Joan Allen returns to Broadway in the play "Impressionism." More Photos >
And like the art gallery owner she portrays in "Impressionism," a new play that opens on March 24 and also stars Jeremy Irons, Ms. Allen, 52, is a veteran Upper West Sider (prewar building, no doorman) who traverses the city in high-heeled boots, having settled here shortly after visiting for the first time at 27 to star in a British war drama.
But unlike her slightly saltier character, she is given to a very un-Manhattanite exclamation: "Gosh!" or, for special emphasis, "Oh, my gosh!" In a recent interview at a rehearsal space in Times Square, Ms. Allen, a Tony Awardwinner and three-time Oscar nominee, averaged eight goshes an hour.
This is a linguistic remnant of Ms. Allen's upbringing in small-town Illinois, where her father owned a Deep Rock gas station, and happiness was a chance to ride, dog at her side, in the truck that delivered fuel oil to the local farms. Somehow regal and wholesome in equal measure, Ms. Allen remains deeply connected to her inner country girl — the girl whose eyes once widened at the purple platform shoes worn by an "exotic" fellow Eastern Illinois University theater student named John Malkovich.
Raised to be unostentatious and trained as an ensemble actor, Ms. Allen never became a fire-breathing scene stealer like Mr. Malkovich.
