Quad-City Times from Davenport, Iowa • 97

I IN STEP BY JAMES BRADY BORN: Sept 7, 1951, in Los Angeles. FILMS: Include National Lampoon Goes to the Movies, 1981; Bad Medicine, 1985; Hannah and Her Sisters, 1986; Radio Days, 1987; New York Stories, 1989; Awakenings, 1990; Alice, 1990. TELEVISION: Includes Rhoda, 1974-78; The Tracey Ullman Show, 1987-90; The Simpsons, 1989-. EMEMBER JULIE I iT Kavner as Valerie Harper's kid sister, Brenda, on LmmA Thev did their last impinwHvnBiMniMmMMHiin8iR)aMiiipia -ivvv risk of alienating her kids. It's a funny, intelligent, often moving script written by the sisters Nora and Delia Ephron, with Nora also making her debut as a director.

Did that make Julie nervous? show in 1978, and Julie still says of those days and of Valerie: "We were very much friends and workmates. She's one of the best, and such a good heart." And it was on Rhoda that Julie got to work with Mary Tyler Moore, whose own show had spun off Rhoda and whose MTM production company produced it. "Mary was in the wedding show on Rhoda" Julie said, "and there might have been one other. Listen, I work with the biggies." Julie said. "She's Not with And she does.

so perfectly suited to this job. She loves directing, loves to be in control She' 11 direct a dinner party. And she has been around the best Rob Reiner and Mike Nichols and Woody, and she's so damned smart and funny, yet there's also a calmness about her." Nora Ephron who also wrote the book and screenplay for Heartburn is married to Nick Pileggi, who wrote the book Wiseguy, on which the movie GoodFellas was based (Pileggi also co-wrote the screenplay). Did Julie meet him? "He came up to Toronto where they were shooting This Is My Life," she said, "and I can't believe Wiseguy could come out of this genteel, elegant guy." How about Dan Aykroyd? "I never met him before," she said, "but of course I knew him from Saturday Night Live and Blues Brothers and Driving Miss Daisy" Julie is an actress who enjoys talking about the craft, just how it works. "One of the best things we did was that Nora insisted on three weeks of rehearsals," she told me, "so that 'mother' and 'daughters' got to know each oth Julie has two motion pictures scheduled to be released next month: a starring role in a film with Dan Aykroyd and Carrie Fisher, and a small role in Woody Allen's latest, Shadows and Fog the fifth Woody film in which she has worked.

And ever since The Simpsons began as a 2-minute segment on The Tracey Ullman Show, Julie has been the voice BRADY'S BITS Julie Kavner said that when The Simpsonsis in production, she and the other actors who do the voices for the animated series work only two days a week. "It's great fun," she told me, "and we do it like a radio show-standing around in a semicircle with our scripts. It's not time-consuming at all." With two new movies in the can, Julie was taking time off in Orient, N.Y., on Long Island, when we spoke. "I go back to work as Marge Simpson in the spring for next fall's broadcasts," she said, "but after that, I don't know. It won't be a new TV series.

Except for Marge, I don't want to repeat another character again." ShewosBhodd's kid sister on television. Next month, Julie Kavner stars with Ban Aykroydin anew film called "ThwIsMyLife" er and became easy together, and I also got to know Nora and Delia. They work together well as sisters. Nora used Delia to help rewrite when she couldn't get to a typewriter and was shooting a scene. Delia was also her backup eye." Julie had roles in Woody Allen's Alice, Radio Days, Hannah and Her Sisters and his segment of New York Stories.

"When you work with Woody," she said, "he's both writer and director. It's like working with a master artist on a well-oiled machine. He has the best cinematographers, and this group he's worked with for what? 15 years. When you're an actor, Woody's a joy!" OS of Marge Simpson "plus all of her relatives." In her own new flick, This Is My Life, Julie plays a single mother with two daughters who sells cosmetics in the Macy's on Queens Boulevard in New York and dreams of becoming a stand-up comic. Dream becomes reality, thanks in part to agents Aykroyd and Fisher, but along with success comes the PARADE MAGAZINE JANUARY 12, 1992 PAGE 19.