She’s busy promoting her book Sunshine Girl: An Unexpected Life.
And Julianna Margulies talked about one very uncomfortable episode from her early days trying to make it as an actress included in the memoir during an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show last week.
The ER and Good Wife star recalled a late night hotel room meeting with action star Steven Seagal, whom she would go on to work with in the 1989 movie Out For Justice.
Shocking: Julianna Margulies recalled a very uncomfortable late night meeting with Steven Seagal when she was just starting out during an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show
Responding to Barrymore’s request to talk about the incident in her TV interview, Margulies, 54, explained she was 23 at the time and had been told by the film’s casting director that Seagal wanted to meet with her ahead of her fourth call back for the part.
‘She called me to say, ‘He’d like to run the scene with you, he saw your tape, he thinks you’re great, come to the hotel room.’ And I didn’t want to go because I lived in Brooklyn and I couldn’t afford a cab, I was waitressing, I was broke.
‘And she said, ‘Don’t worry we will pay for the car, get a car service and I’ll be here we are going to run the scene.’ So I did that and when I got to his hotel room the casting director was not there.’
Margulies recalled how the actor suddenly produced a gun from underneath a cushion once she was inside his hotel suite.
Margulies, 54, explained she was 23 at the time (left) and had been told by a casting director that Seagal (right in 2017) wanted to meet at his hotel ahead of a final call back for a movie part
He had a gun: ‘It was a frightening moment,’ the actress said. ‘I am in an action star’s hotel room with a gun… I had never seen a gun before and he’s six-feet-four and no one knows where I am’
‘It was a frightening moment,’ the actress said. ‘I am in an action star’s hotel room with a gun… I had never seen a gun before and he’s six-feet-four and no one knows where I am.’
‘He asked me to come into the bedroom because he was tired and he asked to read my palm… He put the gun down so I was calming down a little bit and he read my palm and told me that he was a healer and told me I had weak kidneys. And I thought, ‘Is this the shtick that works on women?”
Marguiles went on: ‘Anyway, he read the next palm and got in there and started giving me more advice about my body and how he could fix it through his healing. The tough New Yorker in me just inwardly was laughing because it was so awful and hilarious that I just stood up and went, ‘Well that was fun, thanks about the kidneys, got to go,’ and I just ran for the door waving.’
However, she said, she then returned to Seagal’s room because she didn’t have the money for a cab home and knocked on the door to ask him for some cash.
Weathered the moment: Margulies managed to extricate herself from the situation and she did get the part in the action film Out For Justice released in 1991
Out now: Margulies is busy promoting her memoir Sunshine Girl: An Unexpected Life which includes the Seagal story along with many others from her Hollywood career
‘I spoke really loudly and he had his sort of Cheshire cat grin and I said, ‘I was told I’d be reimbursed for the car fare, so you need to reimburse me for the car fare.’ So he reached into his pocket and handed me money, I didn’t look I ran to the elevator and got in the elevator and looked at my palm, he had given me a $100 bill,’ she shared.
‘I had never seen a $100 bill and I figured if I had just survived in a hotel room with an action figure star and a gun, I could take a subway ride home and payoff my credit card, so that’s what I did.’
Out For Justice marked Margulies’ first big screen outing.
Big break: The actress finally found fame in 1994 when she was cast as Nurse Carol Hathaway in NBC’s medical drama ER opposite George Clooney as pediatrician Dr. Doug Ross
But it wasn’t until she was cast as Carol Hathaway in NBC’s ER in 1994 that she finally found fame.
She left the hit hospital drama in 2000 and went on to star in CBS’ The Good Wife from 2009 to 2016.
Since 2007, she’s been married to attorney Keith Lieberthal with whom she shares a son.
Happily wed: Marguiles left ER in 2000 and went on to star in CBS’ The Good Wife from 2009 to 2016. Since 2007, she’s been married to attorney Keith Lieberthal with whom she shares a son (pictured in 2019)