09:15 PM
TV A Working Actor

Lynne Thigpen died a little over a month ago, she went home from work, and died that night from a heart attack. She was an actor, not a well known one, she didn't fit the Hollywood image of beauty that's a requirement for stardom so she never was a star. Instead she was a working actor, the kind that shows up and does all those secondary roles that are so essential to making good movies and tv shows. It's not just the stars that make a show or movie great, it's all those other people in the scene who play their parts just right, who hit their marks on time and say their lines like they're supposed to, so that the star can give that great performance that everyone raves about.

I was watching an outtakes show awhile ago, showing scenes from Will & Grace, there was this one scene were this bimbo student nurse is brought in to take blood from Grace who's totally freaked out about needles. The actor playing Grace kept cracking up laughing and they kept having to reshoot and this little blonde girl had to repeat her lines over and over and over while the star kept ruining the shot. It struck me as so amazing that she was doing the same lines just right each time, hitting her mark every time, getting just the right inflection in her lines over and over, that's a professional actor. If it had been reversed, if the little blonde girl had been the one cracking up and ruining the scene, you can bet she'd have been out of there in a hurry.

Twenty-four years ago, Lynne Thigpen played a small role in a movie called Warriors, her face was never shown, just her mouth close to a microphone, a DJ on the radio, and her sultry, sardonic voice chronicling the gang's journey home to Coney Island. Just a small part, but she gave something extra to the movie, made it more than it would have been without her part. And I've seen her since in countless supporting roles, always doing a good job with whatever part she was playing.

In her last part, on the tv show The District, she played a black woman, a single mother, an older working woman, she gave the show a heart, a realism that it sorely needed in contrast to the main character's flamboyance. The character dealt with a variety of issues, her sister's murder from domestic abuse, a custody fight for her nephew, a recurrence of cancer, struggling to make a living, and dating and romance as an older single mom. All of that could have been over the top, too melodramatic, become just maudlin soap opera stuff, but Lynne Thigpen grounded it in reality and made it believable.

She was a working actor. I don't expect to see her in any of the memorial tributes at the Emmys this year, she was just another working actor, just one of the countless actors who do their job day in and day out, role after role. And that's the highest praise I can give, she was a working actor.

Lynne Thigpen (December 22, 1948 - March 12, 2003)