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Known for Unusual Roles, Bates Bares All in 'Schmidt,' Garners Globe Nomination
BY KELLY CARTER
USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES -- Kathy Bates doesn't usually drink on the job. Then again, she's not usually naked on the big screen, either.
So it's easy to see why she guzzled a Cosmopolitan to help relax before shooting a scene where she disrobes and steps into a hot tub with Jack Nicholson. It's the scene-stealer in "About Schmidt," which expanded nationwide Friday and is earning kudos for Bates, 54. "It takes a little bit of gumption to just go ahead and do it," says the pudgy, 5-foot-3 Bates, laughing.
She plays a free spirit who puts the moves on Nicholson, a widower trying to keep his only daughter (Hope Davis) from marrying Bates' nincompoop son (Dermot Mulroney). The National Board of Review named Bates best supporting actress. Both she (best supporting actress) and Nicholson (best actor) are up for Golden Globes on Jan. 22.
This isn't her first brush with nudity. In 1991 she bared all in the little-seen "At Play in the Fields of the Lord." And she did a little nudity off Broadway in "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune" in 1987. When it came time to strip in "Schmidt," a skeleton crew was used.
"It was easy," says Bates, divorced from actor Tony Campisi since 1997. "Jack was great. I think when you're supported by the screenplay and the characters that you're playing and it's not gratuitous, then it feels natural."
Bates' trademark is playing offbeat characters. She won a best-actress Oscar for her role as an obsessed fan in "Misery."
"I like playing really out-there characters and a character that I can explore," she says. She currently can be seen as Philip Seymour Hoffman's mother-in-law in "Love Liza."
The past two years she has searched futilely for a movie to direct.
"I find that kind of work tremendously rewarding," she says.
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