Lily Tomlin is undoubtedly one of my very favorite female actresses. I can't help it; I just love her. She will be starring in her first movie as the lead actress in twenty-seven years -
Grandma. In an interview with The Wrap she says that she is "dumbfounded" by "how the gay community has been so successful in progressing."
From On Top Magazine:
The 75-year-old Tomlin plays Ellie, a lesbian poet coping with the recent death of her longtime partner, in Grandma, her first leading role in twenty-seven years. Grandma opens in theaters Friday.
“It's been dumbfounding to me how the gay community has been so successful in progressing,” Tomlin answered. “I think it’s a matter of enough kids coming out to their parents and their neighbors and their relatives – and slowly, it burgeoned into a big awareness that my kid is gay, or my grandchild, or the kid around the corner.”
“It’s made people soften, and then suddenly we're enveloped and assimilated into the culture. And I thought it was amazing and remarkable,” she added.
From
The Wrap:
As Elle, a feisty, flat-broke poet running across Los Angeles trying to raise $600 so her granddaughter can get an abortion, Tomlin is both enormously funny and truly touching; her character may gleefully bash her granddaughter’s boyfriend with a hockey stick, but she can’t hide the pain she still carries from the death of her longtime partner.
Tomlin spoke to TheWrap about the film, but her wry grin flashed even more often when the conversation veered into topics like feminism, gay rights and a certain oddly-coiffed presidential candidate.
Were there key things about the character of Elle that you connected with?
Well, I connected with her being a feminist. I connected with her being a feminist writer, because I had girlfriends who were feminist writers. They would be celebrated in the first wave of the feminist movement, and then as time went on feminism fell out of favor, just like other things do in life. It rolls around, and now we’ll probably have a second wave of feminism … unless Rick Santorum wins.
The entire article and interview with Ms Tomlin in The Wrap is well worth a read. Check it out.