All the World's a Stage for Katie Holmes
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‘‘I have no idea where we are,” says Katie Holmes. We’re on a stroll through Central Park on an overcast afternoon this summer, her favorite time of year, and have been walking with no destination in mind when Holmes notices an older gentleman headed our way, wearing a sheepish expression and holding a rather large turtle.
“It was wandering across the lawn all by itself, so I thought I’d bring it up by the water,” the man says.
“Is it a snapping turtle?” Holmes asks.
“No, it seems lost. I’m probably doing the wrong thing.”
“Let’s just hope it didn’t take him four weeks to get there from here,” Holmes says, patting the turtle’s shell as she turns away and says, sotto voce, “I’m kind of afraid of turtles.”
We’ve stumbled into one of the wilder sections of the park, a rocky swamp left in its natural state as a contrast to the manicured lawns and leafy boulevards of New York’s crown jewel of greenery. Holmes has been coming here for years, often to let her mind wander, but this is a different experience. “This is so gorgeous,” she says. “I didn’t even know about this.”
Holmes has suggested a surprisingly exposed venue for an interview, though few actors walk the tightrope between public and private more deftly than she. Being in the limelight for more than 25 years—first as the sweetheart star of the teenage TV drama Dawson’s Creek, then as a tabloid chew toy for her relationships, and lately as a reluctant street style icon—has made her determined to go about her life as if no one would ever notice Katie Holmes walking through Central Park, which on this day appears to be the case. Walking in nature invites a more contemplative conversation, and we fall into an easy discussion about her latest work: Holmes returns to Broadway this month in director Kenny Leon’s revival of Our Town. Besides the man with the turtle, the only person who approaches us is touting a horse-drawn carriage ride.
“We forget we can just come here and do this on a lovely afternoon,” Holmes says. “There’s so much beauty in the simplicity.”
These days Holmes might want to savor every moment, which is the message of Thornton Wilder’s beloved slice-of-Americana play, written in 1938, as she is experiencing big moments of her own. Now 45 years old, facing a future for the first time as an empty nester (her daughter Suri is heading off to college as you read this), Holmes has thrown herself into creative pursuits including dance classes (“I love a dance studio because every time you enter, you’re starting from the beginning, and that’s a good, meditative way to approach the day”), painting (“I like abstract and took a class right here”), and even a book club (“You learn so much about each other—it’s a chance for everybody to share what moves them”). She’s a great reader; her group, which meets about five times a year, recently discussed Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water.
This is an important thing to know about Holmes, because she considers herself a quiet person who likes simplicity. She speaks with nostalgia about her upbringing in Toledo, Ohio, which is not exactly Grover’s Corners from Our Town but is closer than New York City, and reading is usually how she prepares for a role. “I read a lot to calm my mind down, and then I play,” she says. “We all live at this fast pace, and I know sometimes I need to calm down.”
Lately her professional choices have seemed more considered and personal than earlier in her career, when she starred in Dawson’s Creek, Batman Begins, and a pair of Jackie Kennedy bio-series. Now she can take to the stage or call the shots from behind the camera. Holmes has demonstrated the sort of staying power that is rare in her business, partly because she has pushed back when others have tried to define her, both in film and in fashion, which hasn’t always been easy.
“Do I have 20 scripts at my door, all with the green light? No. Would that make life easier? Yes. Is that unrealistic? Yes,” Holmes says. “Everybody has to find their interesting story, try to put it together, and make poetry out of things. There’s a lot of thought that goes into the projects I work on, but at the end of the day you still want to create something that people will respond to. You’re always at the whim of someone.”
As it happens, earlier this year she was reading Tom Lake, a novel by Ann Patchett that includes a character who has played the role of Emily Webb in Our Town multiple times, when she ran into Leon, whom she had met about 15 years ago while workshopping a production that never got off the ground. Leon broached the subject of casting Holmes, who last appeared Off-Broadway a year ago in The Wanderers (playing, of all things, a famous actress), as Mrs. Webb—Emily’s mother—in his production, which includes Zoey Deutch as Emily, Jim Parsons in the role of the stage manager, and Ephraim Sykes as Emily’s love interest, George Gibbs. Growing up in Florida, Leon says, he used to hate the play because Grover’s Corners had no Black people (“It seems like the most racist place in the world”), but he has since staged contemporary renditions in Atlanta with his True Colors Theatre Company that showed that its themes are universal when the casting is more diverse. “I wanted one family to be Black and one family to be white, because I wanted the older generation to learn from the younger generation,” Leon says. “This is the best play of all time. It is the play to remind us how to spend our moments on the planet and that we have to help our friends and neighbors. It reminds us what we owe each other.”
Likewise, Leon sees in Holmes something he thinks others have missed. “People don’t realize her breadth and wealth of talent. This is basically an ensemble piece, so I really need actors who can understand subtext—what’s really going on beneath these words. She can play danger. She can play love, envy. I just want the presence that is Katie Holmes on stage.” Surely, Holmes can relate.
“This play is important after what we’ve all been going through,” says Holmes, who spent much of the pandemic holed up in upstate New York with her daughter, trying to make something meaningful out of the collective misery.
In 2022 she wrote, directed, and starred in the film Alone Together, the story of two strangers who find love after they book the same Airbnb while escaping New York in March 2020. The New York Times called it a “quiet achievement: a movie that isn’t running away from reality.” She co-wrote last year’s Rare Objects (her third feature directorial effort), adapted from the novel by Kathleen Tessaro about a young woman, the victim of a sexual assault, rebuilding her life while working in an antique shop; one of the shop’s owners is played by Alan Cumming, who has become a close friend. They’ve even taken a stab at writing a script together. “It would be easy, and foolish, to think she’s just this smiley girl, but she’s a powerhouse,” Cumming says. “You don’t get to do the things she’s done by being passive.”
Holmes shot to stardom on Dawson’s Creek. Her style was on display already at a celebration of the 100th episode.
2008
She went to the Met Gala in red Giorgio Armani with contrasting Christian Louboutin pumps. And, of course, a sharp French bob.
2019
Texture is a Holmes hallmark. She played with it in Marc Jacobs at a premiere, and in a cashmere Khaite bra that went viral.
2019
Texture is a Holmes hallmark. She played with it in Marc Jacobs at a premiere, and in a cashmere Khaite bra that went viral.
2019
What’s easy and elegant? A matching set. Holmes wore a royal blue suit while out for a walk on the streets of New York City.
2022
At a Tom Ford fashion show, Holmes took a mysterious, minimalist approach in a black gown that covered her slicked coiffure.
2023
Red accents are timeless, as Holmes showed with a red ribbon and coral lip at a screening of Rare Objects, which she directed.
2024
Elegance and ease are always in. Left, Holmes wears Pucci to an American Ballet Theatre gala. Right, she’s in Prada for a brand event.
Now Holmes is writing three scripts at once, a love story trilogy in the vein of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise series that follows a young couple from high school through their thirties. “I was drawn to create a love story, because I think that that never goes out of style,” she says. “We all want to escape into that.”
Not that she would remember, but I first met Holmes in 2006 in Paris, at a Giambattista Valli show, and then again in 2013, when she and stylist Jeanne Yang were showing their own fashion collection in New York. Even during those brief encounters, it was evident that the public had a fixation with Holmes for reasons other than her professional achievements. Holmes, who now works with the stylist Brie Welch, is held up for scrutiny not so much for her acting or directing as for what she wears while hailing a taxi or running errands. Her outfits have become a beat for many fashion magazines; upon the release of a design collaboration between Holmes and the French fashion label APC in June, the Washington Post headlined an article by Rachel Tashjian “Why does everyone want to dress like Katie Holmes?”
Her style has been described as relatable, approachable, practical, and seemingly effortless, although the New York Times used the word “generic.” She is “accessible and elevated,” says Judith Touitou, the artistic director of APC. “Katie’s style inspires people because it is composed of pieces that everyone has in their closet but assembled in an inventive, personal manner that you can then translate into your own world.” The most personal item in the collection, a quilt inspired by one Holmes’s mother made for her, was the first to sell out, and items that comprise her signature look—jeans and a white T-shirt—are best-sellers.
Tashjian says she suspects that what’s driving the interest in Holmes’s clothes is the gulf viewers see between the actress and celebrities who wear don’t-try-this-at-home fashion during their daily routines. “Our eyes are so trained to see overly styled images as natural, this looks fresh,” Tashjian says. “It’s clear that even though Katie Holmes works with a stylist, she doesn’t call every day asking how to tuck her shirt into her jeans.”
Holmes dresses in a way that makes it look easy, as if she doesn’t care what people think, and she still looks undeniably great. For the record, during our afternoon together, she wore a light, ribbed terra-cotta-colored cotton V-neck sweater from the APC collaboration ($350) over a brown acetate slip dress by Tibi that can be found online for $425, and strappy sandals. At one point she removed her sweater and let down her hair, which had been tucked under a baseball cap, and frankly she could have walked a red carpet in that slip dress. If that isn’t the definition of je ne sais quoi, I don’t know what is.
“This is where we are right now,” Holmes says. “Fashion is really big, and it didn’t used to be. As an actor, you weren’t necessarily photographed all the time on the street. It’s different now, and it’s flattering, but it doesn’t change how I live or dress. I’m adamant about having a life and not letting this industry dictate decisions as simple as what I wear or as complicated as what I do. You don’t want to be afraid of anything, right?”
As we exit the woods near Wollman Rink, I confess that I am wearing ankle socks, which are now the mark of “old people,” according to a viral TikTok post. “I had no idea,” she says. “I thought that was the thing to have.”
“I thought so too, but apparently now it’s, like, mid-calf.”
“I think it’s pants-dependent. You made the right choice.”
I thank her for the compliment, but later I wonder, was that a dig? But of course not. There is no hint of cynicism in Holmes. She says she loves the shared experience of living in New York, and the rituals of the theater, especially the way a cast creates its own community. Both offer a sense of intimacy with strangers that can be elusive for a celebrity who has sought to shield her family from prying eyes. That’s something Holmes is discovering becomes harder as her daughter makes her own way in the world. A few days before we met, Suri’s supposed college choice was inadvertently revealed to the world when one of her high school classmates posted a TikTok video on the school’s “commitment day,” showing her wearing a college’s sweatshirt. According to the gossip that followed, Suri, who has contributed vocals to songs in two of Holmes’s films, is said to be interested in pursuing a career in fashion or acting, which seems like following in her mother’s footsteps.
This is all that Holmes will say on the subject: “I’m proud of my daughter. Of course, I will miss the close proximity, but I’m really proud of her and I’m happy. I remember being this age, this time of beginnings. It’s exciting to learn about yourself, and I loved that time, so it makes me happy to think about it like that.”
Luckily, it’s something Holmes won’t have to weather alone. Like every other resident of Grover’s Corners, she’s got a community to support her. “The members of my book club are going to get annoyed hearing from me,” she says with a laugh. “I’ll be like, ‘Let’s meet once a week.’ ”
Photographs by Ruven Afanador.
Styled by Bernat Buscato.
Hair by DJ Quintero for Living Proof at the Wall Group. Makeup by Genevieve Herr for Lancôme at Sally Harlor. Manicure by Ada Yeung for Dior at Bridge. Tailoring by Christine Gabriele at Lars Nord. Set design by Anthony Asaro. Prop styling by Lauren Alexander. Production: Viewfindersnyla.
In the top image: Thom Browne trench coat and pleated skirt; Fleur Du Mal slip dress ($465); Wolford tights ($75); Max Mara ankle boots ($1,090).
This story appears in the September 2024 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW
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