by Anna Scott
The Independent Staff Writer
Hollywood loves actors who are easily defined. Those blessed with a look that can be summed up in a word or two are like gifts to casting directors, delivered in neat packages with easy-to-read instructions: “Ingenue.” “Mom.” “Action Star.”
But the ones who don’t fit into any obvious niche face a tougher road. Just ask Rachel Bailit, a bombshell actress with the face and sensibility of a comedienne.
“My agent says I have the body of Sharon Stone and the face of Carol Burnett … and he works for me,” jokes Bailit.
The actress is in the midst of workshopping a one-woman show about that very phenomenon. “Sugar Happens,” currently running at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in West Hollywood, is based on Bailit’s own experiences as a struggling actress whose looks often lead to confusion in the audition room.
Directed by David Strasberg, the son of legendary acting teacher Lee Strasberg, and written by Sherry Coben, an Emmy-winning sitcom scribe, “Sugar Happens” opens with Bailit entering the stage, dressed to kill in a corset, short skirt, garters and thigh highs.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she says.
“Big boobs…big lips. Bimbo. Starlet. Slut. But don’t judge me. You don’t really know me. I’m just a nice Jewish girl from Needham, Mass.”
The amusing contradictions continue from there, as the story traces how such a nice Jewish girl from New England transformed into a Hollywood thespian.
A native of Boston, Massachusetts, Bailit began her career as a broadcast journalist during college before moving to Los Angeles in 1995 to pursue acting.
“I fell in love with journalism while I was in school,” Bailit said. “Then I took an acting class for non-majors my final semester in college. The first day we had to be animals and I said, ‘oh my God, this is what I have to do.’
“I’m a storyteller of different sorts now.”
“Sugar Happens” was conceived after a television producer introduced Bailit to Coben, thinking they might make a good team.
“My friend had arranged a lunch meeting for me to pitch [a sitcom] with a producer at Sony,” Bailit remembers. “There was no interest whatsoever in the show, but one of the producers looked at me and said, ‘You need to be doing standup.’”
The producer arranged for the first meeting between Bailit and Coben, who has said that she initially dismissed the actress as “another bimbo” after checking out Bailit’s Web site, but then “met her and thought, ‘She really is this nice Jewish girl.’”
The script came from several interviews Coben conducted with Bailit in the months after their first coffee date and is chock full of the sort of awful-funny employment stories familiar to many aspiring actors in L.A., like being a tester for sports drinks.
“I exercise 45 minutes, then drink Gatorade…and repeat. For six hours,” Bailit has said.
Since “Sugar Happens” opened in May, it has received rave reviews and attracted growing audiences. Actor Al Pacino even showed up one night, which Bailit recalls in an awed tone.
“Afterwards I had a private conversation with him and he was very encouraging,” she said. “He really enjoyed the show and encouraged me to keep working deeper at it. I asked, ‘could you relate to this?’ He said, ‘absolutely, everyone can.’ It was amazing.”
The show, Bailit says, gives her a chance to make use of some not so great moments she’s had as an actress on different sets, where her breasts often take center stage.
“I played a woman with [obsessive-compulsive disorder] in an indie film and even she spent all her time in the pool,” Bailit said. “Then I did a McDonald’s commercial where everyone else was in a bathing suit and they said to me ‘no, you’re too big,’ so I was in a sports bra…it’s been very liberating getting up on stage and talking about it.”
The play is still a work in progress and Coben recently tacked on two additional acts, both set 15 years from now, showing two different versions of what might happen to the actress in the future.
Bailit plans to have the final show worked out by December and hopes to take it on tour by the beginning of next year.
“It is about hope,” Bailit said. “That’s the reason it’s called ‘Sugar Happens’ and not ‘S— Happens.’ I love what I do and I’m determined to fight the odds.”
“Sugar Happens” is running indefinitely Wednesdays at 8 p.m. at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, 7936 Santa Monica Boulevard. Seating is free. For more information call (323) 650-7777.
—Los Angeles Independent