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(This is one in a series of articles on actors and
performers with disabilities.)
Just No Stopping This Actress 
By Kathi Wolfe
Anita Hollander, 54, is an actress, singer, composer,
lyricist, director, producer and teacher. She has performed her critically
acclaimed original one-woman musical “Still Standing” at the White
House, off-Broadway and many other venues nationwide. Her many theatrical roles
have included Grizabella in “Cats,” Emma Goldman in
“Ragtime” and the title role in “Shirley Valentine.” She
has appeared in TV shows ranging from the acclaimed HBO drama “The
Sopranos” to the soap opera “All My Children.”
Though Hollander has had a highly successful performing
career, she has, on occasion, been denied roles because of her disability: When
she was 26, she lost her left leg to cancer.
In 1998, for example, she originated the title role in
“Gretty Good Time” at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The play
was written by the late John Belluso, who used a wheelchair.
“John wanted someone with a disability to play the
role,” said Hollander, who recently spoke by telephone with a reporter.
“A month later (after the play finished its run at the center), the
Ensemble Studio Theatre brought me in to audition.” 
Because she had played the role at the Kennedy Center,
Hollander thought she’d get the part, but it was given to a non-disabled
actress. “It was devastating! The director hadn’t concentrated on the
play.
“It was a low point,” said Hollander, who lives
in New York when not traveling for her work. “Most of my experience has
been positive. I have a life that goes all over the place (in a good
way).”
Hollander, who grew up in Cleveland, wanted to be an
actress even as a young child. “My dad took me to see shows. I fell in
love with musicals. When I was 4, my mother and I were at some kind of program.
I went up on stage and started to sing.”
People expected her to sing a “child’s
song,” Hollander recalled, “but I was singing a song from ‘Guys
and Dolls.’ I sang too fast, but I knew what I was doing.”
When she was 8, Hollander auditioned for the part of the
youngest child in “The Sound of Music.” She got a job as the
understudy for the role in a professional (Equity) summer stock production.
Then, as in a Hollywood movie, “the girl who had the part got the measles
and I got to go on!”
From then on she was “totally serious” about
singing, Hollander said. By the time she entered college, “I’d
developed a passion for straight plays.”
But she had no illusions after being accepted at Carnegie
Mellon University’s drama program. “I went there with no ego. I knew
they’d break me down.”
But there were setbacks. Her father died in her sophomore
year. Then, in her junior year, she was diagnosed with cancer. “Over nine
months, I saw 10 doctors. Nine said I was fine. Finally, one doctor understood
that it wasn’t just something little.”
After being sent to New York, she was diagnosed with
cancer of the connective tissue surrounding the nerves of her affected leg. For
the next five years, she wore a brace both on- and offstage.
After graduating from Carnegie Mellon, Hollander was
accepted into the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. “Only 11 guys
and four girls were accepted!” she said. “I was blown away!”
There, she was fortunate, Hollander said. “One of the
Academy’s famous graduates -- an actress -- had a withered leg. They told
me, ‘The brace on your leg doesn’t mean a thing.’ They saw it as
an asset. They went by my talent, not by my legs.”
Then, after working in Copenhagen and moving to Boston,
Hollander’s cancer came back, and the leg had to be amputated.
“The best doctors were there. They took good care of
me. The brace hadn’t stopped me. I decided the amputation wouldn’t
stop me.”
If she could work with a brace, her doctors told
Hollander, working with a prosthetic leg could be better. “This
wasn’t entirely true,” Hollander said. But a few weeks after the
amputation, she was back performing in “Jacques Brel is Alive and
Well” -- the show in which she had acted before her leg was removed.
Since then, the actress has played all kinds of roles
– from a cat to a clerk on “Law and Order” to a “crazy
Greek god,” she said. “Some have disabilities; some don’t.”
Of course, non-disabled actors want to play characters
with disabilities, Hollander said. “They want to get an Oscar. Sometimes
they deserve it. But actors with disabilities deserve it, too.”
In addition to acting, Hollander is co-chairwoman of the
IAM PWD (Inclusion in the Arts and Media of Performers with Disabilities)
campaign.
In September 2009, the AFL-CIO endorsed the I AM PWD
campaign. At its national convention, the group called for inclusion of people
with disabilities in all levels of the labor movement.
“The labor movement has taken on our language,”
Hollander said. “They’re starting to see that people with
disabilities should have a face and a voice. The International Federation of
Actors has endorsed IAM PWD.”
In 2010, Hollander said, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance
Against Defamation (GLAAD) asked I AM PWD to be included in its analysis of
television shows. “GLAAD looks for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender) characters, but they were interested in looking for characters
with disabilities.”
GLAAD’s annual “Where We Are On TV” report
for 2010 was the first time that the group’s yearly analysis of television
shows examined the representation of people with disabilities on TV. The report
found that in all scripted shows on broadcast television -- on ABC, CBS, NBC,
Fox and the CW -- there were only six characters with disabilities (only 1
percent of all scripted series regular characters).
“This got IAM PWD a lot of media attention --
highlighting the lack of employment for performers with disabilities and the
lack of inclusion of people with disabilities in the media,” Hollander
said. “There’s a lot of resistance in the (entertainment) industry to
people with disabilities. It’s based on fear, ignorance and a lack of
education.”
Until recently, the industry hasn’t thought about how
performers with disabilities can play characters of all types, Hollander said.
“Disability might be an issue for some characters; for others it
doesn’t have to be mentioned.”
There’s a long way to go, but the IAM PWD campaign is
doing some good, Hollander said. “We’re helping people with
disabilities to have a face and a voice.”
For more information, go to
www.anitahollander.com.
Kathi Wolfe is a writer and poet. Her book “Helen
Takes the Stage: The Helen Keller Poems” was published by Pudding House in
2008. |
