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July 13, 2001/Tamuz 22, 5761, Vol. 53, No.40
Actress defies Hollywood stereotypes
NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Los Angeles Jewish Journal
Camryn Manheim walked into David Kelley's office, feeling glum. She knew the executive producer didn't want her for his new ABC drama, "The Practice." After all, Hollywood typically ridiculed women who were 5-foot-10 and a size 22.
Kelley practically yawned throughout her interview. "It was disastrous," Manheim says.
But slinking out of his office that day in 1996, the Jewish actress spotted a cribbage board - and felt a spark of chutzpah. "Why don't we f- this audition and I'll play you right now for the part?" she said.
Kelley didn't play Manheim that day. But he was impressed enough to create a "Practice" role just for her: the gutsy, no-nonsense lawyer Ellenor Frutt.
"When I got the phone call from my agent, saying that I had gotten the part, I sat down in the middle of my kitchen floor ... and wept," Manheim wrote in her 1999 memoir, "Wake Up, I'm Fat!" (Broadway Books, $14 paperback).
Her sense of victory was sweet. It came after a bitter, 20-year battle for acceptance in a business that worships svelte supermodels - a battle that nearly cost Manheim her life.
When her NYU drama professors strongly suggested she lose weight or leave the program in the late 1980s, she began taking speed drugs and accidentally overdosed.
"For the longest time, I hated myself because I was fat," she says. "I let just one thing define me. Then I decided I wasn't going to conform to a standard that wasn't developed with me in mind."
Manheim's campaign against the beauty myth culminated with her accepting an Emmy for best supporting actor in 1998. Wearing a low-cut Emanuel black gown, Payless shoes and Target earrings (12 in one ear), the "Practice" star thrust the award high over her head and declared, "This is for all the fat girls."
The show offered the perfect opportunity to advance her cause. "It's abhorrent to me that women hate themselves so much for being overweight. I want to do everything in my power to fight that."
Fighting injustice appears to be genetic for her. Born Deborah Frances Manheim, she grew up in a culturally Jewish home in Long Beach, Calif. Her Polish immigrant grandfather was an early organizer of the millinery workers union. Her mother, Sylvia, attended the Yiddishist-socialist IWO schools and worked as a switchboard operator for the Communist Party. Her father, Jerry, a math professor, picketed segregated restaurants in the 1950s - and was denounced as a communist by Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
Nevertheless, the Manheims continued to equate their Judaism with social action, toting young Camryn to rallies to protest racism and the Vietnam War.
During her childhood, Manheim, now 40, felt her parents supported every kind of underdog save one: the fat person. When Manheim began gaining weight at age 11, her parents shelled her to a series of psychiatrists and hypnotists. Manheim's self-esteem plummeted.
A few years later, she found respite working summers at the Renaissance Faire, where big, busty wenches were de rigeur. More acceptance followed at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where the actress wore Birkenstocks and protested against the Miss California pageant.
But when Manheim enrolled in NYU's esteemed graduate drama program in the 1980s, she ran into size discrimination. Professors hounded her to reduce. "They said 'You are never going to work if you are a big girl,' " the actress says.
A desperate Manheim began taking speed daily to lose weight. When she dropped 80 pounds, her professors were jubilant. "But I was a wreck," she says. After her near-fatal overdose, she quit drugs and nicotine - and promptly gained back all her weight.
Back in New York, she immersed herself in liberal causes, took a job as a sign-language interpreter and worked on regaining her self-esteem. When leading roles didn't come her way, she wrote a hilarious, poignant one-woman show, "Wake Up, I'm Fat!" about being fat in a society obsessed with being thin.
When a casting director sent Kelley some videotaped scenes of the show, Manheim earned an audience with the TV drama king.
In 1996 she snagged the role of Frutt, who, like Manheim, is culturally Jewish and determined to fight for the underdog. But her very first day on "The Practice," the actress discovered she would have to play an additional role: that of "Fat Police." When the director described her character's first shot - Frutt eating a doughnut - Manheim convinced him to eliminate the food, not wanting to reinforce stereotypes.
When Manheim later learned that a love interest was in the works for Ellenor, she lobbied Kelley to cast a hunk in the role. Not only did she get her wish (actor J.C. McKenzie), she also convinced Kelley to write her some juicy love scenes.
Off the set, Manheim continued to lobby against the beauty myth and to show that "big women can be sexy."
In April, Manheim starred in and executive-produced the ABC movie, "Kiss My Act," a rare television program in which the fat girl gets the cute guy. She says the self-hating letters she receives from overweight women motivates her. "They're heartbreaking," she says.
Since winning her Emmy, Manheim has been featured on magazine covers for People, TV Guide, Mode (directed to full-figured women) and More.
Though she doesn't belong to a synagogue, she supports Hadassah and an annual ball to benefit Bet Tzedek Legal Services.
"Jewish charities offer opportunities for everyone, which is what I love about the Jews," the actress says. "You do not have to be a certified Jew to reap the benefits."
"The Practice" airs Sundays, 9 p.m. on ABC.
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