![]() ![]() A run of well-received performances in TV movies and independent films landed her roles in awards bait (Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River) and blockbusters (Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow) before she was cast in Shameless in 2010. Rossum found Hollywood recognition through more traditional means than Angelyne. That helps me tell the story, in the same way that having none of that helps Angelyne. For a character, I’m comfortable showing blemishes or imperfect skin. “I remember seeing a woman who was totally empowered in her body, in her sexuality, in her womanhood in a way that I certainly was not at 13 - somebody that had captured the city’s attention, seemingly magically.”Ĭontrol is something the actress says she doesn’t give much thought to as it pertains to her own public image: “The care about what you create is what resonates with me, but I’m not particular. “In retrospect, it’s a very curated image, but it had a lot of impact on me,” she says. Her billboards could still be found around town back then, and Rossum recalls staring up at one in fascination. Riding shotgun in her mother’s rental car, a 13-year-old Rossum first encountered Angelyne. Robot creator Sam Esmail, also an exec producer on Angelyne, in 2019 Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty ImagesĪnother cultural education that took place upon her arrival proved more prophetic. “I did not even know who Axl Rose was, but I used to play his music in the bathtub and think, ‘This feels cool.’ “ “I was coming out of the classical music world,” says Rossum. Their landlord, for whatever reason, disclosed that the bathtub had not been updated since the Guns N’ Roses frontman lived there. In 1998 they migrated to Los Angeles, where they shared a small apartment on Shoreham Drive, within earshot of the Sunset Strip, in a unit previously occupied by Axl Rose. Rossum started performing at the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus at Lincoln Center at age 7, backing the likes of Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti. Cheryl wasn’t a stage mom so much as a co-conspirator who indulged her daughter’s fondness for singing and acting. The only child to single mother Cheryl, an artist who early in her career served as Steve Jobs’ personal photographer, Rossum was thrust into the arts at a young age. Rossum was born and is once again a full-time New Yorker, but she spent the bulk of her formative years in Los Angeles. But feeling lost gives way to this real liberation - from myself and the hang-ups that can impede a performance.” “I found it to be completely liberating to look in the mirror and not see myself at all,” says Rossum of transforming into Angelyne. She’s distancing herself from her best-known job to date - one on which she famously fought for pay parity with her male co-star - and is using the TV makeover as a calling card for her young production company. She had to court the series’ capricious namesake for her life rights as well as navigate a pandemic stoppage and an additional delay by her own pregnancy (Rossum and Esmail welcomed a baby girl in May 2021). Her career’s “complete and singular focus” for four years, Angelyne‘s May 19 premiere brought bigger challenges than just outsized prosthetics. Rossum is in a period of reinvention herself. Reinvention, or a rebirth from trauma, that’s something we all tend to do in different ways.” “When I googled her, I was a little taken aback as to why Emmy would want to play her, but the more I learned about her, the more it clicked. “I didn’t know who Angelyne was, and I lived in L.A. ![]() Writer-producer Sam Esmail, Rossum’s husband and frequent collaborator, counted himself among the former group until his wife shared a 2017 article from this publication that revealed Angelyne’s real identity as a Poland-born daughter of Holocaust survivors. Ask anybody Hollywood-adjacent what they think of her, and you’re equally likely to be greeted with a blank stare or a giddy anecdote about the first time they spotted her pink Corvette. She offered no backstory then, and she hasn’t since. She became famous for being famous after erecting billboards bearing her distinctive likeness around Los Angeles during the 1980s. Angelyne, on the other hand, is a figure of hyperlocal folklore. The 35-year-old has courted a successful career with regular acting work since she was a teenager - booking roles with a vague solicitation for “girl next door” types and logging nine seasons as the star of Showtime’s Shameless. Angelyne and Rossum bear virtually no resemblance to each other, in appearance or biography, which is one reason the actress went to such lengths to shore up support for her project. ![]()
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