Jessica Capshaw
TV Guide
September 18, 1999
"Jess for Laughs" by Mary Murphy
No Crowns Please, for Odd Man Out 's Jessica Capshaw, the Daughter of Hollywood Royalty Who is Anything But a Princess
By all rights, Jessica Capshaw could be a real Hollywood brat. She's beautiful, 22 years old, has a good job on a new network comedy and enjoys the kind of industry connections that would set other actresses her age weeping with envy. Dinner with Steven Spielberg? Just say when.
But the daughter of actress Kate Capshaw (and stepdaughter of Spielberg, Kate's husband and the most powerful director in Hollywood) seems unfazed by it all. She drives her own car (a sports utility vehicle) to the set of ABC's Odd Man Out (Fridays, 9:30 P.M./ET). She fetches her own diet colar, even picking one up for a guest. She has not entourage and emphatically dismisses a publicist's offer to sit in during the interview for this article.
"For what purpose?" laughs the Brown University graduate as she sits cross-legged on a sofa in her dressing room on the Warner Bros. lot. "I'm not afraid. If I fall on my face, I'll just get up and wipe my knees off and go on."
Capshaw learned her Hollywood survival techniques from her mother. "She has such a great sense of humor about herself," the younger Capshaw says. "She doesn't have to take everything so seriously. She taught me to laugh things off."
Kate's daugher spent much of her childhood on location, traveling from movie set to movie set with her mom. She was born in Columbia, Missouri, where her mother and father, Bob Capshaw, were students at the University of Missouri. The young family soon moved to New York City for Kate's modeling career (Bob, a salesman for a trademark researching firm, still lives there). The Capshaws divorced when Jessica was 3, and from then on the little girl inhabited her mother's transient world of acting and, later, celebrity.
"We lived on our own in New York, and then she just started working everywhere," Jessica recalls. "Italy for three months, Sri Lanka for a month, London for three months. I would just go to school wherever I was and as soon as the school bell rang, I was out of there, and I would go to work with my mom. I was on her coattails."
Shy around the kids at school, Jessica was more comfortable on her mom's sets, where she saw firsthand the ups and downs of the profession. "She watched that roller coaster," says Kate, "and she understands that most often it is not personal. I'm happy about that, and when she forgets, I remind her."
The shared passion for acting - not to mention the years together on the road - made for a very strong bond between mother and daughter. "I was alone with her until I was 12," says Jessica. Kate then met Spielberg, and the two were married when Jessica was 15. What had long been a two-woman team grew to a clan of nine, including Jessica's six siblings, both biological and adopted: Theo, now 11; Max, Spielberg's son with actress Amy Irving, now 14; Sasha, 9; Sawyer, 7; Mikaela, 3; and Destry, 2. Jessica's father, Bob, has two children from a subsequent marriage: Ethan, 3, and 1-year old Dylan.
Thankfully, the adjustment of an only child to a suddenly expanding family was anything but traumatic source material for a future E! True Hollywood Story. "By that time I very much had an idea who I was," she says. "I was playing sports, doing plays. I really did have a strong life outside my house."
Inside the house, Jessica took on the role of big sister, baby-sitter and protector - good practice for her job on Odd Man Out. The series stars Markie Post as a widow raising four young kids. Capshaw's character, Jordan, is Post's young (and very single) sister, who helps raise the children.
"On-screen," says Post, "I'm the mature one, and Jessica's character is flaky, neurotic and scattered." But in real life, Post goes on, Capshaw is "an old soul, poised, talented and very well brought up by her mother. For everything that she has in her life, the good and negative of being in such a high-profile situation, she is grounded, not spoiled, not a prima donna. She's just cool."
Odd Man Out is Capshaw's first series. She chose to stay in school rather than join the ranks of professional teen actors - something her stepfather wholeheartedly encouraged. Spielberg, Capshaw says, "never finished college, and it was something he always regretted and something that was very troubling to his own father. He was kind of like, 'Finish it for me.'" Capshaw graduated from Brown in 1998 with a degree in English literature, then attended summer acting classes at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
Of course, her family name hasn't exactly been a burden, but Odd Man Out 's executive producers John Strauss and Ed Decter ("There's Something About Mary") insist she was hired because she was perfect for the role. "I don't care what her last name is," Strauss says. "I wasn't intimidated. I wanted to know if she could do this character, if she could bring heart to it. And she could. She is naturally funny."
And yes, Capshaw does admit to the occasional worry about appearing to trade on her famous name. "If you're only getting a job because of your parents," she says, "you're going to lose respect." But with a quick smile, she dismisses any creeping fears. "Listen, I could tie myself up in knots about this, or I can just go out and work." With that, Jessica Capshaw heads back to the set, seeming very much at home.