San Diego Union Tribune April 2002
April 28, 2002BEVERLY HILLS Ellen DeGeneres has just watered her Zen-like garden with the koi pond and fed a large bag of seed to the chirping wild birds in her back yard. Now, in the 1930s-style canyon home that she shares with her significant other, actress Alexandra Hedison, the comedian is curled up on a comfy white sofa, scratching the head of Subtle, one of her two rescued cats.
DeGeneres, 44, seems laid-back although she swears her mind races so fast she has to go into the steam shower to meditate. Besides, her national seven-week stand-up tour starts in days (she's at Copley Symphony Hall tonight) and she's still scribbling out quirky bits in a plastic three-ring notebook. See, she has this procrastination thing.
"I thought, what am I doing trying to write new material when my utensils aren't even alphabetized? Not that I cook, but should I start cooking, I'd know where the beater is. It shouldn't be next to the spatula," she says with that dead-serious face.
A week later, DeGeneres riffs on everything from
procrastination to Botox when her tour debuts at the Knitting Factory, a small Hollywood club. In the audience, John Travolta howls in laughter, his wife, Kelly Preston, applauds with her hands over her head, Sharon Stone and Minnie Driver giggle nonstop and Camryn Manheim of "The Practice" guffaws loudly.All she wants, DeGeneres says in the interview, is to get back to where she was before "my life became one big truth-or-dare film." She's referring to her high-profile, openly affectionate relationship with former paramour Anne Heche, whom she says prodded her to be so public about being gay.
"It hurt me as a performer because I had worked so hard to get to a certain point and now here I am just trying to get back to that point and erase everything else and say, forget about all that stuff and please just focus on me as a comedian," says DeGeneres, whose videotaped stand-up routines won her Showtime's "Funniest Person in America" two decades ago.
After a two-year self-exile from Hollywood, DeGeneres in November made a much-lauded comeback as the wry host of the twice-canceled Emmys, drawing a standing ovation from TV's elite ("I thought Barbra Streisand had walked out on the stage behind me," she recalls). And even though her fall sitcom, "The Ellen Show," was pulled by CBS because of low ratings and is unlikely to return, DeGeneres recently signed to headline her own daily syndicated talk show next year.
At home this day, she is naturally funny and candid ¡V pretty much like she is on stage. There is that racing brain, though, that can't stop even when she talks about adopting a child some day. She'll have to be sure she's in a permanent relationship. The time will have to be right. "I don't have it all figured out," she thoughtfully says. "Like I don't know what a Marks-A-Lot is made of and I know that a child at one point is going to say, 'What's a Marks-A-Lot made of?' "
The birds are singing in the back yard, and DeGeneres, in a blue button-down shirt and beige jeans, notes how peaceful her life is. Finally.
In 1997, she made the cover of Time magazine and TV history when both she and her sitcom character on "Ellen" revealed they were lesbians. The episode earned her a writing Emmy but DeGeneres battled with Disney-owned ABC, which stuck a parental advisory on the show.
When "Ellen" was canceled in 1998, DeGeneres and Heche moved to a secluded 10-acre farm in Ojai, 80 miles and a world away from Hollywood. Then after a 31/2-year relationship, Heche ¡V who later claimed she was insane for part of her life and thought she was God's daughter, "Celestia" ¡V suddenly split one day in August 2000, married a cameraman she met while working with DeGeneres on a documentary of her last comedy tour and in March had his baby.
DeGeneres suggests Heche's subsequent crazy claims were fake. "She's an amazing actress," she says. At the mention of Heche's infant son, DeGeneres grows sadly quiet. "Anne and I were trying to have children . . . I hope the baby's OK."
The breakup left her devastated. "You're with somebody for 31/2 years and you think you know them and then suddenly they change personalities overnight and walk out the door like nothing ever happened and you never hear from them again. It was traumatic, to say the least."
Soon, DeGeneres, who also has two dogs, segues to her animal rescue adventures. Turns out she's given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to injured birds and "almost had a coyote in my car one time. I thought it was a dog wandering around because it was lost." But there's an Anne story here, too. Right after Heche left, DeGeneres says she found a soaking wet hummingbird floating in the fountain in their garden. She held it in the sun to dry off and then carried it to different flowers, sticking its beak in nectar until it recovered and flew off.
"I just thought, there are some times you feel like you're that bird in that fountain, no one's going to find me, no one's going to rescue me, there's no hope and I'm going to die. And some times there's a hand that comes up and scoops you up and holds you up and brings you from flower to flower and helps you and gives you hope."
These days, DeGeneres has a "normal private relationship" with Hedison, who starred in the 1996 TV series "L.A. Firefighters" and had guest roles in "Nash Bridges" and "Melrose Place." Alex, as she is known, is pursuing a career in photography.
Looking back, DeGeneres says that while she and Heche were only trying to show that lesbian couples are like heterosexual couples, their relationship and her own sexuality became too much the focus. "I got caught up in someone saying, 'And do this! And then do this!' " she says, referring to Heche. "And so for me, in this vulnerable place, it's like OK, you're right. But at the same time, I want to say I take responsibility because I participated."
Again, she wants her comedy to be center stage. She has loved stand-up, ever since she first got yuks at a New Orleans fund-raiser by eating a Whopper, shake and fries without finishing a sentence. "You know how people start to talk but then they take a bite and they hold up their finger, like wait just a minute? And, it's always bugged me, like don't take a bite."
At age 13, she realized her gift for grabbing laughs when her parents divorced and her wisecracks cheered up her mother, Betty, now a gay rights activist. DeGeneres says she also used humor to make new friends since her family moved a lot in the New Orleans area, mainly because her father, Elliott, was active in different churches. Elliott DeGeneres, a retired insurance salesman, now lives in La Jolla and plans to attend his daughter's San Diego show.
For some reason, DeGeneres says she doesn't have many childhood memories. Neither do her parents.
"I can go to (my mom) and say, 'Remember that day I was on fire?' And she'd say, 'You were on fire?' "
DeGeneres does recall always "being the good girl and being polite and worrying about what other people" thought about her.
"I have it a little more figured out now," she says, as her second kitty, Harlow, slinks under the coffee table. "I think everybody should really appreciate their own individuality. The weirder you are, the better, as long as you're a good person and you're coming from a good place and have a good heart and treat people with respect."