Jane Kaczmarek found love again with her high school sweetheart. At 70, she's embracing her 'normal, happy life' — and nights in watching 'Landman.'
The "Malcolm in the Middle" mom on going gray — and the three little words she loves to hear from her new husband.
You never know what the “golden years” will bring, but Jane Kaczmarek’s are turning out to be 24-karat.
Two decades after Malcolm in the Middle ended, the actor has reunited with her TV family for a four-episode Hulu reboot (Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair), streaming April 10. The dysfunctional family with heart is back to its old antics — Kaczmarek even manscapes TV husband Bryan Cranston in the trailer.
“It’s like being struck twice with the best kind of lightning you could imagine,” the 70-year-old actor tells me for Yahoo’s Unapologetical ly series.
Stepping back into Lois’s shoes alone would be a fitting career capstone. The role earned Kaczmarek seven Emmy nominations and made her a household name, but it’s arriving at a moment when everything else in her life has clicked into place.
In July, she married her high school sweetheart, Rusty Long, who she’d reconnected with at their 50th reunion. Now splitting their time between Los Angeles and her home state of Wisconsin, she’s enjoying a “normal, happy life” — dinners at home, watching TV. (She has three adult children with ex Bradley Whitford, while Long, an attorney, has two sons.)
Kaczmarek’s also comfortable in her own skin in a way she wasn’t when she was younger. That ease comes with time and perspective, but also with letting go.
“Little Jane, happy at last,” she says. “You know, ambition is a cruel mistress. … [Today] I just don’t feel any. I had a good run. As Linda Ronstadt said, ‘She drank from the trough for a long time.’ I realized I’m really content with what my career was — and that I have someone who loves me and I love him.”
Below, we talk about finding love again, what made her stop dyeing her hair brown and how aging is easier on her because she was “never a glamour-puss.”