#57 — Teri Garr as Sandy Lester in Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982)

One of the first shots in the comedy Tootsie is of Teri Garr acting. More specifically, the scene captures Teri Garr’s character, Sandy Lester, acting in a class and finding herself unable to complete the exercise, hiding her face in embarrassment as she breaks. It is an ideal introduction for a character whose ongoing frustrations as a performer, notably her inability to push through her own hesitancy in making a role hers, is a major driver of the film’s plot.

Sandy is representative of any number of New York City actors, especially, I suspect, at the time the film was made. The constant rejections delivered by the harsh industry compounds the neuroses she already carries with her. Her nineteen-seventies feminism fortification (she’s read The Second Sex and The Cinderella Complex and knows that she’s responsible for her own orgasm) can’t quite overcome the indignities the come from being a working actor and simply getting through the hardscrabble life that surrounds it. She can’t even go to a birthday party without getting locked in the bathroom for an extended period and having her date leave with someone else. With wry, weary resignation, she still manages to tell the host it was a wonderful party.

Given all the particulars, it would be easy for Sandy to be a magnet of pure pity. The story gives her the doormat treatment in so many ways, including her stab at a romantic relationship with her longtime friend Michael (Dustin Hoffman), a situation he entered into under false pretenses and keeps prolonging out of a combination of cowardice and the preservation of a useful professional secret. When Michael shows up hours late for a dinner date, Sandy’s animosity towards him lasts seconds before she’s moaning an apology for thinking it was a good idea to invite him over in the first place.

Instead, Sandy is one of the most appealing figures in the film, and that is largely attributable to Garr’s charismatic, cunning performance. On the most fundamental level, Garr handles the drastic emotional pivots with expertise. In certain scenes, Sandy shifts between uncertainty, anger, self-recrimination, defiant confidence, and rejuvenating optimism, sometimes with a span no wider than a well-curled eyelash between diametrically opposed feelings. Garr maps this terrain so clearly that when a late scene calls for her to react to Michael telling her that he is in love with another woman by jolting upright from her chair with a scream of rage, the comically extreme eruption seems utterly logical.

Like a few other performances from around the same era (Charles Grodin in Midnight Run comes immediately to mind), Garr’s work as Sandy Lester forever after defined my perception of who she was as a person away from the screen. In her countless appearances on David Letterman’s Late Night, which were properly beloved by fans of the show, it might as well have been a slightly more assured Sandy sitting across from him, all the joshing scored with knowing skepticism. To adore Teri Garr is to adore Sandy Lester, and vice versa. And adoration is, without question, the right response.

Previously….

About Greatish Performances
#1 — Mason Gamble in Rushmore
#2 — Judy Davis in The Ref
#3 — Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca
#4 — Kirsten Dunst in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
#5 — Parker Posey in Waiting for Guffman
#6 — Patricia Clarkson in Shutter Island
#7 — Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise
#8 — Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
#9 — Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hudsucker Proxy
#10 — Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny
#11 — Nick Nolte in the “Life Lessons” segment of New York Stories
#12 — Thandie Newton in The Truth About Charlie
#13 — Danny Glover in Grand Canyon
#14 — Rachel McAdams in Red Eye
#15 — Malcolm McDowell in Time After Time
#16 — John Cameron Mitchell in Hedwig and the Angry Inch
#17 — Michelle Pfeiffer in White Oleander
#18 — Kurt Russell in The Thing
#19 — Eric Bogosian in Talk Radio
#20 — Linda Cardellini in Return
#21 — Jeff Bridges in The Fisher King
#22 — Oliver Platt in Bulworth
#23 — Michael B. Jordan in Creed
#24 — Thora Birch in Ghost World
#25 — Kate Beckinsale in The Last Days of Disco
#26 — Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys
#27 — Wilford Brimley in The Natural
#28 — Kevin Kline in Dave
#29 — Bill Murray in Scrooged
#30 — Bill Paxton in One False Move
#31 — Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight
#32 — Essie Davis in The Babadook
#33 — Ashley Judd in Heat
#34 — Mira Sorvino in Mimic
#35 — James Gandolfini in The Mexican
#36 — Evangeline Lilly in Ant-Man
#37 — Kelly Marie Tran in Star Wars: The Last Jedi
#38 — Bob Hoskins in Who Framed Roger Rabbit
#39 — Kristin Scott Thomas in The English Patient
#40 — Katie Holmes in Pieces of April
#41 — Brie Larson in Short Term 12
#42 — Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums
#43 — Jean Arthur in Only Angels Have Wings
#44 — Matthew Macfadyen in Pride & Prejudice
#45 — Peter Fonda in Ulee’s Gold
#46 — Raul Julia in The Addams Family
#47 — Delroy Lindo in Clockers
#48 — Mila Kunis in Black Swan
#49 — Sidney Poitier in Edge of the City
#50 — Lee Grant in The Landlord
#51 — Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut
#52 — Haley Lu Richardson in Columbus
#53 — Jenny Slate in The Obvious Child
#54 — Ray Liotta in Something Wild
#55 — Jean Hagen in Singin’ in the Rain
#56 — Matthew McConaughey as Dallas in Magic Mike