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Tony winner lands a "Beautiful" TV role.
John Tanasychuk, Detroit Free Press, January 8th, 1999
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One of the great Verdi
masterpieces, this opera
features breathtaking arias
and an explosive cast,
including the incomparable
EWA PODLES'
COMPANY PREMIERE!
Performed in Italian with
English Surtitle Translations
FREE OPERA TALK
one hour prior
to performance
Giuseppe Verdi
A Masked Ball
October 18-26
Un Ballo in
Maschera
at The Detroit Opera House
CALL (313) 237-SING for Tickets ...
10/17
2003
74
or order on line at:
www.MichiganOpera.org
ciKeterCfonzAamy,
The 2003 Fall Season is made
possible by Ford Motor Company
Special to the Jewish News
arissa Jaret Winokur
charmed Broadway audi-
ences with her Tony
Award-winning turn as
teenager Tracy Turnblad in Hairspray.
Now she's taking on a similarly light-
hearted, semi-musical project in the TV
movie Beautiful Girl, premiering Sunday
on the ABC Family Channel.
Winokur plays a newly engaged
schoolteacher who enters a local beau-
ty pageant to try to win a honeymoon
trip to Hawaii. But as embodied by
the tiny but curvaceous Winokur,
Becca Wasserman is not your typical
size 2 pageant contestant.
"Being a size 11-12, I am a very nor-
mal, average person. But society makes
that out to be 'the fat girl,"' acknowledges
Winokur, whose character deals with
image and mother issues in the story.
When Mom, played by Jewish
actress Fran Drescher (The Nanny),
questions Becca's motives for entering
the contest, "it makes her want to do it
even more," says Winokur, who both
loved and related to the family dynam-
ic that focuses on three generations of
strong Jewish women.
Several scenes play out over boisterous
brunches with Becca, her mother, sister
and grandmother, all talking at once and
outnumbering the sole male in the
group, Becca's fiance, Adam (Mark
Consuelos, the real-life spouse of
actress/talk-show host Kelly Rip).
"It's so much like my family," notes
Winokur, the youngest of four kids in a
close-knit clan.
While working in Toronto with fellow
native New Yorker Fran Drescher, "my
full accent came out," laughs Winokur,
who's playing a Jewish character for the
first time in Beautiful Girl
She sings three songs in the movie,
two written by her friend Deborah
Gibson (they met as cast mates in Grease
10 years ago). But, she insists, "to this
day, I don't think of myself as a singer.
I'm an actress who sings — the singing
part comes second."
Nevertheless, she's preparing to do a
TV remake of the musical Once Upon a
Mattress (based on the fairy tale The
Princess and the Pea), with Carol Burnett
as the Queen. Winokur also has a deal
Bic
with ABC and Touchstone TV for a sit-
com, possibly for fall 2004.
"I don't want to do a role that has to
do with my weight. I really just want to
play a very strong woman who's as close
to me as possible, and a positive role
model for young girls and women in
general," she asserts.
Winokur, a self-described class clown
who paid her dues for a decade on stage,
in TV guest shots and in small roles in
films like American Beauty, co-produced
Beautiful Girl and hopes to do more
producing in the future.
She's been dating TV writer Judah
Miller for four years — her first Jewish
boyfriend. She expects to raise future
offspring "way more religious than my
parents raised me," but motherhood will
have to wait for now
"I'm not ready 'to have children yet,
but I need children in my life," declares
"total workaholic" Winokur, who loves
to lavish attention on her nieces,
nephews and godchildren.
"I am everyone's favorite aunt and
favorite godmother," she says. "I'm that
way with pets, too. I have none of my
own and don't want the commitment,
but I will play with anybody's dog."
❑
Marissa Jaret Winokur: Playing a
Jewish character for the first time.
Beautiful Girl premieres 8 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 19, on the ABC
Family Channel. Check your
local listings.