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PEOPLE MAGAZINE
November 29, 1999 -- Spirits have been sky-high at Holland Taylor's Hollywood Hills home since her Emmy win last September. They've also been plentiful: "I have bottles and bottles of champagne and fabulous vodka," she boasts, pulling one out of her freezer. "It's unbelievable what people sent me after I won the Emmy. I could throw a great party!"
Taylor couldn't pick a better time to send those invitations out. After 35 years in show business, Taylor, 56, has shaken up TV's Felicity-centric world as the unabashedly sexy, middle-age Judge Roberta Kittleson on The Practice.The role, which won her a Best Supporting Actress Emmy, her first award ever, seems a perfect fit for Taylor. "She's a sexual firecracker," says close friend Téa Leoni, her costar on the sitcom The Naked Truth."There's no doubt about that."
Just ask Taylor's costars. Practicecreator David E. Kelley "gave her a little bit and she took a mile," says Dylan McDermott, who plays Bobby Donnell on the hit drama. "I was pleased to give up my crown to her," says Camryn Manheim, last year's Best Supporting Actress winner. "You never see older women be sexual on TV. This country is afraid of that."
Taylor may seem fearless herself, but she has her own issues to contend with. The never-married actress has recently discovered an emotional void in her life. "I've always had a hunger for realizing myself through my career," says Taylor. "But I've come to the conclusion that my career has a life of its own. If there's a hunger now, it's for intimacy, companionship and a home life. Who knows? I may have to spend the rest of my life alone in this house."
Still, while she loves children, she has no regrets about not having her own. "I don't think I was born to be a mother," says Taylor. "During those years when my body would have wanted [babies], my mind wasn't listening. My creativity was so starved." She adds, "Last year I was very seriously thinking about adopting a Chinese girl. A part of me wanted a love that would be mine and always be there for me. But somehow that just made me psychologically uncomfortable."
Her parents--C. Tracy Taylor, a lawyer who died in 1989, and Virginia, a painter--never wavered on the family issue. Taylor is the youngest of three daughters, including Patricia, now 63 and a public relations exec, and Pamela, 62, a Yale community service manager. At 10, young Holland entertained her family by acting out an entire hour of The Jackie Gleason Showin their Philadelphia home. "I was dumbfounded," recalls Virginia, 83, "not only at her memory but her ability to imitate all the characters."
Taylor continued acting throughout high school and at Vermont's Bennington College. When she brought her acting hopes to New York City in 1965, she endured 15 years of "disappointments and near-misses" on both coasts before landing her breakout role in 1980--Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari's ad-agency boss on the sitcom Bosom Buddies."She was much better than we were," says Scolari. "She just blew us off the stage." Taylor's next big part, as Kathleen Turner's book publisher in Romancing the Stoneand its sequel, soured her on future film work. "Seeing yourself on the big screen is a nightmare," she says. "You just can't believe you look like that. It's like hearing your own voice for the first time. It's horrible."
Ironically, while Taylor chiefly stuck to TV fare such as The Naked Truthand Saved by the Bell: The New Class,it was another film role, 1998's Next Stop Wonderland,which brought her to The Practice.Coexecutive producer Bob Breech, who was looking for "a woman with a good presence and authority," saw the film and knew he had his Judge Kittleson. "She was tailor--made for this part," says Breech, who was drawn to her "strong sense of sexual awareness. You can't help but pay attention to her."
Finally, Hollywood has. At the Emmys, as her name was read along with those of castmates Lara Flynn Boyle and Manheim, The Sopranos' Nancy Marchand and NYPD Blue's Kim Delaney, "I never felt I could win," Taylor says. But once she was accepting onstage, "I saw that ocean of people, and I was utterly at ease."
-- JASON LYNCH
-- ULRICA WIHLBORG in Los Angeles
