The Stunning Transformation Of Julianna Margulies
The following article mentions sexual misconduct.
From an early age, Julianna Margulies was drawn to the art of acting, partly because she liked the idea of pretending to be another person for a while. "I love putting on someone else's shoes," she told Deadline in 2022. "I find a tremendous amount of freedom in acting, and it probably stems from my childhood of always being in the wrong outfit, the wrong shoes, the wrong country and the wrong accent."
While she might've felt "wrong" about certain pieces of her life, Margulies certainly was right when it came to pursuing an acting career. The Spring Valley, New York, native has also never been afraid to take on different types of characters, knowing that it might lead to a bit of self-discovery. "That's what I love about acting, you get to find little pieces of yourself in every character you play," Margulies even once told the BBC.
Years after booking her first onscreen role in 1991, the actor has also gone on to become one of the most critically acclaimed stars in the industry, earning 10 Emmy nods and three wins, along with 12 Golden Globe nominations and a win. And as someone who always enjoys a good challenge, Margulies is still far from being done.
Julianna Margulies' childhood was not easy
Just a year after Julianna Margulies was born, her parents — father Paul Margulies and mother Francesca Gardner Margulies — split up. She then lived with her mother, and her childhood consisted of traveling back and forth between America and Europe so she could visit her dad. At times, this arrangement could be stressful, and the more difficult moments are what she remembers the most. "When you are on an airplane at the age of 11, not understanding where you're going, and you arrive and your mother isn't there to pick you up, you remember the smell of the room, you remember the creases on [the customs officer's] face," she once told Shondaland.
And while Julianna's childhood could certainly be unsteady, she developed a close relationship with both of her parents, nonetheless. Back in 2020, she even represented Francesca, a former ballet student and Broadway actor, at an event for the School of American Ballet. Meanwhile, when Paul, a writer and advertising executive, died in 2014, Julianna wrote a piece for Adweek in honor of his memory, recalling his love of philosophy and most memorable works in advertising. Later on, in 2016, she also celebrated the publishing of her later father's children's book, "Three Magic Balloons." Paul had written the book in honor of Julianna and her two sisters, Alexandra and Rachel. "A balloon man who has been watching them gives them magic balloons because they have kindness in their heart," Julianna told People.
She worked as a waitress while looking for acting jobs
Just like many aspiring actors, Juliana Margulies went through a period when she had to figure out a way to support herself as she sought acting parts. And that's how she found herself waitressing at a restaurant called 150 Wooster after she graduated from Sarah Lawrence.
150 Wooster was a New York hotspot at the time that attracted a lot of famous diners. Some of Margulies' A-list customers included Elizabeth Taylor and Dustin Hoffman. The latter, in turn, offered the aspiring young actor some tips on how to carry herself. "He showed me the proper way to stand and seemed genuinely interested in how I was performing this task—he stood up and said, 'Don't lean over the table. Do you want to know what your back is going to look like?'" Margulies recalled in Interview. Margulies also shared that she waited on Julia Roberts, and evidently, America's Sweetheart wasn't the sweetest customer. On a 2010 episode of "The Late Show with David Letterman," Margulies said Roberts has since apologized.
Margulies also found herself getting a bit of publicity even before booking a role. While working at 150 Wooster, acclaimed photographer Helmut Newton took her photo while she was working. Soon after, the photo of Margulies carrying a tray of desserts was published on Condé Nast Traveler.
Julianna Margulies gave herself five years to become an actor
While it may seem like many actors become famous overnight, in reality, most spend years toiling away before they get their big break. Before that big break comes, the dream of being onscreen can feel a little out of reach and unachievable. Julianna Margulies went through this experience. And while roles didn't immediately come to her, she remained unfazed. Margulies had a plan, after all. And that plan did not involve waitressing for long.
"I gave myself five years — if in five years I'm not fully supporting myself acting, I'm going to go back to school and be a lawyer or a psychology," she once explained during an interview with the Office for the Arts at Harvard. This type of thinking also allowed Margulies to feel good about doing auditions, regardless of how it turned out. "With that, it gave me a little more confidence when I walked into an audition because I felt like I had a fallback," she added. Little did Margulies know at that time that a fallback would be unnecessary in her case.
At 23, Julianna Margulies booked her first film role
As Julianna Margulies kept auditioning, a possible role in the 1991 Steven Seagal action thriller "Out for Justice" came up. The film's female casting director said she just had to meet with Segal at his hotel room. Having been assured that the casting director would also be present, the young Margulies agreed to take the meeting. When she arrived at Seagal's hotel room, however, Marguiles quickly realized that the casting director wasn't around and that Seagal had a gun. "He made sure that I saw his gun, which I had never seen a gun in real life," she recalled while speaking on Sirius XM's "Just Jenny." Fortunately, she managed to leave his room before the situation got worse. "I got out of there unscathed. ... I never was raped, and I never was harmed," she later added.
Margulies also recalled how the now-disgraced Harvey Weinstein later invited her to discuss a possible film role in his hotel room. Having learned her lesson from her Seagal encounter, Margulies made sure that Weinstein's female assistant was with her the whole time. She later learned it was another setup after she found a candlelight dinner for two and Weinstein in his bathrobe. "I saw him stare at her, daggers," Margulies recalled. She landed the role in "Out for Justice" and also got her SAG card. As for Weinstein, he didn't cast Margulies in the movie she auditioned for.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
A few years later, she landed her ER role after a bad audition
Julianna Margulies eventually ventured into television although no one thought she'd book a job there. "A lot of people told me I'd never ever work in TV because my looks were so different. They couldn't tell if I was Black, Hispanic or what," she told the Los Angeles Times in 1994. Eventually, she auditioned for a role in the NBC medical drama "ER." And while she had already read for different roles by then, first audition for the series, as she said on "The Tonight Show," didn't go so hot. Despite this, Margulies was invited back, although this time, she was asked to read for the part of Carol Hathaway, a nurse who has a romantic history with George Clooney's Dr. Doug Ross. Despite this backstory, Carol was also only supposed to appear in the pilot with the character going into a coma following a drug overdose.
But then, the show had Margulies return. "What developed in the pilot between George and Julianna was the heart of the show, the romance of the show. And in the great tradition of 'NYPD Blue,' someone who was supposed to die in the pilot tested so well that they had a miraculous recovery," casting director John Levey later told The Hollywood Reporter. Clooney broke the news to Margulies. The role also led to her first Emmy win.
Julianna Margulies turned down $27 million to stay on ER
"ER" ended up becoming one of the most successful shows on network television, earning 124 Emmy nods and 23 wins. At that point, it would have made sense to assume that Julianna Margulies would stick around. But then, after six seasons, she was done. Of course, the show tried to keep one of its biggest stars around (Clooney left the show after Season 5). When Margulies' contract with the show was up, they even offered the actress $27 million to stay on for two more seasons. And while those closest to her urged her to take the money, Margulies did a little soul-searching, which led her to the Bodhi Tree Bookstore in Los Angeles.
At that point, the actor had been interested in Buddhism. There, she found "Awakening the Buddha Within," a book that apparently held the answer to Margulies' dilemma. "I opened the book, I closed my eyes and I [pointed to a line in the book]. And I opened my eyes and the line was, 'I knew I wanted to learn more, not earn more,'" she recalled on Oprah Winfrey's "Super Soul." The next day, Margulies left "ER," turning down the network's multi-million dollar offer. Instead, she returned to New York and signed on to do a play by Jon Robin Baitz called "Ten Unknowns."
After leaving ER in 1999, she juggled film and TV with theater
In the years that followed after her time on "ER," Julianna Margulies had a lot of projects to keep her busy. Aside from starring onstage in "Ten Unknowns," she also did some film and television work. That said, it seems the last thing she wanted was another full TV series to commit to. "I was burnt-out," Margulies even told Entertainment Weekly while discussing why she left "ER" when she did. Instead, she pursued several miniseries projects, including "Hitler: The Rise of Evil," "The Grid," and "The Mists of Avalon" where she got to ride horses with legendary stars Anjelica Huston and Joan Allen.
As for the big screen, Margulies starred in "The Man from Elysian Fields," "Evelyn," and "Ghost Ship." She later joined the cast of Finn Taylor's adventure rom-com "The Darwin Awards," which also stars Winona Ryder, David Arquette, and Joseph Fiennes. In the film, Margulies plays a British woman. "I wanted to be unrecognizable," she explained. "My agent didn't even know it was me on screen until the end credits." Margulies also later returned to theater, joining the cast of several Broadway productions. These include "The 24 Hour Plays," "Escape: 6 Ways to Get Away," and "Festen."
Julianna Margulies signed on to do Snakes on a Plane because of Samuel L. Jackson
Julianna Margulies may enjoy venturing out of her comfort zone but the last thing she probably expected was a project like "Snakes on a Plane," that action-adventure film about a plane full of deadly snakes that has since become a cult classic. As bizarre as the movie may sound, it had one selling point: Samuel L. Jackson.
"I got sent this script called 'Pacific Air 121' aka 'Snakes on a Plane,' with a cover letter that said Samuel L. Jackson is attached," Margulies recalled during an interview with TV Guide. "I was laughing, to be honest, because I could not believe this was an actual movie that was going to happen." But then, it soon became clear to her that it was happening, especially considering how committed Jackson was to the film. "Sam was doing it elevated it," she added. And so, after a meeting with director David R. Ellis, Margulies agreed to do the film, playing flight attendant Claire Miller. In the end, she had the best time with Jackson. "I was so impressed by his work ethic," Margulies said of the veteran actor.
And while Margulies was expecting "Snakes on a Plane" to go straight to DVD, it ended up becoming one of the most talked-about films of 2006. The film also raked in over $62 million at the box office worldwide, against an estimated production budget of $33 million.
She got married at 41
Julianna Margulies and George Clooney may have developed a crush on each other while working together on "ER," but that didn't lead to anything behind the scenes. And that's probably partly because Margulies was also in a relationship with actor Ron Eldard at that time.
The situation was different when Margulies met Keith Lieberthal in 2006. At that time, she was very single (Margulies and Eldard broke up in 2003) and happily so. Lieberthal is a lawyer, which came as a relief to Margulies. The award-winning star has long held reservations about dating another fellow actor. On top of that, he, like Margulies, is Jewish. As the "ER" actor later gushed on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," "Just kept getting better and better for me."
The two started dating soon after that and Lieberthal even attended the premiere of "Snakes on a Plane" with Margulies just a few months later. And while Margulies also had no intentions of settling down before meeting Lieberthal, they became engaged just after a year and a half together. The couple also found out they were expecting soon after that. They married on November 10, 2007, just months before Marguiles was to give birth. "The best day of my life was my wedding day, and I think so much of it had to do with the fact that I had our [unborn] son with me and the rabbi blessed him," she later told Good Housekeeping. The couple later welcomed a son, Kieran, on January 17, 2008.
Soon, Julianna Margulies headlined her own series
Julianna Margulies soon found herself up for a new television project, except she wasn't the first choice to play the lead, and not even the second. "It came in such a backhanded compliment," the actor revealed during The Hollywood Reporter's 2016 Emmy Roundtable. As it turns out, the lead role was first offered to Ashely Judd, but she passed on it. The producers then went to Helen Hunt and told Margulies that the part was hers only if Hunt turned them down. And as much as Margulies wanted to hate the project by then, agreeing to do "The Good Wife" would become one of her best career decisions yet.
In "The Good Wife," she plays Alicia Florrick, a devoted wife and mother who decides to work as a lawyer after her husband, a prominent politician, becomes embroiled in a huge scandal that also leads to his imprisonment. Margulies told W magazine that she spent a great deal of time studying famous wives who had been in a similar situation, including Hillary Clinton and Silda Spitzer, to help shape her character. Her performance later led to two more Emmy wins.
And while "The Good Wife" ended its run in 2016, its spinoff, "The Good Fight" kept the story going, although without Margulies. As it turns out, she was asked to reprise her role, but the offer wasn't good enough. "I wanted to be paid my worth and stand up for equal pay," she later told Deadline.
She returned to medical drama briefly for The Hot Zone
Julianna Margulies had no intention of doing another medical drama even years after "ER." But then National Geographic's "The Hot Zone" came up and it was far from a standard procedural. At the same time, she was very intrigued by the true story that the miniseries was based on the moment she learned of the project. "When I read the script, I thought, Why didn't I know about this?" she recalled during an interview with Deadline.
In "The Hot Zone," Margulies portrays a real-life character: Dr. Nancy Jaax, the U.S. Army veterinary pathologist who was among the experts who helped prevent a possible Ebola outbreak in the U.S. back in 1989. At that time, a lab facility in Reston, Virginia, took a shipment of monkeys from the Philippines. Not long after, the monkeys started to get sick and die from Ebola, a virus that had never been detected anywhere in the country up until then. "There was nothing known about this agent other than it had over a 90-percent lethality," Jaax also recalled during an interview with National Geographic.
As for Margulies, preparing for this series meant doing a lot of research and spending some time with infectious diseases expert Michael Smit, who also happens to be Jaax's nephew. "He showed me what to do, what not to do, and how to fake it enough to make it look real; those kinds of things," she explained.
Julianna Margulies published a memoir in 2021
Years after she got her start in Hollywood, Julianna Margulies thought it was finally time to tell her story. The idea came to her after "The Good Wife" ended. At that time, she was also sick with chickenpox, giving her the time to seriously think about how to let go of her character, Alicia Florrick, a character she ended up playing for seven long seasons. At some point, the idea of writing a book also came up.
In her memoir, "Sunshine Girl," she opens up about a lot of things, from her difficult childhood to her traumatizing encounter with Steven Seagal to her time on both "ER" and "The Good Wife." It even includes that time when she had to shoot an episode of "The Good Wife" after undergoing a gum graft. Meanwhile, the title of the book also happens to be the nickname that Margulies' mother gave her as a child.
Her parents figure prominently in the story too, which was why it was important for Margulies to get her mother's blessing first (her father had already passed away when she started working on it). "I said, 'Mom, I think I have a book inside of me [about] my childhood, where I got to my career and I won't write if you don't want me to, but I would like to,'" she recalled during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Her mom was supportive of the idea from the beginning.
She also joined The Morning Show
Julianna Margulies may already have a lot going on, but there was no way she would pass up on the opportunity to join the cast of "The Morning Show" during its 2nd season. For one thing, she had been a huge fan of the Apple TV+ drama led by Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon from the start. At the same time, Margulies' relationship with Mimi Leder, the show's producer and director, goes all the way back to her time on "ER." At that point in her career, Margulies was also intrigued with the idea of playing someone new, such as Laura Peterson, a gay character who is highly respected in the TV industry. "I've heard from numerous people how much she means to them, in that they're finally seeing a character on television who is LGBTQ and portrayed with such incredible confidence and smarts and knows where she's going in life," she said to Deadline in 2022.
In the story, Laura also eventually becomes involved with Witherspoon's Bradley Jackson and Margulies was just happy to explore that relationship further. "Does she fall so madly in love with Bradley that she isn't able to bring herself back to who she knows?" she added. Later on, Laura and Bradley's relationship also figured heavily in the story when the show returned for Season 3.