Harris Plays ‘Gin’ for Actors

I gave up counting standing ovations, but I can tell you who makes up an actor’s best audience--other actors.

Tuesday’s Actors’ Fund benefit performance of “The Gin Game” was like a big, fuzzy group hug for stars Julie Harris and Charles Durning. Especially for Harris, who also received a Wilshire Theatre full of happy birthdays in honor of turning a stately 73 that evening.

In Grosse Pointe, Mich., that is.

“Dec. 2 is Julie Harris’ birthday,” director Charles Nelson Reilly said before presenting a cake during a post-show kissy-fest onstage. “It isn’t Dec. 2 yet, but it is in Grosse Point, where she was born.”

Hey, any excuse for a snack. Also honored was veteran costumer Noel Taylor, who received the Nedda Harrigan Logan Award, named after a longtime president of the Actors’ Fund, which helps house, feed and care for thespians in need.

Fellow travelers in the audience included Blythe Danner, Dom DeLuise, Jean Stapleton, Betty White, Angie Dickinson and Joan Van Ark.

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It’s Brenda Blethyn week here in hors d’oeuvres town.

The British actress has been in L.A. to raise her glass at two premieres--Miramax’s “Little Voice” and the Showtime Network’s “Girls’ Night.” In “Voice,” Blethyn plays the harridan mom of a closeted virtuoso singer. In “Night,” she’s a stoic mother and friend dying of cancer.

Blethyn, named best actress at Cannes for “Secrets and Lies,” disappears so completely into her vastly different roles that we were curious to see what she was really like. She’s elegant, gracious and articulate. Surprise!

Blethyn is also educational. Or so we discovered at the premiere party at L’Hermitage when we asked her about working on “Little Voice” with co-stars Jane Horrocks and Michael Caine.

“It was an enjoyable experience. Well, snogging Michael Caine, puh-leeze.”

Snogging?

“Don’t you say snog?”

No, but we’d like to.

“Snog--S-N-O-G--means to have an enjoyable kissing session. With Michael Caine.”

Hmmmm. We forgot to ask Claire Forlani what she called an enjoyable kissing session with Brad Pitt in “Meet Joe Black.” But then we probably couldn’t print it, anyway.

Irene Lacher’s Out & About column runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays on Page 2.