Liza Minnelli, consummate professional, did all her own stunts on Arrested Development
The Oscars arrive on Sunday, which means it’s time for the usual press roundups of past awards winners. Variety features a rare interview with Liza Minnelli for its Oscar cover story, where the EGOT recipient dishes on her famous parents Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli, various career highlights, and the night she won her Oscar for Cabaret. In more recent years, Minnelli’s most prominent role was as the vertigo-plagued Lucille Austero on the TV series Arrested Development; fans remember that “Lucille 2” was Lucille Bluth’s rival as well as Buster’s one-time paramour. But the vertigo sent her to rehab, where the game Minnelli literally wrestled with Lucille’s balance issues.
The Variety interview contains many highlights, but AD fans are probably most interested in this particular nugget about her stunts on that show: “I did all the pratfalls and falling on my fanny… I knew all the stuntmen in Hollywood from when I was little and played on the MGM lot, so I figured out how to make it work.” After all those Cabaret rehearsals with Bob Fosse, it probably seemed like a breeze. Read much more about this Hollywood living legend over at Variety.com.