Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Got it Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size I last spoke to Jean Smart after her astonishing race to the Emmy Awards in 2022.
It was the year her critically exalted comedy series Hacks had become the darling of awards season, winning the Peabody, the Golden Globe and an award from the American Film Institute. Smart finished the year with another Emmy for herself – bringing her career haul to five – as well as a second Screen Actors Guild award and that most peculiar of showbusiness honours, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, near dance legend Gene Kelly and film actor Yul Brynner. When we parted ways, Smart said to me: “Michael, I have nowhere to go but down.
” Fortunately, Smart’s take-it-both-ways prophecy of what fate (and even greater fame) had in store for her did not quite bear out. Hacks has returned for a third season, to ever greater praise from America’s typically capricious television critics and a chorus of approval from its fans. Yet, at 72 , Smart’s late-career meteoric rise is a complex space to inhabit.
She has spent most of her life as a character actress with star quality, seeming to revel in a Phoenix-like ability to fly close to the spotlight without ever burning her wings. Back in 2022, however, when Hollywood’s lightning struck, behind the smiles and the media scrutiny,.
