Denver actor Amie MacKenzie’s remarkable journey to TV and film success | Arts & Entertainment

The primary phrases out of Denver actor Amie MacKenzie’s mouth when she opened her entrance door to me final week had been: “I don’t have any warmth!”

Untruer phrases had been by no means spoken.

“She’s cooking,” mentioned longtime Denver stage director and producer John Ashton.

More true phrases had been by no means spoken.

MacKenzie has booked 13 legit movie or tv initiatives for the reason that starting of 2024, a unprecedented span of success throughout which she additionally turned an emphatic 60.

If you’re a single mom of two and a 19-year survivor of a stage 3 most cancers, milestone birthdays matter. A misbehaving boiler doesn’t.

She’s bought all the warmth she wants – because the world will additional see on Might 31, when HBO drops “Mountainhead,” a movie by Jesse Armstrong (creator of “Succession”) about 4 billionaire buddies who collect at a Park Metropolis ski resort throughout a global financial disaster. We’re speaking, ho, hum, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith and Ramy Youssef.

And, sure … Amie MacKenzie.

She’s additionally about to be seen in “The Madison,” a brand new TV collection starring Michelle Pfeiffer and written by Taylor Sheridan, and in a movie known as “The Last Day,” starring Alicia Vikander (“The Danish Woman”). The very best-profile job of all of them, she’s not even allowed to speak about but.

This after simply having appeared in a 17-minute scene with Nathan Lane in “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” as what MacKenzie calls a “Gorgon” – certainly one of a pack of invasive dinner-party visitors pumping Dominick Dunne for dish on the well-known homicide trial.

It’s unimaginable to overstate how unlikely all this sudden success is at this level in an actor’s profession, particularly contemplating MacKenzie just isn’t some teenager relentlessly pursuing the dream in some run-down Sundown Strip condominium with six roommates, like most Hollywood dreamers.

As a substitute, MacKenzie nonetheless lives in Denver together with her rescue canine, Turtle, in an impeccable Krisana Park mid-century residence sarcastically recognized within the biz as “a California modern.” The one pavement she’s pounding is because the proprietor of a Denver real-estate crew for Sotheby’s International.

And but, her telephone simply retains ringing.

MacKenzie was not born of brat-pack inventory. No, she was born in Rangely, a city of two,800 simply east of the Utah border in northeastern Colorado, and raised in Casper, Wyo.

Positive, she has carried out as a stage actor for many each vital Denver theater firm over the previous 35 years. However, on digicam, she had principally appeared in commercials and quick movies earlier than she landed a one-day gig on “Better Call Saul” in 2018.

“I booked my first episodic TV present after I was 53,” she muses. “That is fairly loopy, proper?”

Proper.

“In an business the place ladies are sometimes thought to have a shelf lifetime of 35 or 40, it’s astonishing that any actress is working as a lot as Amie is correct now – a lot much less one who is predicated in Denver,” mentioned Sylvia Gregory, proprietor of Sylvia Gregory Casting.

Gregory just lately solid MacKenzie in “The Man Who Changed the World,” an upcoming movie wherein she performs a mom of 13 youngsters – 12 of them ladies.

“Amie was the primary individual we solid,” Gregory mentioned. “After I watched her audition, I advised my affiliate, ‘If you wish to see how it’s completed, watch this audition.’ It was chic. She is an entire pure.”

MacKenzie was born of humble inventory, and taught by no means to self-aggrandize. However even she acknowledges that her story is one which anybody with a dream can take inspiration from. She’s undecided she’s price any fuss, however she certain is bound of this:

“I’m happy with my age,” she mentioned. “I find it irresistible.”

Discovering her means from Wyoming

MacKenzie hasn’t at all times recognized that performing is what she’s needed to do for a residing. “However I’ve at all times recognized that this can be a factor that I can do,” she mentioned.

Rising up in Wyoming, she added, “My members of the family had been very a lot supporters of the humanities. I at all times bought the roles within the college performs. I placed on reveals within the neighborhood. However no one round me in Casper would have ever recognized there’s a profession path to being on tv. You by no means even thought of how that occurs. My mother and father had been extra like, ‘That was enjoyable – now go get your diploma in math.”

She moved to Colorado to attend Colorado Faculty, the place she bought her diploma – in math. However by the point she graduated, she felt a must pursue theater. She auditioned for 2 main grad faculties. One was the Denver Middle’s prestigious (however now closed) Nationwide Theatre Conservatory, the place she bought some prescient rejection recommendation. 

“One man advised me, ‘We actually puzzled over you,’” she mentioned, ‘“However all of us agreed that it is best to go to L.A. and do movie and TV.’”

Perhaps later. As a substitute, she joined that different grasp’s program, which was a reasonably terrible expertise. So after a number of months in New York, she “fled” again to Colorado, the place she rapidly discovered a house each as a math instructor at Denver Public Colleges’ (now closed) different High School Redirection, and as an actor acting on space theater levels.

First was a run of musicals on the Arvada Center, together with “A Humorous Factor Occurred on the Approach to the Discussion board” and “West Aspect Story.” Summers would carry her residence to Casper for giant annual musicals there. Then got here marriage, sons Miles and Caden, and extra theater roles once they labored round her daytime instructing job.

 “I bear in mind doing a manufacturing of ‘Nunsense,’ and there was one other girl within the solid who had simply had a child,” MacKenzie mentioned. “We known as ourselves ‘The Little Sisters of Perpetual Lactation.’” 

Then got here a run on the iconic (and now closed) Heritage Sq. Music Corridor, which was recognized for giant, bawdy, and at instances vaudevillian comedy reveals in Golden. Jobs there have been year-round, and didn’t come open usually. MacKenzie’s did when a rising younger star Amy Adams (sure, that Amy Adams), left to do musicals on the (now closed) Boulder’s Dinner Theatre.

MacKenzie didn’t but consider herself as vaudevillian sort of comedian. “I assumed they employed me as a result of I match into Amy Adams’ costumes,” she mentioned with fun.

“I spent two years at Heritage Sq. doing complete nonsense – and it was a lot enjoyable.”

It was there, learning native comedy legends T.J. Mullin, Annie Dwyer, Alex Crawford and others that MacKenzie realized the quick and tremendous artwork of spontaneous improvisation. She rapidly turned extremely searched for comedian roles at space theaters.

In 1992, MacKenzie was “massively pregnant” whereas performing in a monologue play known as “Speaking With” for the (now closed) Theatre Group, which earned her a fan who ultimately modified her trajectory. It was Ashton, a legendary journalist, actor, director, producer and playwright, who noticed “Talking With…” and solid MacKenzie in a ridiculously enjoyable black comedy known as “Dearly Departed,” which changed into a monster hit he would stage many instances and in lots of instances between 1993 and 2010.

Maybe the seminal position of MacKenzie’s stage profession got here in 2003, when the Avenue Theater christened a brand new location with “Sylvia,” A.R. Gurney’s well-liked comedy a couple of man whose affection for a stray canine (performed by MacKenzie) threatens his human marriage.

Ashton, as he’s wont to do, had a gimmick up his sleeve. Right here’s how I reported it on the time:

“The opening-night electrical energy reached its zenith on the high of the second act. The lights got here up on a man named Greg (Ashton) in a canine park, when who ought to wander on stage however John Hickenlooper? Enjoying off one of many marketing campaign points that made him Denver’s new mayor, Hickenlooper casually requested Greg, ‘Do you have got change for the parking meter?’ After the uproarious applause of the group, Greg handed him 4 quarters. Hickenlooper gently scratched Sylvia (Amie MacKenzie) behind the ear and mentioned, “Good canine” earlier than strolling off in triumph.

And as he left, the very a lot in-heat canine replied, “Good butt.”

Speak about a bow with a wow.”

A chilly timeout for most cancers

MacKenzie bought the prognosis in 2006. By then, she was a single mother, simply 42 years previous. Her boys had been 14 and 12. It was a uncommon most cancers. MacKenzie match nothing within the diagnostic profile. She was 20 years youthful than the norm. She had run a marathon the 12 months earlier than. And but, right here she was, combating for her life. 

“Yeah, that was two years of survival mode,” she mentioned. “The excellent news is that it was curable. The dangerous information is that the remedy was simply the worst. The worst.” It was not a on condition that she was going to make it – till she did.

“I believe the rationale I did survive is as a result of I went into it younger and powerful,” she mentioned. “However it took a giant toll on my physique and on my household. My mother was an enormous assist. The youngsters had been solely in center college, however that was really nice in a bizarre means. They had been prepared for some extra duty, and so they jumped proper in and pitched in. It was arduous, however we one way or the other made it by as a crew.”

MacKenzie’s reward for not dying was that nothing was ever fairly the identical for any of them. Not after one thing like that.

‘Each time the boys had a choir live performance at East Excessive Faculty, I used to be like, ‘I am so fortunate to be right here – and audibly sobbing,” she mentioned. 

One other bonus: Reserving her largest theater gig to this point in 2008, simply after being given the all-clear from her physician: An ongoing run of “Women Solely” on the Denver Middle, aka the Denver Broncos of the native performing world. It’s most each native actor’s dream to at some point work on a Denver Middle stage, and this was MacKenzie’s time. Downside was, “I used to be genuinely terrified about having the power to try this present,” she mentioned. However she pulled it off, and he or she would drop out and in of varied productions of that hit present across the nation by 2018.

Considered one of MacKenzie’s nice associates was Judy Phelan-Hill, who performed her peace-keeping mother-in-law in “Dearly Departed.” Phelan-Hill died of cancer final November at age 81.  

“We had been sort of most cancers buddies,” MacKenzie mentioned. “We might each say: ‘I do not want most cancers on anybody.’ Let’s make that clear. However the silver lining with any of the arduous issues that it’s a must to face in life is that they make you razor-focused on what’s necessary. What do I actually wish to be doing? And who do I actually need in my life?”

Nothing higher  

MacKenzie’s profession has been in locked focus since 2018, when she was lastly solid to play a humorless hospital administrator in a fourth-season episode of “Better Call Saul,” made by the crew from “Breaking Unhealthy.” Each reveals had been filmed in New Mexico.

MacKenzie had auditioned 4 or 5 instances, she mentioned, for the long-lasting Bob Odenkirk collection that’s now thought of by most as among the many greatest in TV historical past.

However she had a much bigger hill to climb than most when she arrived at a type of auditions absolutely ready, as at all times. MacKenzie had snared the final audition slot of the day. However quickly after she started reciting her strains, the director stopped her. Somebody from the present had despatched her the incorrect script pages. And the director needed to be out of there in 10 minutes. So she was handed new pages, which she learn to them chilly – the one nightmare larger to an actor than performing within the nude.

She bought the half – however not till the subsequent spherical of auditions, and for one more character totally.

Followers of “Higher Name Saul” is perhaps shocked to study who turned MacKenzie’s greatest buddies on the set that day – brothers Daniel and Luis Moncada, who performed the scary cousins Marco and Leonel Salamanca.

“I used to be attempting to be very quiet, and so they had been like, ‘Do you wish to take an image?’” she mentioned. “And I mentioned, ‘Are you certain it is OK?’”

It was OK. Then she made them giggle.

“I advised them, ‘You guys do not actually look all that scary. You sort of seem like cheerleaders. I’m not shopping for it that you just’re murderers. Are you able to look a bit scarier?’ So that they bought scarier and scarier, till they completely broke. And that was an actual icebreaker. I ended up hanging out with them and giving them noogies. It was so cute.”

She additionally bought chummy with Mark Margolis, who performed the terrifying crime boss Hector Salamanca. Margolis has his personal Denver previous, having carried out with the Denver Middle Theatre Firm within the late Nineteen Nineties.

“Higher Name Saul” started a trickle of roles for MacKenzie that’s now turning into, if not a flood, then definitely a gradual stream. She now has 33 TV and film credit. She’s appeared in 13 TV serials – all for only one episode, however in roles which might be steadily growing in measurement. There’s been “Messiah,” “MacGruber,” Sheridan’s “1923,” “Dexter: Unique Sin” (alongside Christian Slater) and “Pulse” on Netflix.

This latest undertaking is the one she will’t but speak a lot about, besides to say, “It entails a few of the largest names within the enterprise,” she mentioned. “I consider it as the subsequent step, and I’m fortunate to be there,” she mentioned. 

In Hollywood, work begets work, and MacKenzie’s native colleagues say she is completely poised to journey the wave she’s on for years to return. At 60, she is the right age, Ashton mentioned, for the sort of roles which might be at all times in nice demand. “If you happen to want a lawyer, physician, skilled girl, she’s bought that sort of factor nailed,” Ashton mentioned.

Gregory mentioned MacKenzie’s bought endurance as a result of she just isn’t solely an awesome talker. She’s an awesome listener. “Everytime you see Amie, she’s 100% in that scene,” Gregory mentioned. (And it doesn’t harm, she added, that she appears like she may very well be Tina Fey’s sister.)

MacKenzie’s story is an inspiration for her fellow actors, Ashton mentioned. However it must be for anybody who’s nonetheless within the sport – no matter that sport is.

Particularly, Gregory added, for anybody who has overcome most cancers – one thing each ladies have in widespread.

“If you already know anybody who has lived by most cancers,” Gregory mentioned, “there’s just a bit extra pleasure in having every single day – and I hope Amie feels that.”

MacKenzie feels “just like the time is correct for me, in so some ways.”