New England Patriot*
*Desperate Housewives' Marcia Cross is thankful for many
things in life, including return trips to
Boston.
. Photograph by Robert Ascroft.
WHO CAN FORGET the moment Marcia Cross, as Bree Van De Kamp,
burst onto the screen of
Desperate Housewives? There she
was, a seemingly perfect Stepford wife, toting a basket of muffins
and her just as seemingly perfect family to a wake for a suicidal
neighbor on Wisteria Lane. But, as they say, "Who knows what
secrets are hiding in the dark?" And Bree's secrets always come to
light. By the end of the first episode alone, she'd (accidentally?)
tried to poison her first husband, Rex, with onions - to which he
was allergic - from a salad bar after he told her that he wanted a
divorce. Since then, it's been a slow and steady downward spiral
for Bree, whose kids hate her, whose relationships are usually
fatal (at least two corpses in her path thus far), and who's passed
out drunk on her perfectly manicured front lawn, all from the
pressures of trying to be perfect. The more Bree flames out,
though, the more Marcia Cross rises.
Cross grew up in Marlborough,
Massachusetts, a town 45 minutes
outside of Boston, far from the affairs, psychoses, back stabbings,
and municipal meltdowns of Wisteria Lane. "I really lived in an
incredible neighborhood, with tons of kids of friends of my parents
who have known each other for 46 years," Cross says. "I had a
really incredible time as a kid there." She left this idyllic glen
for the less tranquil world of acting, first in New York, where,
after graduating from Juilliard, she went from the stage to soaps
(
The Edge of Night, One Life to Live). Then it was on to Los
Angeles, where she worked in episodic television (as Kirstie
Alley's sultry sister on
Cheers and an obsessive former
girlfriend on
Knots Landing, among other parts) before
winning a role on
Melrose Place as Dr. Kimberly Shaw, whose
psychotic résumé included forays into kidnapping and wanton
destruction. When
Melrose Place went off the air, Cross
earned her master's degree in psychology at Antioch College before
returning to acting and landing a steady stream of TV and film
roles that culminated in 2004, when she was tapped for
Desperate
Housewives.