“Make no mistake about it—those are characters on Big Love and in He’s Just Not That Into You,” says Long, who met Goodwin in 2001, when the two costarred on the NBC sitcom Ed. (Of rumors about their romantic entanglement, he says, “My mother read that and was like, ‘Oh, tell me this is true!’”) “Ginny is on the ball. She’s very sharp and smart. There aren’t that many young actresses today playing so far outside of their wheelhouse.”
In fact, it was a great relief to Goodwin when, during this season’s finale of Big Love, Margene achieved some success as a saleswoman. “I’m just happy she found a talent,” the actress says. “Until that moment, I wasn’t sure Margene could be effectual at anything.”
Even if Goodwin occasionally finds playing such an immature character tedious, her job satisfaction, she insists, is off the charts, and not just because the series has elevated her star. She has formed tight friendships with the actresses who costar as her sister wives, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Chloë Sevigny; the three women often drive home caravan-style from the set in Santa Clarita, 30 miles north of Los Angeles, talking on the phone to make sure no one falls asleep at the wheel. “I have shown up at work [with] my heart broken by a boy, and they have been the ones to hold my hand and call me in the middle of the night to make sure I’m okay. I have no doubt that I’ll be friends with Jeanne and Chloë forever. We are people who want to stand beside each other in life.”
“Ginnifer is giggly and has energy in spades, but she also has this really deep intelligence,” says Sevigny. “She can comprehend a scene on set or a situation in my personal life in a way that I’ve never thought of.”
The connection among them is particularly sacred to Goodwin in light of the fact that she can count her actor friends on one hand. A crossword puzzle–addicted homebody, she finds herself ill suited to the Hollywood scene. “When I’m doing a film, I love getting together after work with my costars,” she says. “But we get back to L.A. and I’m like, I don’t want to go to a club with you, dude. I mean, I think you’re rad, and if you want to come play Scrabble with me, that’s amazing.” They rarely do.
Last year, when Goodwin turned 30, she ignored those urging her to have a big party in favor of “kidnapping five of my girlfriends and taking them to a bed-and-breakfast where we did mud baths and learned how to make perfume and lazed by the pool and drank way too much wine.” In lieu of a phone call, though, she decided to break news of the plan to her friends via a spoof Evite. “I wrote that this tabloid magazine and this alcohol company were sponsoring a trip to Vegas for my birthday, and that we’d be going to the opening of this new club and there would be red carpet, and airfare and everything was going to be provided. This is what everyone in Hollywood does for their birthday,” Goodwin exclaims with wide eyes. “Barf, right?” At the bottom of the faux Evite, she directed her friends to the link for the “new club,” which would have led them to the site of the bed-and-breakfast where they were actually heading. “I figured they’d click and see that it’s, like, this really dorky, girly, wonderful B&B in the middle of nowhere where we were going to get plenty of sleep and play board games. But instead they all panicked and started calling each other—they thought I had gone over to the dark side.” She lets out a mock exasperated sigh. “So little faith!”
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