The Boston Globe
When mom is a tough act to follow | July 2007 | Janice Page

She's the spitting image of her mother, poor thing. For anyone who doesn't already know, Gummer's mom is Meryl Streep. Now in most ways that's probably a pretty big plus. But when you're a 23-year-old actress trying to make a mark in your first major movie -- the lushly filmed "Evening," opening Friday -- having the inherited aura of a legend can be a mixed bag.

People will ask, for example, why in the world you chose to follow in such gigantic footsteps. They will immediately measure you by the impossible benchmarks of the most nominated actor in the history of the Academy Awards (14 and counting). And you just know someone's going to lump you in with Kate and Goldie or (worse) Liza and Judy , no matter how much Shakespeare you do. Not only does "Evening" confront the Gummer/Streep comparison head-on by putting them in the same movie (albeit never together, since they play the same character at different stages of life), it explores complex female relationships in a way that is hard not to project onto its stars. The film ruminates about free will and tough choices and living up to the expectations of others. It tells its audience to follow their passions without apology or regret. And a lot of it takes place in 1950s high-society Newport, which is not so far removed from Gummer's finishing-school days at Miss Porter's in her home state of Connecticut. "In some ways maybe it's like putting the issue right on the table and just forcing people to get over it," the 2005 Northwestern University graduate says of the film's ready spotlight on her famous parentage. "We didn't premeditate [the casting] or anything but, yeah, . . . I'm kind of asking for it," she laughs. And it's funny, because she's one of the few young actresses to know all that "it" entails.

When Streep came to Brookline to collect her Coolidge Award last year, she remarked during a Globe interview that she had no problem seeing her kids becoming actors (son Henry also appears in films occasionally) even though the profession is "wildly overvalued" in her estimation. "[Acting is] very rewarding in many ways, and it's debilitating in many ways," she said. "But they know it and they love it, so it's good." The second of four children of Streep and sculptor Don Gummer, Mary Willa Gummer appeared in a couple of her mother's earlier films ("Heartburn" and "The House of the Spirits"). She recently won fans off-Broadway in "Mr. Marmalade" and "The Water's Edge," and had a small part in "The Hoax." This summer she'll be seen onstage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Lillian Hellman's "The Autumn Garden," and after that onscreen in "Stop Loss" as well as in the HBO miniseries "John Adams." A last-minute casting addition, Streep appears in the Gatsby-esque melodrama for only a few masterful minutes. But if anyone had premeditated a perfect ensemble, that person probably couldn't have done better than the A-list names rounded up for director Lajos Koltai ("Fateless"), who makes painterly work of a screenplay loosely adapted by Michael Cunningham ("The Hours") and Susan Minot from Minot's novel. Along with Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Hugh Dancy, Patrick Wilson, and Glenn Close, "Evening" boasts another mother-daughter acting pair: Vanessa Redgrave and Natasha Richardson.

Redgrave was the first one cast, signing on to play a faded torch singer named Ann, who has deathbed flashbacks to a Newport wedding that ended tragically. Danes plays the young Ann, and Gummer is her upstanding friend, Lila, the reluctant bride. They swoon over the same gorgeous man (hint: not the groom) and come of age via an overwrought tangle of love, requited and otherwise. Meanwhile, at the elder Ann's bedside are her daughters, Constance (Richardson) and Nina (Collette), which presents a unique opportunity to see Richardson and Redgrave play out a final act so intimate that "there were times it was very, very hard to hold it together," Richardson admits. The two have shared screen time before (see "The White Countess") but never in mother-daughter roles. That's why Richardson asked for and got a goodbye scene that viewers should find particularly poignant. "You say goodbye not to another actor; you say goodbye to your mother," director Koltai says of Richardson's approach to the performance. "It's an unbelievable moment."

Perhaps a fitting payoff, too, for years spent trying to win over critics and viewers whom Richardson expects will always end sentences with "she's the daughter of. . ." Vanessa Redgrave, herself the product of a venerable family of actors, says in a separate interview that her children always got parental support and proper training for their career choices (daughter Joely Richardson stars in TV's "Nip/Tuck"), but she felt their pain when it came to living and working in her controversial shadow. She still regrets the time spent away from her kids during politically active years that now strike her as selfish and out of balance. "I wish I could have done better as a mother," she says about raising the offspring of her marriage to director Tony Richardson. She says this even though "Evening" insists there are no mistakes in life , no need for regrets or do-overs because in the end we are the fascinating sum of everything we experience. Thus the same fiery conscience that once took her away from family now convinces her to treasure a project where "I'm there [filming in Rhode Island] with my daughter, and I can pop into her caravan at the end of the day. . . . It was a gift from heaven," she recalls, beaming.

Gummer and Streep still have miles to go before they're at that stage professionally. Respectful of her daughter's nascent career, the star of "The Devil Wears Prada" decided to take a backseat in the credits for this latest film, as well as skip promotional outings and finish filming the elder Lila's limited part before the younger Lila even arrived on set. One day mother and daughter might appear as adults on the same stage or in the same frame, but it would have to be "waaayy in the future," says Gummer. "If ever." "It's tough to be compared to a great actress and a great beauty," Richardson offers knowingly. "It makes you feel very, um, inadequate, really." That's why Koltai advises Gummer to find her own path. "Nobody who has such a big mother as she has can do otherwise," the director says.

That's easier said than done, since this actress's mom has played everything from a doomed Polish Holocaust survivor to a love-starved Iowa housewife and her every award-winning gesture and look is fodder for comparison. "The daughter belongs to the mother so much that of course you see something in her eyes, something in her face," Koltai adds. "But it's not like the mother, it's like her. It's exactly Mamie."

Put another way: That's Mamie with an " i," not Meryl with a " y."

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