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Charlene Tilton - Too Busy To Be Bored! |
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“I find life to be very exciting, but I always have. The words I’m bored
have never come out of my mouth. I don’t understand when someone says,
‘I’m so bored.’ That just does not compute to my brain. I don’t know how
people utter those words. I can go outside and say oh my God there is a
cardinal sitting outside of my window. I find people and life
fascinating and exciting and unpredictable for sure.
I had a lot of days with really dark times and that were really
challenging. There were times when I didn’t want to get out of bed.
Things had happened, but I have also had some really blessed days and
some really good days. Even on the darkest and most challenging days the
one thing that I will say is life is exciting no matter what it brings,”
says film, television and stage actress and playwright Charlene Tilton.
Charlene Tilton did not have time to be bored in (2017), even if that
was in her nature, as she co-starred with Lauren Aliana in the movie
Road Less Traveled, as an
eccentric wine making aunt, had another major role in
Second Chance Christmas, as
the meddling mother of Katrina Begin’s character Caroline who is dealing
with amnesia and she appears in the drama
Vengeance: A Love Story with
Nicholas Cage and Anna Hutchinson, as the mother of two meth addicts and
a drug dealers. In the latter role she says some of her own friends did
not recognize her when they saw the film. She appeared on the revived
Battle of the Network Stars
and she wrote the script for a one woman play
Tammy Faye Tweets. At the
beginning of 2017 Charlene Tilton starred in the stage production of
Driving Miss Daisy. Along the
way there was a stop in October of 2017 to speak at
Voices for the Voiceless: Stars
for Foster Kids, hosted by Seth Rudetsky in New York City, just one
of several charitable causes that Ms. Tilton is involved with.
“Everybody comes in and donates their time. They bring out people who
have come through the foster care system and when I was little I did
spend some time in the foster care system. I was there to tell my story
and I have done it twice now. It is probably one of the best events that
I have ever done. It is
quite amazing,” she says and whether she is talking about this event or
another one of the charities with which she is involved, the timbre of
her voice changes, leaving no room for doubt, as to just how important
these events are to her.
Prior to moving from Los Angeles to Nashville to be closer to her
daughter and grandson, Charlene Tilton also served as the President of
Actors for Autism. She still
remains active on the board.
She says, “I
realized after my fiancé passed away that the best way to get out of
your depression and self-pity is to help somebody else. I had a friend
who mentioned that he was working with
Actors for Autism and if I
ever wanted to come down and teach a class (to let him know). I went to
check it out. I walked in the door and I didn’t know anything about
autism. I saw them for the talent that they possessed. I fell in love
with the kids and my first time there they fell in love with me. We
connected and I realized that I had a gift for working with them. They
received from me and I learned from them. It was an amazing experience.”
This past year Charlene Tilton has demonstrated both her versatility as
an actress and her resilience.
“When I arrived to do
Second Chance Christmas
I had just been doing Driving
Miss Daisy on stage. The producer and director said they wanted to
get everybody together for a dinner that night, before the first day of
shooting. I told everyone that I had been doing the play, I had a sore
throat and (I wasn’t feeling well), so I said I was going to pass on the
dinner. Well, I ended up with pneumonia and I have never been so sick in
my life, as when I was doing this movie. I just got through it,” she
says.
As for
Road Less Traveled she says, “I will try
anything and I will try as hard as I can. I will do my best. I am not
afraid of looking really stupid. Everybody was nice and we had a great
time, so that was fun. I play the eccentric aunt who makes my own wine (she
laughs). I had a great time with that.”
When talking about her involvement with
Battle of the Network Stars
she pokes fun at herself, “That was so much fun and I am about as
athletic as a doorstop. I am not athletic at all. I can’t catch a ball
or throw a ball. I can’t do anything, but I had a lot of fun doing the
show.”
Despite that she
says, “I found out that I have done more
Battle of the Network Stars
than anybody else and I didn’t know that.”
Battle of the
Network Stars
is not the only time that Charlene Tilton had an opportunity to
demonstrate her, hmm, athletic prowess on television. She talks about
her experience a few years back with
Dancing On Ice.
“They were doing that show in the U.K. and
Dallas was so popular out
there. I also have done a lot of shows out there and so they inquired. I
said that I had never skated in my life.
I had just gone through something. My fiancé had passed away
unexpectedly years ago, five or six years ago on December 23 rd right
before Christmas. I had gone into depression and I wasn’t doing well,
but I was turning my life around and I decided that I was going to seize
every opportunity that came my way, so I said yes I will do it.
Oddly enough as non-athletic as I am for some reason I can balance on
ice skates. Don’t ask me why, because I have no idea. I wasn’t great,
but I wasn’t bad either. I
was shocked by how well I did and so were they. On the days that we did
the show I was fourteen hours a day on skates, because we would rehearse
and we would shoot. It was one of the best things that I have ever done
and I enjoyed it so much.
For a middle aged woman who had never been on ice skates I didn’t do too
badly. You challenge yourself and you are out of your comfort zone. It
was a wonderful experience for me,” says Tilton.
Charlene Tilton talks about the theater side of her career, “I have been
doing stage since I was a kid. The whole time that I was on
Dallas I was always doing
Equity waiver, ninety-nine cents theater productions. I did
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
in London (England), I did
Cinderella in London when I played the evil step-mother,
Snow White in Los Angeles
when I played the wicked queen. Ariana Grande was Snow White and Patrick
Harris was the mirror. I did a play called
Tell Veronica that I produced
and I played a crazy talk show host. I was in a play called
Dish Babies in which I played
nine different characters. For that one I won the Los Angeles Theater
Critics Best Actress Award. I have done a lot of theater and a lot of
plays. I love doing theater. I did a play called
The Foreigner, which was
directed by nine time Tony Award winning director Jerry Zaks. I did that
with Imogene Coca. I love doing theater.
In my own life I tend to be very extroverted. If I see a flower it is oh
my God that is the most beautiful flower I have ever seen in my life. To
me it is whatever it is. If it is a dessert then it will be to me the
best dessert that was ever made. I tend to go very big and broad, so for
me (playing parts like the wicked queen) are wonderful and I love doing
them. I relish them, but Second
Chance Christmas was also a wonderful thing, because I played just a
regular mother. Believe it or not those things are oddly enough a little
bit more difficult for me to do, because I have to be a little more
real.”
It is almost like Charlene Tilton was predestined to be an actress and
it all began when she sang “O Christmas Tree,” as a six year old at a
school pageant.
Later on, “I grew up in Hollywood and right before I turned eight years
old I was a latch key kid, as my mom would go to work. I wore a key
around my neck and I went to school by myself and I would come home to
our little apartment by myself. I was surrounded by Paramount Studios,
Desilu Productions, Screen Gems and of course the infamous Hollywood
sign that beckoned to me every morning.
It just seemed to me that magic was made there. The most amazing
place to be was on the other side of the studio (gates). I would stand
there (at the Paramount Studios gates) and I would try to flag people
down who were driving in and out. I would just dream of what it would be
like to be on the other side. The feeling never went away, even when I
got Dallas. I would drive
through the studio gates at 5:30 in the morning and they would say good
morning Ms. Tilton and I would say good morning and I thought I can’t
believe that I am driving through the gates of MGM studios. It is Sony
now, but it was MGM at the time. It just never ceased to amaze me. It
was always something that seemed so incredible to me.”
Charlene Tilton would start taking herself to the theater when she was
nine years old and then started taking acting lessons, but it was while
she was attending Hollywood High School that she was spotted by an
agent.
She recalls, “I was in the drama and play production (programs). That is
where I got my start when an agent saw me in a production of
Elizabeth I. I played eight
different characters and one was a mime (she starts to laugh).
We had some very talented people who came out of that class. The
director at Hollywood High School was amazing and I was introduced to
Shakespeare and Molière, Tennessee Williams and all of the great, great
playwrights. It was very exciting.
The agent who saw me at Hollywood High School needed eight inch by ten
inch headshots and I didn’t have money for that, so I took my school
picture and had it duplicated and enlarged. She sent me on some
auditions and the first one was a McDonald’s commercial. It was between
another girl and me and I did not get it. The second one was a Walt
Disney movie Freaky Friday
with Jodie Foster and I got that. From that I got
Happy Days. I would audition
and I would get parts and finally I got
Dallas, which was very
exciting.”
Charlene Tilton was just seventeen years old when she read for the part
of Lucy Ewing in Dallas.
“I was so excited (She repeats
this twice reliving the excitement of the moment). I just felt a
connection with the part. I knew it was mine and I knew it was meant to
be. I knew it before they did. First of all we did not know that Dallas
was going to be a worldwide phenomenon. It was originally a six-part
miniseries. I was still learning my way around the set and I was
fortunate, because I had people like Larry Hagman, Jim Davis who played
my grandfather who was a major movie star and Oscar nominated Barbara
Bel Geddes. Barbara was the original Maggie in
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. The
work ethic on that set was stellar and I learned from the best people.
We were really close and became a family. They were so professional and
so nice. They guided me and it was lovely.
They did not just keep my character as this little young thing, but they
let her grow up with me, which was very nice.”
Charlene Tilton easily endears herself to you. She is full of energy,
exudes warmth, talks effusively about her daughter Cher Ish and her
music career and she leaves no room for doubt that she is basking in
being a grandmother. Each theater production or film or television show
that she has been a part of in the recent or more distant past she
speaks about enthusiastically and always there is a sense of gratitude.
Perhaps that is why it did not come as a surprise to hear her say, “It’s
not about the fame. It’s about the work and your preparation and study,
how you treat people and the family that you form or if it is a play.
Whatever project you are working on you form this unique bond with
everybody that is involved, because it takes a lot of people to make a
production for theater, television or film.”
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Charlene
Tilton talks about Voices for the
Voiceless: Stars for Foster Kids, a star studded evening that
featured Broadway stars, Tony Award winning actors and producers, as
well Grammy Award winner Stephanie Mills and stars from television and
film.