KUMBIA SHOW: How Allison Janney Became That Actor In Everything

via BuzzFeed

The six-time Emmy winner tells BuzzFeed News about the highs, lows, and insane experiences she’s encountered in her 25-year career.

Chris Ritter for BuzzFeed; ABC, CBS, NBC, New Line, Dreamworks,

Allison Janney's love affair with acting began years before she ever played C.J. Cregg on The West Wing, Ms. Perky in 10 Things I Hate About You, or any of the other dynamic women who have come to define her 25-year career.

"My mom was an actress. She went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, did Summer Stock, and was roommates with Eileen Brennan and Rue McClanahan," Janney told BuzzFeed News in her dressing room on the set of her latest project, CBS's Mom. "So, growing up, we'd go see Eileen whenever she was performing in different plays. I was too young to actually go to the theater, but I remember waiting up for her to come over afterwards and romanticizing her life a lot."

While the late Brennan may have kick-started Janney's love for performing, Janney looks at another iconic actor as her mentor: Joanne Woodward, who was married to Paul Newman for 50 years until his death in 2008.

"I went to Kenyon College in Ohio and Paul Newman went to Kenyon," Janney said. "During my freshman year they built this beautiful theater and he came back to christen it by directing the first play. I met him and Joanne when he cast me in the show and she said I had to come to New York and go to the neighborhood playhouse where she went ... It wasn't a guaranteed career for me. But right after college, I went to New York, went to that neighborhood playhouse, and studied acting there for two years. Then, Joanne had a theater company she very generously headed up for us and allowed us to do plays. That pretty much sealed my fate."

What followed was several years of doing, in Janney's own words, "a lot of off, off, off, off, off, off-Broadway stuff." But she endured. "Every time I tried to leave, every time I would quit in tears when things didn't work out, something would pull me back in," Janney said, fingers opened toward the sky. "Somebody was looking out for me up there, like, 'Don't give up yet!'"

That patience paid off in 1996 when Janney made her Broadway debut in a revival of Noel Coward's Present Laughter. "I was 36 years old and that was the first time I got a big break — and it was on Broadway!"

"Better late than never" quickly became Janney's unofficial motto as one role led to another — parts that eventually became her celebrated niche.

"Being a character actress, I think it allows me to have those kinds of varied roles," Janney said. "I feel like I've been skirting around the outside, showing up in a little thing here, a little thing there; never one big thing, but it's amounted to a lot of really great roles in really great movies that, over the years, have amounted to a really nice career. I'm certainly grateful to have made a living doing this, because there really was nothing else I could do."

In her own (slightly edited) words, Janney shared her memories of some of those "really great roles" that got her where she is today.