Patricia Clarkson is an actor who always hits the true note, but it’s been quite a while since she nabbed a movie role as full-scale and invigorating as the one she has in “Lilly.” The movie, which opened yesterday, is a whistleblower drama, based on the life of Lilly Ledbetter, who was the image of a homespun citizen — an Alabama wife and mother working as a supervisor at the local Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company plant — when she became an activist almost in spite of herself.
At Goodyear, Ledbetter started out in 1979 slinging tires on the factory floor. She then climbed the managerial ladder, only to keep getting knocked back down. Her work record was top drawer, but she was the only supervisor at the plant who was a woman, and that made a lot of people around her nervous. Near the end of her 20 years there, she learned she was making half of what her male colleagues did. (They were also getting jumped ahead of her with next to no training.) Trying to rectify that raw deal, she wasn’t looking to stir the pot — she just wanted a fair shake for herself and her family.
This is the kind of person (and movie character) who inevitably gets described as “scrappy” and “feisty,” yet even when Lilly is going up against the system there’s nothing flamboyant or righteous about her. Clarkson plays her in shopworn bangs, with a horse-sense Southern directness and a twinkle of reality in her eye. She shows you Lilly’s strength, her everyday touch of inner fire,...
VICTOR VALLEY, Calif. (VVNG.com) — The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department is warning residents about a growing wave of misinformation across the county, fueled by viral social media posts ...