The woman next to me starts crying as Amy Irving walks toward us. We’re on Orchard Street, on the Lower East Side of New York. The lady introduces herself as Cheryl; her daughter owns Sweet Pickle Books, where Irving and I are supposed to talk.
“It all feels full circle,” Cheryl says as she wipes away tears.
This year, 2023, is full of anniversaries for Irving. It’s been almost 40 years since she played Hadass in 1983’s Yentl and close to 35 years since the debut of Who Framed Roger Rabbit—which casual viewers may not realize features Irving singing “Why Don’t You Do Right?” as animated bombshell Jessica Rabbit. It’s also been nearly 35 years since the release of Crossing Delancey, the rare movie that seems to grow more beloved with age, thanks to its bygone New York charm, its swoony central romance, and especially Irving as a Jewish proto–Carrie Bradshaw.
Cherished as it is by its fans, Crossing Delancey is likely not the first, second, or even third thing a casual moviegoer might associate with Irving. Neither, for that matter, is Roger Rabbit, a blockbuster Irving wasn’t even supposed to be a part of.
“They just needed someone to put down a temp track so that the animators could animate Jessica singing the song.… And I think Steven was producing the film.” That would be Steven Spielberg, Irving’s husband at the time. “Steven told Bob [Zemeckis, the film’s director], ‘I’ve heard Amy sing in the shower. She can do it.’” Irving shrugs. “They got me for nothing, and I only did one take—it was just literally a temp track. And then he liked it, so he used it.”
Nearly 35 years later, Irving is singing the song again. This time it’s the opening track on her debut album, Born in a Trunk, out April 7. “I had no idea I was ever, in my whole life, going to do an album,” she says, then smiles and points at her son Gabriel. “If he hadn’t taken me to dinner and plied me with liquor, I may not have.”
Each track was deliberately chosen to evoke a specific time in Irving’s life. There’s “I Never Dreamed,” which plays during the prom scene in Carrie—Irving’s first big film, where she starred as conflicted cool girl Sue Snell. There’s “I’m Waiting Forever,” written by a costar of Irving’s from the 1980 film Honeysuckle Rose. Before giving her the greenlight to record, he had one stipulation: “I asked him permission to use it, and he said, ‘Of course. Can I sing on it too?’” Irving said yes; not a hard decision since the songwriter in question was Willie Nelson.
Amy Irving is the sort of person who inspires songs and happy tears. She’s difficult to forget, and not just because she has one of the greatest pairs of blue eyes in movie history. Yet her filmography is remarkably slim for an Oscar nominee who’s been working in the industry for almost 50 years.
“I was never a viable box office star,” Irving says. “I didn’t open films. I had my cachet. I had my moment. But I don’t think people would ever cast me because they thought they were going to get [a big return at the] box office.”
Yet Irving, the child of the actor Priscilla Pointer and actor-director Jules Irving, grew up obsessed with the idea of craft. She considers herself a stage actor first, and has done everything from Shakespeare to Chekhov to a turn as Mozart’s wife, Constanze, in the original Broadway run of Amadeus. Making movies just never felt as comfortable to her: “That whole stop-start-stop-start thing, when you grow up in the theater, it’s not natural. I did it, and I tried to do the best I could with it. It’s like apples and oranges—it’s a whole different discipline.”
