We’ve all had bad jobs. And long before Virginia Madsen was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for “Sideways,” the South Side native had a particularly nasty job as a cocktail waitress at a notorious Chicago singles bar. “I started working but I knew I was out the door,” Madsen told us when we sat down with her a few days ago. “I knew I was on my way to L.A.”
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Madsen just needed some cash to get there. So she lied about her age (she wasn’t yet 21) and got a job at the old P.S. Chicago on Division Street. “After a certain hour of the evening, it starts to get ugly,” the 45-year-old actress said. “I was sort of low man on the totem pole so I always had to clean up the women’s bathroom. Let’s just say a lot of women get sick. It was so demeaning. I tried to think of it as a character study. But really, what I did is I vowed and I swore that this was the last waitressing job that I would ever do.”
Things have worked out just fine for Madsen, whose first major role was Princess Irulan in the 1984 sci-fi blockbuster “Dune.” She has two films coming out on Feb. 23–playing Billy Bob Thornton’s wife in “The Astronaut Farmer” and Jim Carrey’s wife in “The Number 23.” “I’ve been on a streak,” Madsen told Armour & Co. “I won’t always be on this streak, but for now it’s fantastic.”
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Terry Armour co-hosts “The Stan and Terry Show” at 9 a.m. Monday-Friday on WCKG-FM 105.9.
The Personals page was compiled by Alan Leo from Tribune news services and staff reports.