Jane Kaczmarek, the Milwaukee native and actress who once presided over one of television’s wildest families, has gone from setting curfews to setting bail in her latest role. Please approach the bench.
By Michael J. Bandler

For the past few months, actor Bradley Whitford, onetime star of “The West Wing,” has been chasing a trio of stewardesses around the stage of Broadway’s Longacre Theatre eight performances a week—in character, of course—in the revival of a 1960s sex farce, Boeing-Boeing. And what’s his wife, Jane Kaczmarek, been doing all that time? She’s been keeping herself occupied 3,000 miles away, on a Hollywood soundstage, shooting “Raising the Bar,” a new TNT legal drama that has a generous element of characters canoodling to it as well. “I’ve been getting more than my share of happy kissing,” she says brightly. “And it’s going to continue, if I have anything to say about it!”

By any test, Kaczmarek is one of America’s genuine TV stars—a Yale-trained actress who, apart from occasional forays on the stage, has spent virtually all of her working years in television. She’s made original movies for the small screen and has appeared as a guest on sitcoms and dramas, including a recurring role in the mid-1980s on “Hill Street Blues.” But audiences know her best for her seven seasons as Lois, the high-strung, eccentric mom on “Malcolm in the Middle.”

At the time the hit show went off the air in May 2006, the actress was “really spent.” The mother of a two-year-old daughter when the show began, she’d had two more children during the run. (“I was pregnant the first season, and they hid it–the frying pans got bigger and bigger!”) She began filling her days with other interests–from parenting to gardening to charity work. But when the creative team headed by Steven Bochco– her “Hill Street Blues” boss from years back–offered her a judge’s robe and a meaty part to go with it, she had one question.

“‘Can I work two days an episode?’ I asked. Judge Trudy Kessler is the lead character, and if they’d said ‘no,’ I would have passed on it. They filmed my scenes in a concentrated way, making sure the character was very focused. And since we only filmed 10 episodes, it became a job I really could do along with raising my kids,” she says.

Kaczmarek was accommodated because much of the show’s action takes place out of court–involving the interplay between a young prosecutor and a public defender as they hash out their respective strategies before coming into the courtroom and chambers of the imperious, impatient and sometimes intemperate Judge Kessler.

“She’s a very good judge,” the actress says, “although the milk of human kindness doesn’t run through her veins.” And the show–which, in a subplot, has the judge dallying with her (much) younger court clerk–is less comedic than one might imagine. It involves, to a great extent, some of the challenges and ills of the legal system as reflected in protracted dispositions of cases. It runs the gamut from humorous to acerbic to downright confrontational and somber.

That spectrum—from dramatic to hilarious—mirrors that of Kaczmarek’s career. Early on, after studying at the Yale School of Drama, she was cast in relatively serious roles, often playing attorneys and a variety of law enforcement officials. But then she got the chance to replace Mercedes Ruehl as one of the lead characters in Neil Simon’s bittersweet Broadway comedy, Lost in Yonkers, which opened the door for her.

Kaczmarek grew up as a part of a close-knit Milwaukee family, on the city’s south side and in suburban Greendale. She—along with Whitford and their three children, ages five to 10–comes back frequently to Greendale to visit her dad, a one-time Defense Department employee, and her mom, a retired schoolteacher.

“We used to take the bus around Milwaukee. My grandparents, my Aunt Ruthie and my cousins lived five minutes away. There were great parks: Jackson Park and the band shell in Humboldt Park,” she says. “I was a baton twirler and would march in parades in the summer. It was a very tidy place to live. We went to Italy last summer and then to Wisconsin, and my kids said they would rather be in Milwaukee than Italy.”

As a sophomore at Greendale High School, Kaczmarek played the lead (Annie Sullivan) in The Miracle Worker. One of her teachers “saw something in me that I didn’t.” She used her baby-sitting earnings to pay for a workshop at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. Her parents didn’t push her in one direction or another; they left her alone to her pursuits.

“Once, when my kids were running around, I said to my mother, ‘How did you deal with four of us?’ And she said, ‘I think I just ignored you—which is why you all turned out so well,’” she says.

Kaczmarek graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a double major in theater and education. She was accepted at Yale, where she became good friends with classmates (and fellow actors) Frances McDormand (Fargo) and Kate Burton (“Grey’s Anatomy”). It was Burton, years later, who introduced her to fellow Wisconsinite Whitford, a Madison native.

Kaczmarek says Whitford’s laidback nature balances out her somewhat stronger personality, hinting that her role on “Malcolm in the Middle” wasn’t so far off from her true character.

“You never wondered how Lois was going to react to something,” she says. “She came from me.

“I was in the garden center recently; I wanted something that wasn’t there. And my little boy said to the clerk, ‘You’d better do what she says; she’s a really good getting-mad-at-you kind of person!,’” she says. “I thought, ‘I am? Really?’ I am a highly functioning, resourceful, multitasking person, and when I see people who aren’t on that level, I can get frustrated. I don’t like clutter. I don’t like being unproductive.”

That productive drive constantly steers her to new ventures. She makes time for an oil-painting class and another on typesetting. She’s studied music history. She plays piano and gardens at her home in Pasadena.

Another aspect of her life she and her husband have grown to cherish is Clothes Off Our Back (clothesoffourback.org), a charity which they created in 2002. “I was overwhelmed with all the swag–the free stuff you get as a celebrity in Hollywood. [“Malcolm in the Middle”] and [“The West Wing”] were nominated for everything, so we would go to all the awards shows wearing magnificent clothing that had no life afterwards,” she says.

The couple devised the idea of selling gowns, tuxedos and various accessories through an online auction that would raise money for three children’s charities each year. One of her favorite organizations is the Smile Train, devoted to cleft-palate repair. But she’s quick to point out that her choices depend on “whatever breaks my heart the most that year.”

So, she explains, “when Jennifer Aniston had a good year at the Emmys, so did the 50,000 children in Africa who were immunized with the proceeds from the auctioning of her dress. We just auctioned Keira Knightley’s green evening dress from Atonement for $35,000.” Katherine Heigl’s slinky red Escada gown from Oscar night was a prized offering in late winter.

The charity, the career choices she makes and the household she embraces all point to a woman whose wit and devil-may-care personality actually belie someone who thinks very seriously about where she’s been and where the future may take her. She was grateful that “Raising the Bar” came along when it did, affording her a “really exciting” career opportunity, she says, “that fits in well with how I want to live my life.”

“I’ve played a Holocaust survivor and I’ve done high comedy. I’ve tackled every emotion and situation I can think of. I’m 52, and when you turn 50, something happens. You realize your days are numbered, and you think seriously about how you want to spend each day … I try to keep that in mind when making choices.”

And who are we to judge?

COURTROOM APPEARANCES

“Raising the Bar” isn’t Kaczmarek’s first time serving on the bench. Here are the seven verdicts she handed down on “The Simpsons” as the voice of the stern Judge Constance Harm:

“The Parent Rap” (2001)
Bart and Homer are tethered together after Bart takes a joyride in Chief Wiggum’s patrol car.

“Brawl in the Family” (2002)
The Simpsons undergo supervision by social services after police are called to intervene in a Monopoly game gone sour.

“Barting Over” (2003)
Bart sues Homer to become an emancipated minor. He moves out and befriends skateboarder Tony Hawk.

“Brake My Wife, Please” (2003)
Homer’s driver’s license is revoked and Marge is forced to drive him around town.

“The Wandering Juvie“ (2004)
Bart is sentenced to six months in juvenile detention for throwing a fake wedding so he can exchange the gifts for store credit.

“On A Clear Day I Can’t See My Sister” (2005)
Lisa files a restraining order against Bart. He’s forced to live in the yard and learns to commune with nature.

“Rome-Old & Julieh” (2007)
Homer is assigned an accountant after he incorrectly files for bankruptcy. To curb expenses, he pulls Grandpa out of the nursing home.

THE SIMPSONS ™ AND © 2001 TCFFC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. CR: FOX