Del Rio News Herald from Del Rio, Texas • Page 50

Heroic forebears, a complex childhood, a strong motherhood put Julia Louis-Dreyfus worlds the self-centered single woman that made her Why My Watched "I WAS DOING A SCHOOL PLAY, Julia is the granddaughter of Pierre and I had to faint," Julia Louis-Dreyfus Louis-Dreyfus, a Jewish hero of the said, referring to a moment during the French Resistance who flew 88 combat fifth grade. "I don't even remember why missions for de Gaulle's Free French this character in the play fainted, but I Air Force during World War II. Her fadid and I got an unintentional laugh. I The Seinfeld thought, 'Oh, that's weird. I wonder gang: (l-r) what I did that was I'd stumbled Michael Richards upon a little gold nugget that I picked (Kramer), Jason up and put in my pocket.

I discovered I Alexander (George), Jerry really liked making people laugh." Seinfeld and For nine seasons, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Julia LouisDreyfus (Elaine). 37, made people laugh playing Elaine From its debut Benes on Seinfeld, the NBC show that in 1989 until its finale last became the nation's top-rated TV come- spring, the show dy in 1994, one year after it replaced about nothing Cheers on Thursday nights. The show was something extraordinary. brought her TV stardom, plus Emmy and Golden Globe awards. Today, with the end of the network run of Seinfeld, she has the option of starring in her own TV series, making movies or doing both--a major accomplishment for any performer.

I visited Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Los Angeles, where she lives in a Spanishstyle house overlooking the Pacific Ocean with her husband, the TV. writer-producer Brad Hall, 40, and their two sons, Henry, 6, and Charlie, 1. I wanted to learn what led Julia to acting and kept her go- ther, William, escaped Nazi-occupied ing despite disappointments, and what France as a boy to make a new life in the the future held for her. I began by asking U.S. Today he heads Louis Dreyfus about her childhood.

Cie, a commodity-arbitrage company. "My grandmother was very funny, When Julia was a year old, her parvery wry," she stated, smiling. "And my ents divorced. Her mother, Judith, marmother's very funny. There's a lot of ried Dr.

Thomas Bowles, a surgeon. funny in my family. There was also a They lived in Washington, D.C., where strong sense of what is right and what is Julia was raised with two half-sisters. wrong. It didn't come from a church.

Her father also remarried, giving Julia Although my mother took me to a two more half-sisters. As a child, on Unitarian church on occasion, my val- school weekends and in the summers, ues came from my family." Julia regularly flew from Washington DOTSON RADER marriage and apart from a sitcom star: Kids Never 'Seinfeld' to visit her father and his family in a second look. When I was growing up, Westchester County, north of New York they did. It's not that I wasn't legitimate. City.

I asked if shuttling between the I don't think anybody made me feel that two families had been emotionally dif- way, But, in the family I lived with, I ficult for her as a young girl. didn't have the same last name as everyDEN was a show about four horrible, I their funny? selfish, I own think little self-involved Seinfeld world. people And redefined why locked is in sitcom. that There had been nothing like it before." "Oh, yes," she replied gently. "When one else.

I didn't take my stepfather's I was 7, I started doing that little com- name. I kept my father's name. I think mute, or not-so-little commute. These people were probably perplexed, wondays there are many of these mishmash dering, 'Why do you have a last name families, and people probably don't take different from the rest of the I COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFF -LIAISON PAGE 4 AUGUST 16, 1998 PARADE MAGAZINE.