Ellen Barkin: Enjoying her third act

Ellen Barkin is an actress of strong opinions on just about everything - including herself - as Erin Moriarty of "48 Hours" discovered during a recent round of Questions-and-Answers:

Moriarty pulled out a copy of New York magazine: "There is this incredible picture of you, which is just a beautiful picture of you," she said.

"Thank you," said Ellen Barkin. "That looks like me!"

"When you look at that, I mean, do you think of yourself as a beautiful woman?"

"No. Here's what I see: I see that she's got, like, a nose that hangs down on one end, and has like a ball, like a Karl Malden. The eyelids are too heavy and could probably use a little something."

"How would you describe your looks?" asked Moriarty.

"Well, I would say it's not for everyone, as the Jews say!" Barkin laughed. "That's what I would say."

OK, so maybe the individual features ... the crinkly eyes, the crooked nose and mouth ... ARE a little unconventional. But put them all together and you get one hot actor, a woman who has perfected the tough, but sexy broad role.

"As soon as someone tells me I can't do something, I think, 'Oh, oh, obviously, I can do that and I WILL do that."

Ellen Barkin and Moriarty sat down at an exhibition of classic movie posters - featuring classic faces - at New York's Lincoln Center.

Their first topic: The face Barkin presents to the public as part of her latest passion: Twitter.

"There is something that enrages me about every ten minutes about the world I live in now, so I think, 'Oh, this has really got me angry. I'm gonna Tweet it!'"

She tweets under her own name ... oh, does she TWEET! Dozens of posts a day, demonstrating that her tough persona is no act.

"There are an awful lot of F-words in your Tweets," Moriatry said.

"Right."

"So people wonder, could that really be Ellen Barkin?"

"Well, I mean, if you had dinner with me, I don't think you would doubt that it could be me," she laughed.

The rough language and the in-your-face attitude, Barkin says, are just part of being a born-and-bred New Yorker.

"You know, some people would not want to be able to be walking out in a city and have people recognize you. That doesn't make you uncomfortable at times?" Moriarty asked.

"Here in New York I don't," she said. "You know, I'm not Brad Pitt."

She grew up in the South Bronx and Queens, and after high school moved into her first Manhattan apartment. She showed us the exact spot: "It's all fancy now."

She was in her mid-20s before her first auditions led to work in the theater. She calls herself a late bloomer: "I was, yeah, all around."

"But why? Were you afraid to go to auditions?"

"I think so, yeah. I mean, it was partly just fear. And then I think the other part was that I was very committed to learning my job."

Her first big break came in "Diner," a seminal '80s movie directed by Barry Levinson. (Remember that name - it'll be important later.)

But back then, Barkin says, other filmmakers weren't quite ready for her.

"They'd be, 'No, no, she can't be the girl, she's not pretty!' And they'd say terrible things to you."

"And that didn't discourage you?"

"No. Tenacious! I'd say, really. I can't be that girl. Really. Not sexy? Not pretty? Okay! Maybe I can't get through the pretty thing, but it was a rebelliousness."

Her tenacity paid off in an unforgettable role opposite Al Pacino in "Sea of Love."

"I only got the part in 'Sea of Love' because every girl in Hollywood turned that part down, so they were desperate. They were, like, ready to go and had no one. So they said, 'Okay, let's get that, you know, not-so-pretty one, and see if maybe we can make it work.'"

It DID work ... and opened the way for a career that spans more than 40 movies.

On the set of "Siesta," she met Irish actor Gabriel Byrne. They married and had two children. They ended the marriage in 1999, but not the friendship.

"Yeah. I would say we're very good friends. Confidants."

"So your divorce better than the marriage, or divorce as good as the marriage?"

"Well, look, I don't think that something ending takes away the idea of success. If that were the case then nobody would ever have a successful life, because we all die. So inherent in everything is an end. Now if your marriage goes on for 30 years and you're miserable, are you more successful than [the] wonderful eight, nine years I spent with Gabriel Byrne? We had two wonderful children, and managed to stay very close friends."

Her second marriage, to billionaire businessman Ron Perelman, did not end quite so amicably. There was a nasty (and very public) divorce five years later.

"You can talk about your first marriage. Can't talk about your second at all?"

"No. I don't."

"Because you have a confidentiality agreement?"

"Obviously!"

"But is it accurate at least to say that was a very tough ending to a marriage?"

"I would say that was just an extremely difficult time for me and everybody around me."

When the legal dust-up had settled, Barkin walked away with a reported $20 million settlement ... and banked another $20 million when she famously auctioned off 100 pieces of jewelry given to her by Perelman.

The auction is widely believed to have inspired a scene in "Sex and the City" of "breakup revenge."

Barkin had largely put her career on hold during her marriage to Perelman. Once it was over, she was free to show her full range, and she did.

She took the role of a wheelchair-bound doctor in the revival of "The Normal Heart," and won her first Tony.

She smoldered as the blond bombshell in "Ocean's Thirteen."

And in her new movie (which she also produced), she plays a mother just about at the end of her rope.

That film, "Another Happy Day," comes thirty years after her breakout role in "Diner," and happens to be written and directed by another Levinson - not Barry, but his 26-year-old son, Sam.

"I honestly feel that just playing this role has helped me as an actor more than anything I've done."

Barkin loves to talk about what she says is the most satisfying role she's ever had, until I went one question too far ... and asked about the widely-reported story that she is also involved romantically with Sam Levinson.

"So, are you going to kill me if I ask you about that story about - because I know you, I think you have been, that you are, in fact, now dating the director?"

"I'm not going to discuss that," Barkin said.

"You're not going to discuss it? Are you going to deny it?"

"I'm not going to discuss it."

What she has never been afraid to discuss is her age, and why not? At age 57, Barkin's career is in high gear. It would seem that even as she approaches 60, Hollywood has grown very accustomed to that face.

"So I just feel very full right now," Barkin said. "Like I've done very well over the last five years. You know, it might have taken me two years to kind of dust myself off, but then I kind of kicked into high gear.

"I don't like the wrinkles, and I don't like saying the age thing. But some of the wrinkles, I like. I like these, you know?" she said. "There's a lot to do, I think. I like this third act so far."

• "Another Happy Day" (Official website)
• @EllenBarkin on Twitter
• "Style and Motion: The Art of the Movie Poster" at the Film Society of Lincoln Center