![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Jill Clayburgh
6/11/10 13:15When I was an au pair in the summer after my Freshman year I saw Pippin on Broadway with the kid I was taking care of (we had great conversations about it, and about a number of other movies and shows we saw that summer. That boy grew into a terrific adult, and I'm flattered to know he thinks I had a hand in it). Anyway, Jill Clayburgh played Catherine, the lovely widow with whom Pippin falls in love (while on the run from all the failures he's left behind). Ultimately he leaves her, thinking he has to keep chasing his Great Purpose--until the Leading Player suggests that his Great Purpose is to go out in a literal burst of flame. At which point Pippin discovers that love and home life are not so bad at all. Through it all Catherine is faithful, humorous, and rolls with the punches--the grownup that Pippin is not, but a woman who sees what is good in him.
Jill Clayburgh was beautiful in an offbeat way, and had a wonderful talent for playing intelligent, emotionally open women in emotionally trying situations. Not only in Pippin but in An Unmarried Woman, she was an actress who defined what I wanted to be as a woman. She's being tossed around as someone who defined feminism or some such thing. I'd say, she defined what feminism aimed for: intelligent, confident women who could have love in their lives without being defined by it.
She's gone, much too early. I'll miss her.
Jill Clayburgh was beautiful in an offbeat way, and had a wonderful talent for playing intelligent, emotionally open women in emotionally trying situations. Not only in Pippin but in An Unmarried Woman, she was an actress who defined what I wanted to be as a woman. She's being tossed around as someone who defined feminism or some such thing. I'd say, she defined what feminism aimed for: intelligent, confident women who could have love in their lives without being defined by it.
She's gone, much too early. I'll miss her.