You probably would not recognize Siobhan Fallon Hogan by name, although you might have spotted her in a few landmark screen hits.
She had a recurring role three times on TV’s Seinfeld and a role in the movie Men in Black, spent one year as a member of the Saturday Night Live cast and, last year, played the part of a birthing instructor who sounds a lot like cartoon character Elmer Fudd in the film comedy Baby Mama.
From Baby Mama, Hogan landed a role in the new romantic comedy New in Town, starring Renee Zellweger and Harry Connick Jr.
But Hogan, who described herself as being the “goof” of her Irish-American Catholic family when she was growing up, doesn’t take a lot of roles.
For one thing, she’s the mother of three children in a Catholic school in New Jersey.
“I don’t know if you can hear me. I’m putting silverware away,” she said during a Jan. 22 telephone interview with Catholic News Service from her home in Rumson, N.J. “I like to work on projects as they come (and) finish them. If I work only a couple of months out of the year, it works for me. My agent won’t like to read that, but it’s true.”
For another, Hogan said she routinely rejects roles she finds at odds with her faith.
“I get scripts and when I read them, I think, ‘I can’t believe they’re going to make this.'” She added that she rarely sees the film or TV projects she’s passed up. “I have very few regrets on those. No — I have no regrets on things I did not do,” she said.
Noting the date of the interview and CNS’ Washington headquarters, Hogan said, “Hey, you got a big day down there. I’ve got a sister down there with two busloads of kids.” She was referring to the contingent from a parish in the Diocese of Syracuse, N.Y., that had come to Washington for the annual March for Life.
Hogan grew up in a small town in the Syracuse Diocese that had no Catholic school. However, she got her bachelor’s degree from Jesuit-run LeMoyne College in Syracuse, then got a master’s degree from the theater program at The Catholic University of America in Washington.
Her one season on Saturday Night Live,”1991-92, was different from what she had expected. “I’m not a stand-up comedian, I’m an actress,” she said. “It was really competitive. It was the ‘Wayne’s World’ time,” referring to a recurring sketch that starred Mike Myers and Dana Carvey.
“Women got only one sketch per show,” she said. “You had to claw your way to the top. I’m not a fighter. You either get me or you don’t.”
Still, SNL, as it is popularly called, proved to be “a great platform” for landing movie and TV roles, according to Hogan. It also put her in good stead for the Baby Mama role. Hogan had played the part of Alec Baldwin’s sister on 30 Rock, which stars SNL alum Tina Fey, who was going to be in a lead role in Baby Mama . In addition, SNL creator Lorne Michaels was executive producer of the movie.
In Baby Mama, Hogan stole the scenes she was in, even a deleted scene included in the DVD version of the film that’s now out.
Hogan likes her role in New in Town. She plays an executive assistant to Zellweger’s character, a corporate executive sent by her company to its plant in a small Minnesota town where she might have to cut jobs or close it.
“I play a Christian … and there’s a great scene when the town comes together to save the cheese factory,” Hogan said.
Of her co-star Connick, she noted. “Oh, he’s a Catholic. He sang for the pope.”
Last April Connick performed two pieces he composed for an event with Pope Benedict XVI when the pontiff came to the U.S.
[CE Editor’s note: By running this article this article, CE is not making a recommendation of New in Town or any of the other movies mentioned. Parents are urged to use make use of the family-friendly movie reviewers listed here: Movie Reviews.]
