The sartorial realm is not the only place that Goodwin feels herself coming into her own. Postbreakup, she has reached a few conclusions about men. “I didn’t know before that we don’t have to compromise,” says Goodwin, who admits that she has a new beau (she was spotted smooching an unidentified blond gentleman at New York’s Corner Bistro the very evening of our meeting). “I know now that there are men out there who are, for me, the whole package, who are supportive of my successes because they know I will be just as supportive of theirs. I’m less tolerant of foolishness now; I know that it’s important I not tie myself up with the wrong person, because then I will miss the right person coming along.”
Though she’s only now developing an unwillingness to settle in her personal life, Goodwin has always abided by that policy when it comes to acting. For years she endured long stretches of anemic bank balances. After graduating from college, she subsisted for several months on an acting award stipend, and her first jobs—the role on Ed and a few supporting parts in films—were far from gold mines. “There were days spent in tears, but it wasn’t that I was ever worried that I would want for anything,” she says. “It was more, Am I going to have to compromise and take a job that I don’t believe in? Actually, that’s how it was for me until, like, 10 minutes ago.” Though Goodwin clearly doesn’t have a policy against middlebrow studio movies, early in her career she did pass on a number of big-budget projects that didn’t appeal to her—even though they would have more than paid off her debts. “I could always count on my parents to talk me out of them,” she says. “They would tell me to be patient, that I can always sleep on a friend’s couch, and that the most important thing is to believe in yourself and your work.”
Though her Tennessee upbringing made her prim when it comes to sex (she jokes about her “iron panties”) and etiquette (rude cell-phone usage “breaks my heart”), her “artistic hippie” parents encouraged intellectual and spiritual exploration. Her mother, a FedEx employee, and her father, who owned a recording studio, sent her to Unitarian church on Sundays, to synagogue on Saturdays (Goodwin’s mother was Jewish, but both parents had become Unitarians before Ginnifer and her sister were born) and to an all-girls Episcopalian school during the week; she was both baptized and bat mitzvahed. “It’s not so much that we were hedging our bets,” she says, “as it was important to my parents that my sister and I explore faith on our own terms.” Today she doesn’t attend church but considers herself a Unitarian; she was drawn to the mantra that her childhood church subscribed to: “We agree to disagree.”
