The Fox legal dramedy Ally McBeal was such a phenomenon that the lead character even
appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Calista Flockhart, the actor who played her, has been
working steadily since then, though not quite at the same level of massive popularity. Here's
what really happened to her.
Flockhart landed her breakout role after almost a decade as a screen actor. She first appeared
on soap operas like Guiding Light and As the World Turns before appearing in a handful
of films throughout the '90s. She's also an experienced stage actor who's performed in
the likes of The Glass Menagerie and The Three Sisters on Broadway. But if things had gone
a little differently, she could've missed out on the role that made her famous.
During a 2015 appearance on The Talk, Flockhart revealed that her agent passed on the Ally
McBeal audition on her behalf. Luckily, the Ally McBeal team kept coming back to her,
and the match was obvious when she finally gave the character a try.
"Are you still with the agent?"
"Yeah."
As show creator David E. Kelley told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017,
"She was always going to be the one as soon as we saw her. The problem was that we didn't
see her until the very end of an exhausting casting process [...] Calista came in, hit
every note and every tone and there was no doubt that she was Ally."
In 2017, The Hollywood Reporter published an oral history of Ally McBeal for its 20th
anniversary, which featured interviews with the cast and crew. As Flockhart revealed in
the piece,
"I had a great appreciation for Ally’s character and the uniqueness of the writing, the hallucinations
and the voiceover and all that wonderful stuff that I’d never seen before. One of the things
I thought was so special about Ally was that she was not an ingénue; she was idiosyncratic,
eccentric, intelligent, a work in progress."
Ultimately, Flockhart was very pleased with Ally's characterization, even though she could've
potentially turned off some viewers. As she put it,
"When you make the central character goofy and off the wall and just as eccentric as
everyone else, it’s risky because the audience doesn’t have that person to hold on to.
I thought it was terrific."
Flockhart even liked the notorious dancing baby, a computer-generated tot that invaded
Ally's thoughts and persuaded her to dance along. As she recalled,
"I had to mimic the baby’s dancing and thought it was really brilliant — and the baby was
a bit creepy but it worked well. It was pretty imaginative to get that."
The June 29, 1998 cover of Time Magazine featured the faces of four iconic women: Susan B. Anthony,
Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Ally McBeal. Under McBeal's frame were red letters asking,
"Is feminism dead?" Reporter Ginia Bellafante wrote the cover story, entitled "Feminism:
It's All About Me!" According to Bellafante, feminism of the era didn't focus very much
on real issues that affect women's day-to-day lives, like equal pay and childcare. As she
wrote,
"Instead, much of feminism has devolved into the silly. And it has powerful support for
this: a popular culture insistent on offering images of grown single women as frazzled,
self-absorbed girls."
Bellafante had particularly harsh words for McBeal, as she contended,
"Ally McBeal is the most popular female character on television. The show [...] focuses on a
ditsy 28-year-old Ivy League Boston litigator who never seems in need of the body-concealing
clothing that Northeastern weather often requires."
Also in 1998, Flockhart was selected as one of Barbara Walters' Most Fascinating People
of the Year, and the actress addressed the Time cover during her interview with Walters.
"The idea that you can compare Susan B. Anthony to a television character didn't seem fair."
While Ally McBeal was still on the air, Flockhart decided that the time was right for her to
become a mother. So in 2001, when she was 36 years old, she adopted her son Liam. Ally
McBeal ended its run in 2002, and she wasn't in any major projects for a couple years thereafter.
She told ABC News at the time,
"I have always wanted to adopt a child and I am overjoyed that I have been blessed with
a beautiful and healthy son. I'm completely enchanted and awestruck."
She added,
"I feel extremely fortunate and grateful that I work for such a supportive company that
offers a wonderful childcare facility, enabling me to spend a lot of time with my son while
I'm working."
Nowadays, Liam is pretty much all grown up, as he's reportedly been attending school at
Amherst College.
Calista Flockhart's family grew once again in January 2002 when she met Harrison Ford
at the Golden Globes. The romance was kept mostly private at first, but the couple eventually
shared a few details about each other with the public. As Flockhart dished to People
Magazine,
"I like the way he looks first thing in the morning. It's not handsome. It's more cute.
He looks like a little boy. You know how when you wake up in the morning and you're kind
of puffy and rumpled and you look kind of vulnerable? That's what he looks like."
Flockhart also insisted that their 22-year age difference didn't faze her. Ford also
had no trouble going into dad mode, as he dutifully helped out with her son Liam. As
he quipped to People,
"I'm good at changing diapers. No sense letting that experience go to waste."
After spending the better part of a decade together, Ford and Flockhart eventually tied
the knot in 2010. Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson was their officiant, while
Liam served as the ringbearer. This was Ford's third trip down the aisle and Flockhart's
first. He wore Wrangler jeans, while she opted for a simple white sundress.
After Ally McBeal ended, Flockhart took a few years off from regularly acting, but in
2006 she was ready to return to a steady TV gig, as she joined the cast of the ABC drama
Brothers & Sisters. She talked with CinemaBlend that year about her reasons for returning
to acting, as she explained,
"[Brothers & Sisters] is a very real show, and Ally was sort of fantastical and a different
kind of reality, and it was very high comedy. This is, I think, funny, and yet it's just
different."
Flockhart was also willing to take on the gig because of how she was able to fit it
into her family life. As she noted,
"My son is five. He's off to school. I miss acting a lot. I wanted to stay in L.A. I don't
want to travel. And out of the blue, and I was sort of thinking about, 'Well, it's time
for me to go back to work. I really want to go back to work.'"
She added,
"I loved being a mom but as any mother can tell you, you stay home with a two year old
24/7 and you get mush brain and you start wishing that you were working. And then when
you're working, unfortunately you're wishing that you were home. It's a tough dilemma that
I have a new appreciation for."
In 2007, Calista Flockhart told the Los Angeles Times,
"At my real heart, I'm a character actress, and I do crave playing all kinds of different
roles."
Indeed, Flockhart is a versatile actor who's displayed an eagerness to exercise her skills
throughout her career. But despite her professional success, she was struggling with the fact
that her baby was growing up. As she shared with the Times about her son Liam,
"Kindergarten, as it turns out, is a huge milestone and I wasn't quite prepared for
it. He's doing great and having a lot of fun. I know it sounds kind of silly, but it's the
end of an era. It's the end of that baby being home with you and you have to let go. And
it's a wonderful thing, but it wasn't easy. It was emotional."
According to Brothers & Sisters executive producer Greg Berlanti, Flockhart's only condition
when negotiating the show's schedule was:
"How can I have more time with my son?"
Ultimately, her ability to achieve balance between her professional and personal lives
ended up being hugely rewarding. As she told the Times,
"It's an amazing place to be and I'm kind of surprised I'm there. I'm in a place in
my life where I'm just really happy."
Harrison Ford is a longtime aviation enthusiast who enjoys flying planes himself. But he's
run into some trouble in the sky, including multiple crashes. One incident occurred in
2015, when a rough landing resulted in him heading to the emergency room. His publicist
told NBC News that the actor had been flying a vintage World War II plane that had engine
trouble upon takeoff. Ford reportedly had no other choice besides an emergency landing,
which he did safely, although he did sustain injuries.
People Magazine later reported that Calista Flockhart spent most of the weekend by her
husband's side as he underwent treatment for his injuries. According to a source who spoke
to People,
"She arrived early every morning and returned home late every night. She was under stress."
Considering how supportive their relationship has always reportedly been, it's no surprise
that Flockhart was dependably there for her husband as he recovered.
Following her husband's accident, Flockhart decided to once again step back from her acting
responsibilities. Beginning in October 2015, she starred on The CW series Supergirl as
the title character's boss, Cat Grant.
"This show, it's gotten so much buzz before we've even been on the air that- that's a
little disconcerting to me. That's a little scary."
But then in 2016, Flockhart scaled back, as her role was reduced from a series regular
to a recurring part. According to TVLine, this was a direct result of the show moving
its production to Vancouver from Los Angeles, where Flockhart lives.
By 2017, Flockhart wrapped up her last few episodes on the series. She rarely gives interviews
and has no social media presence, so it's likely that she enjoyed the additional privacy
and still doesn't mind being out of the spotlight. At the same time, anything could happen for
a woman as talented as she is. In 2021, Entertainment Weekly reported that Cat Grant would be returning
for the final season of Supergirl, but not with Flockhart playing her. Instead, she would
be played by newcomer Eliza Helm as a younger version of herself in a flashback.
In a time of seemingly endless reboots and remakes, life comes full circle for plenty
of actors. Ally McBeal fans have had plenty of time to revisit the series through reruns
and streaming, but there are surely plenty of fans who would love to know what Ally has
been up to in the decades since. In 2019, there was a rumor about a potential new Ally
project when an insider told Closer Weekly,
"Calista's been quietly hustling to pull together a reboot in the spirit of other '90s hits
like Roseanne and Murphy Brown, but it's been one frustration after another. Fox doesn’t
want the show and there aren’t a lot of interested takers at the moment. Calista wants
to be the lead in a series again and have some creative outlet now that her son Liam
is going off to college."
A new project looked like even more of a possibility in March 2021, when Deadline reported that
a possible revival was in the works and that Flockhart had been asked about reprising her
role. David E. Kelley was also reportedly expected to be involved, but likely not in
a writing capacity. When Kelley was asked about a reboot back in 2019, he told Variety,
"I would not be opposed to that being done again, but in somebody else's hands because
I did that one, and I think if it were going to be rebooted, it should be started up by
somebody else, and preferably a woman."
If the timing is right for Calista Flockhart, her fans would undoubtedly love to see her
dancing once again as Ally.
"I didn't even have a cell phone when I was on Ally. Now isn't that- don't tell- that's
crazy."
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