Jean Smart EARNING HER ENCORE

WITH A HIT SHOW, A BROADWAY COMEBACK AND DECADES OF SCENE-STEALING BEHIND HER, THE STAR IS NOT SLOWING DOWN

- Jennie Noonan

Sure, it was scary returning to Broadway for the first time in 25 years, but actress Jean Smart, whose one-woman show Call Me Izzy will run for 12 weeks until August 17, refuses to be fuelled by fear. “I don't like fear. It’s really bad. It feels terrible,” she told People magazine when the play opened on June 12. "It's like getting on a roller-coaster. No, no, thank you. I'm good ... I wasn’t 100 per cent sure I could retain 75 pages, but now I feel very confident about it.”

Smart, 73, launched her acting career on stage, going onto star as Marlene Dietrich in the 1981 biographical play Piaf. She later earned a Tony Award nomination when she starred in a 2000 revival of The Man Who Came to Dinner alongside Nathan Lane, but she’s best known for her small-screen work - first, with her breakout role as the sweet-but-ditzy Charlene Frazier in '80s and '90s sitcom Designing Women. The actress has worked consistently since leaving the show in 1991 - winning two of her six Emmy Awards for a guest role on Frasier and her third playing Christina Applegate's on-screeen mother on Samantha Who? - but it wasn’t until she was in her sixties that she really hit her stride.