Actress Lee Purcell has had an extensive career in television, motion pictures, and the theatre, appearing most recently in the NBC sci-fi series Persons Unknown. An interesting tidbit: Steve McQueen personally selected Ms. Purcell for her first screen role as "Jerri Jo Harper" in the 1970 drama Adam At 6 A.M., costarring a very young Michael Douglas.
You can read about Ms. Purcell's recollections of that fateful period on the 30th anniversary of McQueen's death last month and how indebted she is to McQueen by going here.
Since that scene-stealing performance, the auburn-haired beauty has worked in westerns, dramas, comedies, murder mysteries, virtually the whole gamut, garnering two Emmy nominations in the process: the first as Outstanding Lead Actress for the 1991 television movie Long Road Home, and the second as Outstanding Supporting Actress for the 1994 film Secret Sins of the Father.
You will also likely remember Ms. Purcell's work as "Wiley" in the 1974 Charles Bronson action thriller Mr. Majestyk, "Peggy" in the 1978 cult surfing classic Big Wednesday, "Beth," the seductive step-mom, in 1983's Valley Girl, and "Louise St. Laurent" in the award-winning Due South television series.
Last week Ms. Purcell became a fashion and beauty consultant of sorts for female baby boomers, launching the aptly titled BoomerBabes! website.
Ms. Purcell is also an active crusader for a number of charitable causes, including the Veterans Entertainment Team for military personnel and Heart of a Horse, an organization devoted to rescuing abused horses. To learn more about Ms. Purcell, visit her official website, where she often interacts with fans.
In the meantime, Ms. Purcell has kindly agreed to a long-form, ongoing interview series devoted to her full career. Read on below to find out how she became an actress, how she traveled to California alone (almost dying in an automobile crash), the squalid, junkie-filled apartment complex she called home for a time, and why you should never stop pursuing your dreams.
Can you pinpoint the moment where you knew you wanted to become an actress?
As I was already performing from the age of three, in amateur and school productions, it was just a natural evolution. My first performances were in dance; I did my first TV show at five (a television program in Memphis, Tenn.), and my first school operetta (Peter and the Wolf) at seven, so performing was always there for me, like breathing.
The only moment I remember which crystallized my already existing goals was in Peter and the Wolf. I played the bird, Sasha, complete with head and beak and footed yellow pajamas. I was on the stage, flapping my dyed yellow chicken feather wings, and the audience began enthusiastically clapping in the middle of my performance.
I liked that, and remember thinking, “Ohhh, I can do this!” So, the more they clapped, the more I flapped. That moment of realization that I could create an effect on an audience was exhilarating and addictive. The stage manager practically had to drag me off that stage so the show could continue.
My maternal grandmother, my role model in so many ways, always said that I told her at the age of 2½ years old that I was going to be an actress and buy her a big car. No, I didn’t buy her that car, but I did take her to Europe for the trip of a lifetime when I finally had money. She preferred that over the car!
So, there was no “moment”, no epiphany, when I “decided” to be a performer. I seem to have been born with the creative drive. My son says I fell out of the womb acting, and that seems to be true.
At the same time that I was constantly performing while growing up, I was also writing, painting, drawing, playing musical instruments, being in a band, and doing photography. I’m still a writer, still love photography and plink on my piano now and then.
Were your parents supportive?
My parents were very supportive of my performing, as long as it was in local amateur or school productions. But, they were not so supportive when I announced one day, while still in my teens, that I was leaving alone for California to be a professional actress. They were shocked and scared as many parents would be.
I had never discussed my acting aspirations with my parents, or anybody else. It would have been like announcing I was flying to Mars on the wings of an eagle. So, I just quietly kept my dreams of being a professional actress to myself and privately made my own plans.
When I was 13 years old, knowing I would need my own money to finance my future, I walked a very long distance to a bank, opened a secret savings account (you could do that as a minor in those days) and saved every penny I received and earned for the next several years. I still have that little bank savings book, just in case I need a tangible reminder to have courage.
When I left for California, my mother gave me $85.00 and my parents made a bet I would be back in a week and I drove away to make my life into what I wanted. I never resented their lack of assistance and never expected any. When you do something on your own, it means a lot more to you. Having a self-entitlement mentality is very, very unhealthy.
Upon arrival in California, I got lost on the freeway looking for the place I was going to stay, was hit by another driver, my car was totaled and everything I owned was strewn for a mile down the freeway as my car had rolled over and over. That was my grand entrance to my new life in California!
Miraculously, I was not seriously hurt, even though my plan of supporting myself by being a dancer was put on hold due to a knee injury from the accident. But, I then had no car and very few possessions left.
A kindly cab driver, who witnessed the crash, had then driven up and down the freeway, picking up what remained of my things for me and followed the police and me to the hospital. I will never forget him.
Of course, the money I had saved wasn’t enough, California was expensive, even then, and so were all the necessary classes in which I enrolled once I arrived; acting, singing, dance, accent reduction, etc.
I worked all night, every night, in a disco to pay for it all, and lived in an awful, scary place and only had enough money left for one meal a day. But, it was worth it. In my viewpoint, if you don’t follow your dreams, you're dead.
A couple of years later, I took another leap of faith and moved to England and also studied acting there, so I have a good, international grounding in my craft.
What was this awful, scary place you had to stay in during those early years in California?
Actually, it was a derelict apartment building in a bad neighborhood, which was condemned and torn down shortly after I moved out. The other fine residents were very pre-occupied shooting themselves up with drugs in the front hallway, so I didn’t use the front door to the building.
My squalid little apartment (called a “studio” apartment) was on the ground floor with windows onto the parking lot, so I used the window like my own personal front door and would just climb in and out to enter and exit.
That way I could avoid the drug addicts at the front entrance. They still broke into my apartment and stole my little bit of hard-earned money.
I found another place to live shortly after that. The location where this awful building stood has been a parking lot ever since the building was torn down.
Ironically, whenever I go to the annual American Film Market, I have to walk right by the location of my former apartment, as the area has been somewhat “gentrified” in recent years.
I’m glad that my parents never saw how I lived during those days. My grandmother did, and she was justifiably horrified. I think experiences like these give you strength of character, if you survive them!
Great quote: "If you don’t follow your dreams, you’re dead."
Thank you. Of course, I didn’t mean that one would be physically dead, but dead in other ways, spiritually or emotionally. I believe it’s much better to have followed a dream, and even if one didn’t succeed at that dream, to not have followed it at all would be far worse.
We need to have dreams; they define us and make us what we are. No matter how young or how old we are, dreams are what feed us emotionally and spiritually.
Dreams are what keep us going in spite of the barriers life may throw at us, and there will always be barriers.
I was with David Carradine at one of his last public events where we were both presenting awards. I will always remember David saying, “There are no failures in Hollywood, just people who quit too early.”
Stay tuned in the following weeks, as we've only scratched the surface of Lee Purcell's amazing, still-flourishing career.
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