Central Perk
Meet Lily Rabe, This Summer's Shakespeare in the Park Stand-out Star.
By Whitney Spaner // PHOTOGRAPHED BY Eric McNatt
Actress Lily Rabe never went to camp but imagines the experience is similar to her latest gig, starring as Portia in the Public Theater's production of The Merchant of Venice in Central Park this summer. "The way we do Shakespeare in the Park, there is that summer camp feeling that we'll all be here through the rain and whatever else. Everyone's getting paid the same, and we're all sharing the same crowded dressing room," says Rabe at Maialino, her neighborhood go-to restaurant at the Gramercy Park Hotel. So does that make Al Pacino, who plays Shylock, camp counselor? "It's a highbrow first camp experience!" exclaims Rabe in her distinct contralto. Though she considers Pacino's The Panic in Needle Park one of her "favorite movies of all time," it's hard to get too starstruck when your mother is Oscar-nominee Jill Clayburgh and your father is playwright and screenwriter David Rabe.
Born on the Upper West Side -- shortly after her mother earned acclaim in movies like An Unmarried Woman and Starting Over, and a few years before one of her dad's best-known works, Hurlyburly, made its Broadway debut -- Rabe says she had some growing up to do before she was ready to accept her parents as artists. Watching her mother's movies, she recalls, "used to make me turn bright red and I sort of wouldn't remember watching them when I was younger. You want your parents to just be your parents and keep it at that." But now that she's 28 and carving out her own acting career (which so far has included turns on Broadway in Steel Magnolias and Richard Greenberg's The American Plan), she says, "I want to read everything my dad has written and see everything my mom has done. I feel better equipped to take that stuff in and experience them through their work. I almost feel hungry for it." This summer, however, her plate is pretty full. "When I am working, I have the tendency to go underground," she says. "I have a lot of calls that I haven't returned that I need to. My head is in it all the time. It's actually kind of agreeable."
The Merchant of Venice runs through August 1 at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.
Lily wears a dress by 3.1 Philip Lim and a vintage ring.
Stylist: Luigi Tadini
Hair: Sarah Potempa for Aussie at the Wall Group
Makeup: Katey Denno at the Wall Group
Born on the Upper West Side -- shortly after her mother earned acclaim in movies like An Unmarried Woman and Starting Over, and a few years before one of her dad's best-known works, Hurlyburly, made its Broadway debut -- Rabe says she had some growing up to do before she was ready to accept her parents as artists. Watching her mother's movies, she recalls, "used to make me turn bright red and I sort of wouldn't remember watching them when I was younger. You want your parents to just be your parents and keep it at that." But now that she's 28 and carving out her own acting career (which so far has included turns on Broadway in Steel Magnolias and Richard Greenberg's The American Plan), she says, "I want to read everything my dad has written and see everything my mom has done. I feel better equipped to take that stuff in and experience them through their work. I almost feel hungry for it." This summer, however, her plate is pretty full. "When I am working, I have the tendency to go underground," she says. "I have a lot of calls that I haven't returned that I need to. My head is in it all the time. It's actually kind of agreeable."
The Merchant of Venice runs through August 1 at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.
Lily wears a dress by 3.1 Philip Lim and a vintage ring.
Stylist: Luigi Tadini
Hair: Sarah Potempa for Aussie at the Wall Group
Makeup: Katey Denno at the Wall Group
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