Jean Smart’s Career Timeline: “I Don’t Take Any of It for Granted”

After working in film and television for decades—not to mention winning five Emmys—Jean Smart has learned some Hollywood lessons the hard way. Like this one: “It’s a law of physics. Inevitably, the scene in a script that is the reason you took the job is always the scene that gets cut. Not cut, but edited down.” That’s what she expected to happen on Babylon, the sprawling Hollywood epic in which she plays gossip columnist and wise woman-about-town Elinor St. John. Late in the film, she gives a speech to Brad Pitt’s fading star, Jack Conrad, about the lasting onscreen legacy… Read Full Article