Maura Tierney is a Lucky Girl

The actress talks about Margaret Thatcher, Hudson River Park, and Tom Hanks By Angela Barbuti Maura Tierney has a lot to feel lucky about. Not only has she moved back to NYC, but she won a leading role in Nora Ephron's Lucky Guy, where she gets to work alongside Tom Hanks every night. The 48-year-old, who has been on screen with roles in television and movies, now graces the stage in her Broadway debut. A Boston native who studied theater at NYU, Tierney said, "I love theater, so hopefully I'll do some more theater at some point." How did you get started in the business? I went to NYU and studied theater. And then I moved out to LA for a couple of months for fun after I graduated - and I ended up getting a job in a television movie. This is your Broadway debut. What made you want to do a Broadway show? I'd never done it before, so it's something, as an actor, I've always wanted to do. And I really wanted to work with George C. Wolfe and Tom Hanks. George has directed some really amazing plays and Tom is - as everyone knows - a wonderful actor. Can you give us a synopsis of Lucky Guy? It's a play about a journalist named Mike McAlary. He worked for the New York Post and Daily News in the late 1980s to the mid 1990s. He was a very accomplished, ambitious, raucous rousing tabloid reporter who then won a Pulitzer Prize. You never met Nora Ephron. No, I never did. I wish I had. Tom and Nora were friends and he is paying tribute to her with this role, which she wrote for him to play. I just think he's a great actor and a really hard worker. I know they were very close, so it's a nice thing. What was moving to NYC for college like for you? It was really fun. When I was looking at schools, I saw New York City and said, "This is where I want to be." Where are you living now? I live in the West Village. What are some of your favorite places in the city? I love Hudson River Park all the way down to where you get the ferry. I go there all the time. I think it's a really beautiful part of the city. I'm always downtown; I hardly ever come uptown. The Highline, I think, is really beautiful. I really like the East Village, and I don't get to go there very often. I think it's more of an alive place than the West Village, even though where I live is very pretty. I saw on Twitter there was an ER reunion at the show the other night. Oh - cause Angela Basset was there. We worked together on [the television show] ER. You are very open with your own battle against breast cancer, which you were able to beat. Do people come to you for advice? Sometimes. A lot of people, unfortunately, get diagnosed with cancer and a lot of them are okay. There are people in my personal life I've talked to, and sometimes I meet people in the street, but not so much. You were recently on The View, and they called you "the thinking man's sex symbol." Is that going to keep coming up now? I don't know, but Joy Behar said it used to be Margaret Thatcher and now it's me. I thought that was a pretty funny joke. What are you future plans? I don't know. I have been working on this play since January and will be doing it until July. I don't know beyond that. My head is very much into what we're doing right now. To learn more about Lucky Guy, visit www.luckyguyplay.com