Master chameleon Beth Grant has been in tons of movies—blown up in Speed, rulered to death by Chucky in Child’s Play 2, grumpily psychic in No Country For Old Men, and so on. Now, she’s having a ball as Aunt Sissy on the new Logo series Sordid Lives and is twice as charming, beautiful and talented in person as we’d hoped.

by Jonathan Riggs

You’re in, like, every movie — which is as it should be.

I can give you a list of all the things I didn’t get! [Laughs] My agent told me once that I was a pacer horse. They bring them in to make the other thoroughbreds run faster. Sometimes the others drop out of the race, and the pacer horse wins. I lose to the greatest actresses—Lorraine Bracco, Sigourney Weaver, Kathy Bates—but I just stay in the race, baby!

As Aunt Sissy, you’re one of the best parts of Sordid Lives in all its incarnations. How crazy/fun has the journey been?

It’s unbelievable! It started for me over 12 years ago when Del faxed me a short story called Nicotine Fit about his Aunt Sissy. Then he wrote a one-act play. Then he came out, turned it into a full-length play and it just kept growing! I was at a drag bingo in Long Beach last night doing a fundraiser for the Trevor Project. There was one guy there that knew every single line of the movie! We had the trailer for the show, and they were just screaming and laughing.

Is it fun being a Southern woman onscreen since you’re also one in real life?

Yes, but I’m always happy to stretch. I was Andy Warhol’s mom in Factory Girl and got to do a Slovakian accent, and that’s fun. But to play something as comfortable as Southern to me feels wonderful. Going into these people and characters, that’s my drug of choice.

You do really disappear into your characters, who are often strange-looking or just, well, strange.

It’s a devilish plan of mine—I play all these extreme characters so when people see me, they think I’m so beautiful! [Laughs] I love it when someone starts to figure out who I am—they liked Little Miss Sunshine, Rain Man, Sordid Lives, Child’s Play 2, Speed, A Time To Kill—but they never realized it was the same person. I get a little glimpse of what it must be like to be a real star!

You’re so sweet in real life—why do you play mean so often?

Maybe it’s a way for me to vent all the anger I have at life! My beeyotch in Little Miss Sunshine—I loved her! I knew exactly what to do! Del’s been giving Sissy a dark side in the series, too. [Laughs]

And of course, in Donnie Darko: “Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!”

My God, they love that line! It was voted the best line of the year by Time Out New York, tying with Denzel Washington’s in Training Day.

King Kong ain’t got nothin’ on you, Beth Grant!

My husband is a similar type [of] actor. We didn’t become actors because we like to be ourselves—we became actors because we like being other people! The kiss of death for us in an audition is when they say “Just be yourself.” Who the heck is that?

Let’s chat about Aunt Sissy’s hair.

On The Boyfriend School, aka Don’t Tell Her It’s Me, I was trying to do a French twist for the audition but it fell over to the side, and the director just loved it! I didn’t want to do an ordinary beehive for Sissy, so I thought of that hair. I should get a patent—it has been stolen. I saw somebody—I won’t say who—that I know knew about this hairdo cause she kept talking to me about how to do it. Then she did it in a TV movie. [Screams] Thievery! I should patent it, don’t you think?

Do Aunt Sissy drag queens get a dispensation?

Oh, absolutely! Special permission given! I love my drag queens!

You’ve been in a lot of LGBT-friendly projects.

I was a gay waiter’s very accepting mother on Cybill, and I think that was one of the first gay characters, long before Will & Grace. I was in To Wong Foo ... too, and I just love my boys. Now we have lesbian fans, too, which is great. My daughter is in the GSA at her high school, and I asked her if she joined because I have so many gay friends. She said, “No, mama, it’s a humanitarian issue.” I just love that so much, that we are bringing up this new generation of egalitarians who understand that everybody has a right to be who they are. It’s beautiful.

Sordid Lives: The Series premieres July 23 on Logo.