J. Smith-Cameron is sipping a cappuccino in a caf� not far from the Manhattan Theatre Club. The Memory of Water by Shelagh Stephenson, is in previews at MTC and this is her last chance before the evening performance to get an extra "jolt of energy."
A consistently working stage actor for nearly two decades, the former South Carolinian is best known for the Drama Dept.�s 1997 off-Broadway hit As Bees in Honey Drown, in which she joyfully played a flamboyant con artist named Alexa Vere de Vere. The star-making performance earned Smith-Cameron an Obie Award and fame surpassing her recognition as Ramona on the TV series The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.
"Sometimes I�ll notice people peering at me in a coffee shop," says the performer. "And after I�ve gone through checking whether my slip is showing, they�ll come up and go, �Did I see you downtown in a wig in a play?� Because I look so different from Alexa, they�ll be thinking, �That voice is familiar.�"
Charmingly enough, Smith-Cameron is oblivious to a woman who, moments before these experiences are recalled, had been stealing glances from a nearby table. (The woman eventually paid her bill and departed after apparently failing to place the woman with the curly, blonde hair).
Casting directors, however, have had no such trouble placing Smith-Cameron. One of the performer�s more high-profile movie roles (she�s done over a dozen films) is in Carrie II, the upcoming sequel starring Amy Irving. Like the original 1976 thriller, this one is about a teenager with telekinetic powers. Smith-Cameron plays the girl�s mother who, again, like the original, is a religious fanatic and a bit insane.
Currently, she�s playing it less wild in The Memory of Water, a dark comedy about three sisters gathering for their mother�s funeral.
Her versatility is what most impresses Bees playwright Douglas Carter Beane, a co-founder (like Smith-Cameron) of the Drama Dept. "She [would say], �Do you want me to cry with a laugh in it? Do you want me to laugh with a cry in it?�" he recalls. "She has an unbelievable facility which, you know, when you�re a British person, everyone goes crazy over; when you�re American, people just ignore it. And what she can do with language is amazing! The amount of breath control that it takes to get through Alexa�s first monologue, it�s really tough. Then to see other actors try it, you realize how lucky we were to have J. right off the bat."
If you�re wondering about that name J. Smith-Cameron, the actor says it dates back to her first starring movie role, a 1979 independent called Gal Young �Un directed by Victor Nunez (Ulee�s Gold). Still in college at the time, she was calling herself J. Smith after deciding that her given name, Jeanie, was, "a little girl�s name." When the movie was finished, however, and she was about to open in her first professional stage play, Actors� Equity informed her that J. Smith didn�t cut it.
"There�s this rule that you�re not to have the same name as another performer," she says. "Being J. Smith made me intersect with 20 other people, I imagine." So for Equity she became J. Cameron (after her great-grandmother, Jeanie Cameron).
Then, just as she was planning her big move to New York, she learned that Gal Young �Un had found a distributor. Needing the movie as a calling card for agents, but no longer going by her J. Smith billing, she contacted Nunez about somehow reflecting the change in the film�s publicity material. "I didn�t hear back from him right away," she says. "Then right before I came to New York, I got a package from the distributor with the movie poster in it. And it said �J. Smith-Cameron.� And I don�t know if [Nunez] got that out of something I said to him, but I went, �Oh, that�s a good name.�" Friends just call her J. now, although she thinks Jeanie is sounding kind of nice again. "It comes full circle," she explains.
The actor�s Broadway credits since then include the 1989 all-star farce Lend Me a Tenor, which earned her an Outer Critics Circle Award, and Our Country�s Good, for which she was nominated for a Tony in 1991. Off-Broadway credits include Women of Manhattan, Mi Vida Loca, and Blue Window, all at the Manhattan Theatre Club, where The Memory of Water opens on November 10.
And what would Smith-Cameron do if she weren�t one of the busiest actors in New York? "When I was in my 20s," she says, "John Patrick Shanley [who wrote Women of Manhattan] said, �You really have a turn of phrase. You should try writing.� He finally challenged me to do it, [saying], �If you don�t write a story in the next six months, I�m going to start stealing your ideas.� So I wrote a short story that got published. And I�ve tried writing again. I�m so in awe of writers that I�ve been kind of shy to try it. But I go out with a writer, Kenny Lonergan, who wrote This Is Our Youth [the 1996 cult hit which re-opened this week off-Broadway]. And Kenny has said, �You shouldn�t be shy, because the great thing about writing is that you can hole up in private and you don�t have to show it to anyone.�"
By Andy Buck
"I wanted to do something really different from As Bees in Honey Drown", says Smith-Cameron. "I wanted to get as far away as I could from playing a hopped-up, �on� kind of person. I think this character [Mary] is rational. There�s something introverted about her. It feels comforting to come back to a part like this, which is a little closer to how I see myself."
Smith-Cameron�s first New York break came in 1982, when she joined the Broadway cast of Beth Henley�s Pulitzer Prize winner, Crimes of the Heart. (Henley�s newest play, Impossible Marriage, stars Smith-Cameron�s partner-in-Crimes, Holly Hunter.) Henley recalls Smith-Cameron�s "fascinating combination of eagerness and elegance," which describes her very nicely today as well. "Her qualities were uniquely wonderful," the playwright says. "I knew she�d succeed."
Smith-Cameron brings a writer�s eye to her appreciation of the playwrights she has worked with, including women like Henley and Stephenson. "It�s fun to watch them move through time and write about their own age group as they go along," she says. "It seems like when people write women in their late 30s or 40s, they tend to write these hardbitten professionals, barflies, or dragon ladies. And, actually, I think that period of 35 to 45 for a woman, and maybe for anyone at that age, is a soft, tender time. You feel young and old. For a woman, your biological clock is ticking. I think there�s great dramatic potential in portraying that. [Stephenson] has accurately written three women roughly in that slot, and it�s just a delight to explore."