Lauren Ambrose, fresh out of high school, stepped onto her first movie set for the 1997 queer studio comedy, In & Out. Surrounded by legends like Debbie Reynolds, Wilford Brimley, Bob Newhart, Tom Selleck, and Joan Cusack, she found herself immersed in a world of "showbiz." This early experience, observing these greats at work, instilled in her a deep appreciation for the craft and a desire to emulate their greatness.
Early Career and Influences
Ambrose vividly remembers Debbie Reynolds grabbing a stage mic and performing "Tammy" and "Singin' in the Rain," improvising pratfalls. She recalls Reynolds approaching her as if she were a know-nothing preteen, boasting, "I'm Princess Leia's mother." This was Hollywood, and Ambrose was absorbing every moment. Even at a young age, she was determined to forge her own path.
Despite experiencing the typical ups and downs of a working actor, Ambrose has always maintained a vision of a scrappy, diverse career. She aspires to be an old, tiny actor-person who can play very different parts.
Navigating Hollywood and Staying Grounded
After early roles in In & Out, Party of Five, and Can’t Hardly Wait, Ambrose found herself on the edges of the late-’90s teen scene. However, she never felt truly sucked in, preferring to stay grounded in her New Haven hometown. "I think because I came in from Connecticut to do it-I didn’t really live there," she explains. "I’ve always felt outside of all of it, on some level, and like I’ve always been proving myself at every level."
Later, her role in the HBO family saga Six Feet Under brought her more into the Hollywood fold. The show, created by Alan Ball, offered Ambrose another opportunity to learn from experienced actors. She watched Frances Conroy, who played Ruth Fisher, deliver wrenching performances and asked her for advice. Conroy’s response, "Everybody has their moment to do their work-when they say action, that’s my time to do my work," became a guiding principle for Ambrose.
Read also: The Inspiring Weight Loss of Lauren Scalia
Ball found Ambrose "brave," willing to try anything and dig deep into Six Feet Under's intensely emotional material. Over five seasons, he charted her coming of age in the show, the strength she brought to Claire’s growth as an artist and within the family. He ultimately structured the brilliant and devastating finale around her, following Claire down the road as she said goodbye to her family, one by one.
Ambrose left Hollywood after Six Feet Under concluded. "To go directly from Six Feet Under into doing a bunch of plays was, maybe, a weird move," she says. "But the whole reason I wanted to do this was to be onstage." She made a conscious choice to live "out in the woods" with her husband and two kids, commuting as necessary. "I don’t think it’s helpful to me to be surrounded by the industry of show business all the time," she says. "It’s important to be away from it because, yeah-there’s a darkness that comes over one when they’re in it too much."
Embracing the Stage
In middle school, Ambrose auditioned for an off-Broadway play at the Vineyard Theatre company and booked it. She played a bratty sister; her parents took her back and forth for rehearsals and performances. "It was this intense exploration of big emotions-big, intense emotions," she says. "Here I was in Union Square with all these actors who were trying to make it." This experience solidified her passion for acting.
After Six Feet Under, Ambrose turned down big offers, like a key part in Twilight, because theater required months to be blocked out. She balanced stage work with pilots that didn’t get picked up or only lasted a few episodes. Despite the promise of exiting a mega-hit like Six Feet Under, Ambrose’s screen career appeared stalled. "It’s all in a life," she says again.
Almost immediately after moving to New York, she joined the Broadway revival of Awake and Sing!, directed by Bartlett Sher. "She was so good," Sher tells me. "She’s one of those few people who manifests as an artist all the greatest possible layers of human experience." She won a Drama Desk Award as part of an ensemble that also included Mark Ruffalo. The next two years, she did back-to-back productions of Shakespeare in the Park, including a Romeo and Juliet that many critics consider an all-timer. The year after that, she returned to Broadway in an Exit the King toplined by Geoffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon.
Read also: Weight Loss Guide Andalusia, AL
All this amid a major life change: Ambrose, who married the filmmaker Sam Handel around her casting in Six Feet Under in 2001, gave birth to their son during this period, and found herself overpowered by feelings of love and longing and fulfillment. It all went into the work; she spoke to Oscar Isaac’s Romeo as if to her newborn.
Bold Choices and Unfulfilled Dreams
About a decade ago Ambrose was set to lead a revival of Funny Girl, despite never having done a professional musical. The vocal requirements of the role are, you may have heard, significant-perhaps career-defining. Sher was slated to mount the production, which was ultimately canceled due to financing struggles. Ambrose tells me the Funny Girl book had been more riskily adapted for their adaptation. "We really were going to sink into the world of vaudeville, Lower East Side New York, and the Yiddish theater," she says. "[Compared to] the one that’s on Broadway now, I think it would’ve been a very different experience…. But these things come and go. You can’t be too devastated."
It may sting a little less now that she’s proven just how assuredly she can carry a major Broadway musical. Sher cast Ambrose as Eliza in his 2018 My Fair Lady, after she sent him a note asking for a shot at an audition. The acclaimed revival won Ambrose the Outer Critics Circle Award and earned her a Tony nomination. Her performance was mesmerizing, and the singing? Call it a massive re-introduction. "You’re going from a growling, furious working-class girl working in a flower market to a princess at the end of the piece-you need an incredible singer who both belts and sings gorgeous high soprano," Sher says of the part. "She could do all of it and bring a level of acting and heart and intelligence and ferocity."
With My Fair Lady, Ambrose naturally sparked a lot of media coverage-including one curious controversy. Co-star Diana Rigg criticized Ambrose for not performing on Sunday matinees, a decision that was not actually Ambrose’s, and the sentiment caught fire, with outlets like the New York Post speculating about Ambrose’s life "up in the country" taking up her time. In reality, says Sher, "[Eliza] is an absolute voice-killing character, and it was always planned from the very beginning to move from eight shows down to seven to protect your instrument." Ambrose says she didn’t understand exactly why it became headline fodder, and shrugs it off now as nothing that bothered her. "I don’t look at the internet for the most part, except for the New York Times Cooking," she says.
Current Projects and Future Aspirations
In recent years, Lauren Ambrose has continued to challenge herself with diverse roles in Servant and Yellowjackets. In Servant, she plays Dorothy Turner, a mourning mother who is struggling with the loss of her child. Ambrose plays the role with a pointed intensity. Most of Dorothy’s scenes feature her smiling a bit too widely, and at times it feels like she’s incapable of blinking. According to Ambrose these scenes were challenging not because of the emotional toll they took, but because of their technical precision. She explains, "I try to make everything as personal as possible. I have all kinds of secrets that I work with. Those scenes are often technical. Where can I literally put my eyes so that what you’re seeing is the right thing? So that it doesn’t look like I’m looking down or that it doesn’t look like I am thinking something, so that it literally appears that she’s gone?"
Read also: Beef jerky: A high-protein option for shedding pounds?
In Yellowjackets, she embodies the adult version of Van, a character shaped by profound adolescent trauma. Tawny Cypress, who plays Taissa, said, "She was the front-runner for all of us as soon as we knew that there was going to be an adult Van," says Tawny Cypress, who plays Taissa and shares the most scenes with Ambrose in Yellowjackets.
Ambrose emphasizes her current professional and artistic satisfaction, while always quick to qualify that it’s not as if she was unsatisfied beforehand. She relishes the challenge of completely transforming herself for each role. "I feel like I always have to go that extra step to get the jobs that are truly different from anything I’ve ever done before, because no one’s seen it," she says. "But that’s what I love. For me, that’s no problem. I’m happy to completely transform myself. Piece of cake. I relish that kind of challenge."
Six Feet Under: A Lasting Impact
Before landing roles in Servant and Yellowjackets, Ambrose played Claire in Six Feet Under. The show explored themes of death, family, and personal growth. Each episode began with a death, highlighting the constant presence of mortality.
The series follows the Fisher family, who runs a funeral home. Nate (Peter Krause), David (Michael C. Hall), and Claire (Lauren Ambrose) grapple with their father's death and the responsibilities of the family business. The show delves into their emotional struggles, relationships, and personal identities.
Ambrose's character, Claire, is the youngest and most rebellious of her siblings, longing for purpose and feeling misunderstood. She is a passionate artist, using photography as a creative outlet.
Six Feet Under is praised for its writing, ensemble cast, and exploration of dark themes. The series finale, "Everyone's Waiting," is considered one of the best in television history, depicting the characters' lives and deaths in a poignant flash-forward sequence.