Cara Buono's moment - actress

Interview, June, 1994 by David Goodman

Actress Cara Buono's amiable disposition masks a winning tenacity and a liberating intellectualism. The Bronx native, buoyed by her family's "blue-collar work ethic," began attending a battery of auditions as an unmentored twelve-year-old and graduated from Columbia University in three years while supporting herself with Broadway and television roles.

Previously seen in the haunting Waterland, she turns up this month as a kidnapped Cuban immigrant in the unenlightened rodeo-slackers-versus-city-slickers action comedy The Cowboy Way. In lieu of the substantive screen roles that will surely come to her, she writes reflective, philosophical short plays and remains addicted to theater. "My ideal," she says, "is to struggle through an all-day rehearsal, find the one good moment, and ask, 'How did we get there?' and to have it raining in New York when we come out and go to dinner."