Kristin Bauer van Straten talks about acting, True Blood and her character, Pam and reveals a bit of herself with theglobeandmail.com. Below is a portion of that article.
On camera, Bauer van Straten’s features are big; in person, they’re enormous – deep-set eyes, cheekbones wide as sails, lips so full they look about to burst. Her voice, however, is a surprise: It’s a full octave higher than Pam’s, girlishly enthusiastic, and slowed by the elongated, slightly nasal vowels of her native Wisconsin. This dominatrix is secretly a dairy maid.
“When I first arrived in Los Angeles, my acting coach took one listen and said: ‘Ooh, you need a voice coach,’” Bauer van Straten said. Her response – “Why?” pronounced “Wii-ee?” – supplied its own answer. The coach taught her to drop her voice and to excise the upturn? That makes declarative sentences into questions? When she first appeared as Pam, she wrote to thank him: “Are you watching this? Because you are partly responsible.”
Bauer van Straten took the long road to fame, moving to L.A. in 1994 and kicking around for more than a decade, doing guest spots on series, bit parts in movies, and pilots that didn’t get picked up. Memorably, she played Man Hands, one of Jerry’s failed dates, on Seinfeld. “Every few years,” she said, “I’m in this awkward position where I’ll run into Jerry somewhere and think, ‘He’s not going to remember my name.’ So when I say hello I feel I have to say, ‘I’m Man Hands.’” She laughs giddily.
She suffered her share of humiliations (she was once hired for a pilot, fired from it, was persuaded to audition again, and then dismissed a second time) and came close to quitting more than once. “When people ask me for advice about becoming an actor, I’ll ask: ‘Is there anything else that you love?’” she said. “If they say yes, I say: ‘Go do that.’ I stuck with acting only because I couldn’t do anything else. I once said to a friend: ‘If this slow streak continues, I’m going to be working at Starbucks.’ She said: ‘Oh, honey, we’re not qualified.’ My poor parents were worried about me for a long time.”
They can relax now. Although Bauer van Straten is still a sweet Wisconsin girl at heart – she admits to first crushing on her future husband after repeat viewings of the video of his love song Rain, and gushes about animals, recycling and John Wayne – she knows how to sink her teeth into Pam. At the HBO event, she dished about who would win in a girl fight between Pacquin and herself (Pacquin) and described making out with Skarsgard as “fabulous.”
The allure of True Blood is its unabashed wish fulfilment. And Bauer van Straten is not immune. “Pam lets me get everything out – any causticness or bitchiness,” she said. “Most of us are conflicted about who we are. She’s not.”
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