SINGING PRAISES
Cheryl Hines may play the embattled
wife on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm,
yet she’s anything but troubled
LEAVE IT TO A WOMAN OF LIMITLESS PATIENCE TO ARGUE
for her own limitations. But that’s the sort of irony Cheryl Hines
embraces as television’s most tortured wife. Well, at least she seems limitless.
From keeping mum on the infidelities of crazyeyed rap thugs to
playing her husband’s bathroom sentry, is there anything the embattled
better half of chronically crotchety TV producer Larry David can’t do?
“I can’t sing,” she admits.“I’m a terrible, terrible singer.”Years ago, Hines explains, well before
the critical garlands of HBO’s verité laugher, Curb Your Enthusiasm,the burgeoning actress was
midway through “Anything Goes” when she suddenly stopped, midaudition.“I really can’t sing,
can I?” she asked. Her wouldbe employers told her the truth, and from that moment on, she
vowed never again to waste anyone’s time with her vocal aspirations.“At some point you have to
realize your limits,” she concedes.
The fiasco may have curbed her enthusiasm to moonlight as a torch song chanteuse, but Hines
recently won her vocal cords some redemption by landing a plum part as the voice of a cartoon
lioness in Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Father of the Pride.The Dreamworks animated series, which teams
Hines with vox lumieres John Goodman and Carl Reiner, follows a feline family that finds its
way into Siegfried and Roy’s legendary Las Vegas show.
“At first it’s a little intimidating,” she says of her foray into voice
work.“You’re in this booth, and there are ten people staring at you
on the other side of the glass. But you can do whatever you want.
It’s an animated character, so you can let go a little.”
This is a topic Hines knows well, for letting go is the essence
of her craft: improvisation.After earning her degree in radio and
television in Tallahassee, Hines headed west for the bright lights
and glamour of a cramped onebedroom Hollywood apartment
and sporadic acting jobs. By meeting the right people, she soon
parlayed a parttime bartending gig into a coveted spot among
LA’s budding improv impresarios at the Groundlings Theater.
Shortly after that, Hines was “spotted” in a local showcase and
landed the part of Cheryl David on CurbYour Enthusiasm, affording
her the chance to polish her already formidable improv
chops.“Without that training,” she says,“I’m sure I wouldn’t have
gotten the role.”
For two seasons, David, cocreator of Seinfeld and inspiration
for the character of George Costanza, refused to show Hines a
single show outline. “I’d just show up on the set and stand there,”
she says flatly, “and I’d ask what the scene was about. Sometimes
he’d tell me and sometimes he’d say, ‘you’ll figure it out.’”
For now, Hines, who recently earned an Emmy nomination
for her role as Cheryl David, has figured out a few other things,
to boot — namely, how to juggle her work on Curb and Pride
with her role as Peter Gallagher’s cuckolded lover in Oxygen
Network’s debut film, A Tale of Two Wives. And then there’s her
recent marriage — which is not to Larry David, as legions of fans
believe, but to her manager, Paul Young, whom she describes as a
“dreamy dream man.”
When Hines affirms that Young represents “the brains of the
group,” I remind her that she had the good sense to marry him. She
modestly concurs, then goes on to further sing her husband’s praises.
And you know something? She actually sounds pretty good.
— Jeremy Horelick
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