Kyra Sedgwick is more neurotic than Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson
I know all of the cool kids are talking about the return of True Blood, but all of the uncool cop-show geeks can meet me over here in the corner. How excited are you that The Closer is coming back in a few weeks? I can hardly wait! It feels like it’s been forever, but really they had new episodes back in November and December, right? I am in love with The Closer, and with Kyra Sedgwick. I had always been a fan of Kyra, but she’s found her iconic character with Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson, head of Major Crimes of the LAPD. I also love the team – Lt. Flynn especially. No… Det. Gabriel. No, Chief Pope. I can’t choose. They’re all my favorite. Anyway, Kyra is starting her promotion for The Closer’s new season, and she’s the July cover girl for More Magazine. She sounds way more neurotic than I was expecting:
You wouldn’t think a beauty like Kyra Sedgwick ever struggled with body-image issues, but in the July/August issue of MORE, on newsstands June 22, she reveals that she’s no different from many other women.
“Food has never been easy for me,” she tells writer Meryl Gordon, adding that the catalyst was a role in the 1985 film War and Love, for which she was required to lose 20 pounds to play a Holocaust survivor.
“I came back from that, and it triggered something,” she says. “I ate everything in sight. My weight went up and then too far down.” She admits she struggled with food and body-image issues for years, finally throwing out her scale, tired of the mood swings and her self-judgmental reaction. “I’m so grateful that I don’t get on a scale because it’s never going to be the right number.”
Having made peace with her body, Sedgwick, who starts her sixth season as the Golden Globe–winning star of The Closer on July 12, is now bracing herself for the imminent departure of her daughter, 18-year-old Sosie, for college. (Son Travis, 21, will enter his senior year this fall.)
“It’s like, you’ve had this job forever, it’s the job you always wanted to do, and you were pretty good at it. Then you get fired for no reason!” she says of her empty-nest status. Sedgwick asked that the filming of the new season of The Closer be pushed back several weeks so she could enjoy more time in New York with Sosie. Laughing, she says that she’s been literally scheming for spare moments with her daughter. “
I set my alarm to wake up so I can see her. I don’t make plans on weekday evenings in case I can spend time with her. It’s pathetic; I don’t care.”
Sedgwick reveals that she and her husband, actor Kevin Bacon, “have had very little time alone. This is going to be a whole new phase. With all my weeping, I’m counting on that.” The reason? On their honeymoon in 1988, the couple, who had discussed their desire for children, made a spur-of-the-moment romantic gesture. “We were like, Let’s just not use birth control,” she says. “I didn’t think it was going to happen so fast. I got pregnant in two weeks.”
After Sosie, now 18, was born, Sedgwick entered therapy. (She is also mom to Travis, now 20.)
“I used to be so serious. My life was weighty, and my heart was heavy,” she says. “When the kids were little, any joke made at my expense, I couldn’t handle it. I’ve done a lot of interior work, embracing my mortality and knowing I’d better have a good time because I’m not going to go this way again.”
She saw her therapist for nine years. But now, “I embrace my flaws and quirks and can laugh at myself. Having children, you’re got to face your sh-t or be ruled by it,” she explains. Sedgwick doesn’t want her children to follow in her and Bacon’s footsteps.
“I don’t want my kids to have all the rejection and pain and insecurity of this crazy business,” she says.
She spends six months of the year away from home filming The Closer.
“Kevin has to share me with more of the world now than he signed up for. He did sign up for an actress, but my life has become bigger, and I’ve become more independent… he’s been home a lot with the kids,” she says. “I go to work, and sometimes at the end of the day, I’m too tired to have a really long conversation…To be able to count on someone like that, it moves me.”
With a long-running marriage in which both partners have enjoyed great professional success, there has been only one sour note in the couple’s household: their finances. On the advice of a family member, they invested for some 10 years with client-bilking financier Bernie Madoff. When she was told that their Madoff investments had all vanished, “I laughed. I just couldn’t believe it,” Sedgwick says. “It’s awful, and it’s really sad and infuriating. And there are a lot of people who are so much worse off than we are. He’s a sick man. . . . You know what it’s shattered my trust in? The government taking care of us. The S.E.C. knew—they knew.”
[From More (additional quotes via Us Weekly)]
She and Kevin Bacon are so awesome together. He’s even directed a few episodes of The Closer, and Sosie came on for a wonder character arc as Brenda’s wild-child niece (she was a good little actress too – and she has Kevin’s coloring!). Sigh… I know Kyra isn’t in fact Brenda Leigh, but I want her to be. I love her.
More Mag photos courtesy of More & Us Weekly.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pLHLnpmirJOdxm%2BvzqZmamhlZYBxe8qyqZqXo5qxqMPInKKYoaOUurC%2BxJilnq2ipMGqr76tn5qmj5myscHTspacoJmas6Cu0Z6lnZmPobKqs8eYoaignqi8r3s%3D