It’s Jane Kaczmarek’s lunch hour and she’s cramming as much conversation as she can between bites of her salami and provolone sandwich.
Her talk ranges from her fondness for lunch meat to her admiration for Meryl Streep. But her main topic is time.
“I’m so acutely aware of how little time I’ve got ... I just don’t want to waste it ... I’m kind of a nut about that,” says Kaczmarek, who turns 49 on Dec. 21.
It’s her sixth season as Lois, the opinionated tough-love mom of an often chaotic bunch of boys in the Fox sitcom “Malcolm in the Middle” (Sundays at 7:30 p.m. EST).
Kaczmarek and actor-husband Bradley Whitford (“The West Wing”) have three young children and she wants each day’s shooting on “Malcolm” to pass swiftly so she can get home in time to read to her kids before they go to bed.
“As a young actress I would have killed to have more face time. Now the first thing I do is pick up the script and go, ‘Damn another scene,”’ laughs Kaczmarek as she sits in her dressing room on the CBS lot in Studio City.
“But in a funny way, I think it’s why I have probably got so much acclaim for this part. I just want to go home. I deliver lines with great dispatch because I want to get going ... so I think that probably created Lois more than anything.”
Time passagesShe’s been nominated for an Emmy five seasons in a row and walking the red carpet gave her the idea for clothesoffourback.org, which raises money for charity by auctioning the clothes stars wear at award shows.
“I feel like I have my 15 minutes of fame and I know the amount of money you can raise and the amount of awareness you can bring to certain things you care about,” she says. “I want to die knowing that I really did as much as I could with the time I had.”
Bryan Cranston, who plays her easy-going husband, Hal, jokingly notes that it’s true his co-star is “very obsessed by time.”
He also kids about how her hip replacement last April has affected her work.
“When during rehearsal we discuss why a character should do this or that, Jane is always (suggesting) ‘I think she’s lying in bed at this time!”’
During rehearsal on this day, Kaczmarek didn’t get to lie down, but she was seated on the bed with Cranston as Lois and Hal discuss how little time they seem to have for each other.
The result of this chat is that Hal turns their garage into a facsimile of a tropical happy-hour spot. Here, the couple plan to spend time each evening together, while Malcolm and his brothers are assigned the household chores.
Inevitably the show has evolved from its first season when the main buzz was around Frankie Muniz as Malcolm, the second of Lois and Hal’s four sons.
The oldest son, Francis (Christopher Kennedy Masterson) only appears occasionally now, and the clearly teenage Malcolm and his brothers Reese (Justin Berfield) and Dewey (Erik Per Sullivan) have been joined by a fifth boy, Jamie, born at the end of the fourth season and now occasionally glimpsed as a toddler.
Kaczmarek admits it has taken awhile to feel comfortable with story lines about a teenage Malcolm because “’naughty children’ is funny, ’naughty teenagers’ is a little more menacing.”
Playing a peach blossom
Born in Milwaukee, Kaczmarek grew up in the Midwest where “a climate of celebrity didn’t exist” and she was expected to become either a hairdresser or a nun.
Yet she does recall playing a peach blossom in a school pageant, leaving the stage in the wrong direction and convincing the other peach blossoms to follow her.
“That was probably the first time I remember having a certain power or authority to convince people of something, even though it was wrong,” she says, laughing.
She went on to graduate from the University of Wisconsin and study drama at Yale. An early role came in the 1984 movie “Falling in Love,” as wife to Robert De Niro, who leaves her for Streep.
“I think Meryl Streep was the only actor I have ever met I was totally tongue-tied in front of,” says Kaczmarek.
She has treasured memories of the kindness and encouragement of the two-time Academy Award winner, who went “to bat for me” to help ensure the supporting role of the wife didn’t get short shrift.
“I remember thinking, wow, if I’m ever in a position to be gracious and encouraging to other people I must remember how Meryl behaved.”