Ellen Barkin’s softer side still comes with a snarl

Ellen Barkin’s softer side still comes with a snarl Image

Indeed, the perception of Barkin, 57, is one of a salty and brash New York broad, but in a three-decade film career the actress has often leavened her characters’ tough, headstrong exteriors with nerve-fraying vulnerability and vixenish allure. Of course, in real life, Barkin says, she would never label herself as tough.

“I’m too vulnerable, if anything. And I think what might be perceived as ‘tough’ would be called strong and tenacious if I were a man. But because I am not a man, I’m called tough – and sometimes worse,’’ she says, with a familiar lopsided smirk, between sips of tea.

Her latest role, the overwrought Lynn in “Another Happy Day,’’ tilts more to the vulnerable side of the equation. In the ensemble drama, Barkin’s character must navigate through an emotional minefield, as family gathers at her parents’ home to celebrate the wedding of Lynn’s oldest son, Dylan, who was raised largely by his father.

A hypersensitive soul with a desperate need for validation, Lynn grapples not only with her troubled children, including a drug- and depression-addled middle son (Ezra Miller) and self-mutilating daughter (Kate Bosworth), but also a pair of mean-spirited sisters (Siobhan Fallon and Diana Scarwid), her ex-husband (Thomas Haden Church) and his prickly second wife (Demi Moore), and her icily aloof mother (Ellen Burstyn). As old skeletons get dragged from the proverbial closet, Lynn’s attempts at resolution with various members of the clan crash and burn.

Ellen Barkin’s softer side still comes with a snarl

Ellen Barkin’s softer side still comes with a snarl

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