Carla Gugino’s résumé is rather idiosyncratic. The film and television side is packed with comic-book adaptations (“Watchmen”), horror (“The Haunting of Hill House”), thrillers (“Karen Sisco”) and sci-fi (“Wayward Pines”). The theater side lists plays by the likes of Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill and Athol Fugard. Who else straddles such a wide range? We’ll wait.
This stylistic whiplash is typical of Gugino’s career: She followed up the 1993 Pauly Shore comedy “Son in Law” with “Of Mice and Men” at Rochester’s Geva Theater, then in 2004 she made her Broadway debut with Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall” — at a time when her main claim to fame was playing the mom in the “Spy Kids” franchise.
While she has worked steadily onscreen for the past 30 years, with a few memorable roles under her belt (most recently in the harrowing “Gerald’s Game”), it’s the theater world that has offered truly challenging material. “Hollywood never quite knew what to do with her,” said Robert Falls, who directed Gugino in O’Neill’s feverishly operatic “Desire Under the Elms.” “Her performance in ‘Desire’ was this combination of a fierce intelligence, a deep emotional well she was able to draw from and a — very rare onstage — true sensuality.”
Now, Gugino continues to display her taste for abrupt juxtapositions by moving from the sleek Cinemax crime series “Jett,” created by her longtime partner and frequent collaborator, Sebastian Gutierrez, to the thematically and formally challenging play “Anatomy of a Suicide,” by the British playwright Alice Birch. In “Jett,” Gugino portrays the taciturn titular thief, citing Clint Eastwood and Toshiro Mifune as her inspirations. At the Atlantic Theater, she is Carol, the eldest of three generations of women who enact their lives in separate but overlapping time frames juxtaposed onstage like a split screen. As the title indicates, the role is intense.
Over lunch at the plant-based restaurant abcV (“I’m not vegetarian; this is just good food”), and in email exchanges afterward, Gugino, 48, displayed an agile mind and boundless intellectual curiosity. She contextualized her work with often obscure references, including to the 1961 French film “Léon Morin, Priest” (her dog is named after that film’s director, Jean-Pierre Melville) and the actor-director Barbara Loden. Suddenly, her seemingly haphazard career started to make an odd kind of sense. These are edited excerpts from the conversations and emails.
Why did you choose “Anatomy of a Suicide” to return to the stage?
I was aware of Alice’s writing because she’d done the film adaptation of [Nikolai Leskov’s] “Lady Macbeth,” and I knew that she wrote on “Succession.” Then the play came to me because one of my agents represents her. I’d been very adamant for the last several years about wanting to do another play but many elements conspired to make that not happen until now. I’d also been working in various places — Atlanta, Toronto, Berlin, Pittsburgh, Vancouver — and I hadn’t been home [in New York] in ages.
Your screen and stage careers seem to be in different universes. How did you go from “Spy Kids” to “After the Fall,” for instance?
There is no doubt that Maggie [in “Fall”] was the best role I’d ever had the opportunity to play at that point. It was a crazy thing for Michael Mayer to cast me because he had so many seasoned Broadway actresses to choose from. What was freeing is that I knew every intricacy of a set but I didn’t know how theater worked. There was something wonderful about going, “O.K., I know how to act but I don’t know if a Thursday night audience is better than a Wednesday night audience.” It was really life-changing.
What is it like to rehearse an experimental show like “Anatomy of a Suicide”?
It is one of the most challenging experiences I’ve ever had. These three stories are taking place simultaneously, so we are in our scene taking cues from somebody on the other side of the stage. I didn’t know how we could do this without Alice being here at the beginning of rehearsal. And Lileana [Blain-Cruz, director of “Anatomy”] has a wonderful sense of humor, which you really need when rehearsing a play like this. Not to say that a man could not have directed this beautifully, but this play is so deeply female. It is as much a celebration of life as it is an exploration of suicide.
Do you see a through-line in your career?
When I was 13 I set out to be a transformational actor. There are many incredible stage actors who have no interest in doing film, or vice versa, but for me every medium feeds the others. I’m able to explore different genres and different characters, and people seem to know me from different alleys. In a way it represents what I want, but perhaps it’s a little confusing in terms of perception. I never set out to do genre movies, by the way — it’s just that they were where I had the most interesting opportunity to explore a character. But then you can get in that box.
You did the “Karen Sisco” series in 2003, back when film and television were pretty separate.
I remember very clearly I was doing “Spin City,” “Judas Kiss” and Brian De Palma’s “Snake Eyes” all in that span of time, and people were like, “You’re getting these roles in film, why are you doing TV?” Well, because one is a sitcom with Michael J. Fox, who is a genius in that medium so of course I want to do that and learn from him, and then I get to do “Snake Eyes” — why wouldn’t I? It was very delineated at that time.
Do you think there’s a gap between the way you are perceived — often as a bombshell — and what you want to accomplish as an actress?
When I was an ingénue, I never sounded like one. I was at least 10 years too young when I did the “Spy Kids” movie, and I then struggled with the fact that people thought I was much older than I was. So I would be in a situation where they would think I was older than Brad Pitt or the leading man of that moment, and I’d go, “No, no, I’m only 28!” I knew I would hit my stride when I hit 30, when the inside and the outside of me would start to connect more. And my best roles started coming in my 30s and even in my 40s.
What kind of roles are on your wish list?
I’ve long wanted to play the Marquise de Merteuil in “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” and Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” I’m getting to an age where those towering characters are nearer on the horizon [smiles]. And I do have a soft spot for Noël Coward’s “Private Lives.” I would love to do a romantic comedy, or a proper screwball comedy — “His Girl Friday” was one of the most influential movies for me.
Do you think theater offers better roles to women — and possibly a longer career?
When I was turning 40, I did the movie “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” with Angela Lansbury, who was in her 80s at the time. I said to her, “You know, I’ve decided I don’t want to do anything to my face, so I’ll act in film until they say I’m too old to be a lead and then I’ll do plays and I’ll produce movies, until I can play the really cool old lady.” She looked at me like I was an alien and said, “But you’re so young.” Not for Hollywood!
