Mom of 'Leatherface' latest role for Glencoe's versatile Lili Taylor

What's the best thing about being versatile stage, screen and TV actress Lili Taylor?

"Oh, jeez, oh, brother!" the Glencoe native said. "I wish I could answer that with no problem, like with a fantastic answer! The best thing? Hmmm. I have good ears!"

She quickly added: "For listening. I'm a good listener. Acting is listening. If you're open and listening, you're taking in everything. For me, life becomes more meaningful because I'm picking it all up."

Taylor just completed a second season on the ABC-TV series "American Crime" playing Anne Blaine, mother of a main character. Last season, she played a recurring role as Nancy Straumberg in the same show.

In movies, she played a key supporting character, Mary Cooper, in last year's "Maze Runner" movie installment, "The Scorch Trials."

Sometime this summer, she'll be seen in the horror tale "Leatherface."

Not bad for a suburban native whose earliest movies were directed by noted filmmakers such as John Hughes ("She's Having a Baby"), Cameron Crowe ("Say Anything") and Oliver Stone ("Born on the Fourth of July").

"The main thing for me is directors," Taylor told us. "Directors are the most important things for me. Even in different genres, like 'The Conjuring.'

"I would never have thought about doing a horror film like 'The Conjuring.' But I loved James Wan, the director. I love good stuff on any platform."

Taylor possesses a well-earned reputation for aggressively taking on tough, prickly characters that more image-conscious actresses avoid out of fear or vanity. Her ugly duckling character in the indie production "Dogfight" (with the late River Phoenix) testifies to that.

The actress attended New Trier High School in Winnetka - until her first professional play at Northlight Theater came along.

"I was a senior in high school and I didn't graduate because of that play," Taylor said. "But I did get my Equity card."

She eventually enrolled at DePaul University, until another professional commitment required her to skip school for a day.

"One teacher wouldn't let me do it," Taylor said. "We started fighting. He told me he didn't like my attitude and I told him I didn't like his. He told me, 'Don't come back,' and I told him, 'I won't come back.' That was it."

Taylor stayed in Chicago until she and the Equity actors union got into a dust-up.

"I wanted to do non-Equity theater with John Cusack and the New Criminals," she explained. "They said they would take my card away forever. So, I went to New York."

Back in 1987 and 1988, she said, Chicago had about 120 non-Equity theaters and only 16 Equity theaters.

"I was young and all the work I wanted to do was non-Equity," she said. "In New York, you can do non-Equity stuff and they don't care. I don't know why. Unions are great. I don't want to bash the unions. I just wish they'd given me an exception."

Taylor returns to Chicago whenever she can. She performed in the play "Mud" with Joyce Piven at the Remains Theatre in the early 1990s. Taylor cited Piven, of the prestigious Piven Theatre in Evanston, as her greatest mentor in the acting field.

"Yep, Joyce Piven all the way," said. "She let me see the joy in acting. No matter what the role, it doesn't have to be so serious, there can be joy. That's what she taught me."

Some people stumble into acting, or have backup plans in case their dreams of performance art success don't come true. Taylor said she didn't really have a choice.

"When I was a kid and was asked what I wanted to be, I always said, 'I want to be an actor!'" she said. "I don't know how I knew that at age 4 or 5. But that's always what I wanted to be. Always. There was never even a question. Thank God, because there's nothing else I could do."

She met her husband, writer Nick Flynn, on a blind date she nearly dumped.

"My friend set us up on a blind date without telling me," she said. "When I realized what was happening, I actually left. I'd never been on a blind date. I was freaked out! I was like, 'I gotta get outta here!'"

She did. But then she remembered a saying that salvaged the evening: "No contempt before investigation."

"I said that to myself, then I went back in," Taylor said. "That was it."

Taylor is now a mom, plus an active member of the American Birding Association.

"I would never have thought one day I'd be part of a 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' sequel," Taylor said. She plays the mother of three homicidal maniacs, one of them the legendary Leatherface.

In that role, "I think my boys are just fine," she said. "So, thank God, I don't have to have anything in common with my character or I'd be in trouble!"

- Dann Gire

• Jamie Sotonoff and Dann Gire are looking for good stories about suburbanites in showbiz. Know some? Contact them at jsotonoff@dailyherald.com; dgire@dailyherald.com.

‘Conjuring 2’?

Lili Taylor never imagined she’d be acting in a horror movie like 2013’s “The Conjuring,” but she took the role of a possessed mother because she admired Director James Wan’s work. “It was a blast!” she said. “I begged them to let me be in the second one. Begged them! I said, ‘I’ll put on so much makeup you’ll never know it was me!’” “The Conjuring 2” will be released June 10, without her.