A Queen of the Queen of the Heartland
Before
Felicity Huffman was a star on
screens big (this spring's
Georgia Rule)
and small (
Desperate Housewives), she was a
hardworking, couch-surfing, snow-shoveling
Chicago actress. She's
more than happy to take us back there.
.
Photograph by Catherine Ledner.
"I did my homework,"
Felicity Huffman
begins, talking about how she spent the night before our interview
carefully researching where to go and what to do in Chicago. She
came of age as an actress there, and her husband, William H. Macy,
is a transplanted Chicagoan who's almost synonymous with the city.
But Huffman, like Lynette Scavo, her always stressed but very smart
character in
Desperate Housewives, doesn't
do anything halfway. "I have all these notes in my computer," she
says. "I was talking about Chicago, and we were like, Oh, what
about that, and what about that?" Doing her homework has paid
off very well for Huffman. Not only has she won an
Emmy and a
Screen Actor's Guild Award for her
Desperate
Housewives role, but last year she was also nominated for an
Oscar for her work in the film
Transamerica. This month, she's back on TV with
Desperate Housewives and in bookstores with
A Practical Handbook for the Boyfriend: For Every
Guy Who Wants to Be One/For Every Girl Who Wants to Build
One, a book she coauthored. In the spring, she returns to
the big screen with
Georgia Rule, which
also costars Jane Fonda and Lindsay Lohan. Huffman has come a
very long way from her
Colorado hometown. Here's what she remembers
(and what she's researched) from her years in Chicago.