Holland Taylor is particularly good at playing women who expect to be obeyed. We value her dry timing and the humanity she gives them, though we would like more parts that ask something else of her.
Fi1m perspective
Professor Stromwell in Legally Blonde (2001) gives Holland Taylor a job she does particularly well: making professional authority credible in a comedy. Her dry timing suits a tough law professor, and we like the firmness she brings to a supporting role without needing it to become the whole attraction. Reese Witherspoon remains the reason to see the film, giving Elle Woods the wit and determination to carry it through some indifferent jokes. The comedy is predictable and could be more sharply timed. Taylor’s suitability for Stromwell is also a useful way into the problem of a career spent so often playing the person in charge.
Television has supplied much of that work, from her breakthrough as Ruth Dunbar in Bosom Buddies (1980) to Judge Roberta Kittleson in The Practice (1998) and Evelyn Harper in Two and a Half Men (2003). The professions and family arrangements change; the expectation of authority often does not. Taylor’s strength is making tough or overbearing women human without apologising for their sharpness. That is useful in both comedy and drama, although repeated casting of this kind can leave us knowing what to expect before she has spoken.
The Truman Show (1998) is the stronger of the two films, though Taylor’s supporting part is not the main reason to recommend Peter Weir’s comedy. We were unsettled by Jim Carrey’s vulnerability: the hurt of a life turned into television survives the cleverness of the premise. The film makes blame too easy to assign, but that does not cancel its emotional force.
Her later screen work includes Ellen Kincaid in Hollywood (2020), while Ann (2013), the one-woman play she wrote and performed, gives a useful corrective to the picture of a permanent supporting actor. We would like more screen roles that require something other than authority from her. The reservation is about the repetition of the assignments, not a lack of skill in carrying them out. Start with Legally Blonde if predictable comedy is no objection.
Biography
Holland Taylor is an American actress born on 14 January 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She trained in drama at Bennington College before moving to New York to pursue a stage career.
Her breakthrough came with the role of Ruth Dunbar in the sitcom Bosom Buddies (1980–82). She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 1999 for playing Judge Roberta Kittleson in The Practice (1998–2003) and received four further Emmy nominations for Evelyn Harper in Two and a Half Men (2003–15).
Taylor is known for film roles including Beatrice Stanhope in George of the Jungle (1997), Professor Stromwell in Legally Blonde (2001) and her part in The Truman Show (1998). She wrote and starred in the one-woman play Ann about Ann Richards, earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play.
