new movie, she loves the women in her life: “My mother-in-law was my closest friend in all the world, and her daughter is my closest friend in all the world.” She loves the men, even ex-husband George Englund: “He’s the most adorable man I’ve ever known. He’s darling. World-class man.” She loves the career, the kids, the grandkids. She loves Obama, “who is going to change the world.” She loves the Olympics and delicious dinners and dancing and jokes and songs and shows and, oh, just all of it.Even this, which she might not really love: talking to one reporter after another all day long. If she tries, she can even love this.
“It’s what you have to do, so you do it,” she quips. “You make it fun.”