Standing right now in a West Village photo studio in New York, she’s doing the Modern Mom’s Multi-task. Here she is as celebrity and cover model, girl-next-door ravishing in a floor-length Mediterranean peasant dress thrown on for a photo shoot. Here she is as a still-besotted wife, flirting with her husband, Paolo, who smiles back from the corner. Here she is as mother, her adorable toddler, Gianni, hiked out on one hip and her mop-topped five-year-old, Marco, tugging at her other. Here she is as best friend, pointing to the catering table a few feet away and whispering conspiratorially to Marco, “Try the chocolate macaroon, dude.”
Playful and more at ease than she has been in years, Hennessy is flourishing in ways she never expected. After six years in Los Angeles on the hit NBC forensic-pathology drama Crossing Jordan, she and her family are now comfortably settled in New York again, her real home base since leaving Toronto in 1990. No longer a slave to the punishing schedule of series TV, she has been free to stretch other muscles, to immerse herself in motherhood and follow her muse. They feed each other, parenting and creativity. This month, Hennessy returns to the big screen opposite Alec Baldwin, as the frustrated housewife and mother Brenda Bartlett in the affecting early-1980s indie drama Lymelife.
At the same time, she is making a radiant return to music, her first love, as a troubadour, with the folksy Ghost in My Head, which she wrote largely by herself. Inspired, she says, by Marco and recorded when she was pregnant with Gianni, the album – available online this spring – reveals sides and secrets Hennessy has never before shared in public. After the photographer and stylists retreated, Hennessy sat down with Chatelaine while Paolo took the boys home for dinner.
Q: Maybe I shouldn’t ask you this, but it occurs to me you turned 40 last November. Was that a big deal?
A: Not especially. I remember that the first time I asked my mom how old she was, she was 33. So I always pictured adult women as 33. When I hit that age, it was like, Oh, jeez, oh my gosh, I guess I have to be an adult now.
Q: Nah, you’ve got kids, they’ll keep you young.
A: I’m really enjoying the whole day-to-day of having two kids. I didn’t know how I’d react with not doing the acting thing every day.
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