Veteran Atlanta actress is still going strong at 64

Credit: Horizon Theater

Credit: Horizon Theater

Cook is understated and humble about creating such a rich tapestry.

“It’s a combination of physically embodying the character (How do they walk and talk?), understanding what makes them tick and also trying to emotionally relate,” she said.

“Then there’s memorizing the lines and taking input from the director and responding to what the other actors bring.”

In this case, she took cues from longtime collaborator and Horizon theater co-founder Lisa Adler, who directed her in “Heart.”

“Carolyn is an extraordinary actress,” Adler says, simply.

“People think acting is easy, but these actors who do stage work, they train, and it’s very precise and complex.”

Cook’s nearly 40-year career has been characterized by a plethora of wide-ranging and sometimes challenging roles, sitting in the producer/director chair, creating a French language theater company, a successful Shakespearean run and a series of awards and accolades.

A great run that started with a grade school play in her hometown of Dalton.

“I was Mary Poppins in the fourth grade,” she said with a laugh. “I had five lines.”

Laughter comes easily to Cook as she talks about her life and career. It’s plain she’s serious about her craft, while at the same time able to see the humor in the sometimes capriciousness of life.

While still in school, she did one-act plays, enjoying them but still focusing her career aspirations elsewhere. That changed after a college degree in French, a move to Carrollton, Georgia, to do public relations at then-West Georgia College and marriage to husband Matt.

She began driving into Atlanta for theater classes, which morphed into a two-year internship at the Alliance Theater. That same stage was also the home of her first professional turn — an appearance in the British historical drama “A Man for All Seasons.”

“I (again) had five lines,” she told an interviewer from Arts ATL a decade or so ago. “And I moved a lot of furniture.”

Meatier early career roles followed, including major parts in such productions as “My Children! My Africa!” by South African playwright Athol Fugard, playing a young white girl waking up to the human tragedy of apartheid.

Credit: Horizon Theater

Credit: Horizon Theater

Later, she played another youngster getting schooled in racial prejudice — U.S. style — in “Good Times are Killing Me.”

“I was lucky enough to do things early on that were really powerful scripts about important issues,” Cook said.

Another notable career milestone came in 1994, when she joined the Georgia Shakespeare repertory company, staying until the organization folded in 2014.

Former producing artist, director and co-founder Richard Garner heaped praise on Cook’s versatility and evolution into a mainstay, with lead roles in such productions as “Saint Joan,” an imagining of folk heroine and French military leader Joan of Arc.

Garner said with their doing rotating repertory work, one night she might be one of the evil daughters in “King Lear” and the next night immersed in “A Comedy of Errors.”

She had a particular talent for handling Shakespeare’s somewhat archaic phrasing, making it “as natural as can be,” he said.

Another defining Cook characteristic evident both on and offstage was that of mentoring.

“When we had college interns in the company working alongside the pros, they always learned so much just being in the rehearsal room with Carolyn,” Garner recalled, “watching her focus, her choices.”

Cook’s take: Show up prepared, be professional, set a good example and answer questions.

Drawing on her family’s strong emphasis on academics and the arts plus a voracious appetite for learning, she studied French language and culture and then founded Théâtre du Rêve (Theater of the Dream), serving as producing artist director of the French language company.

Among her achievements: writing and directing “Code Noir,” a play about a timeslip that brings a French Revolution-era general and a modern-day New Orleans defense attorney together.

Her love of learning led her to take up the fiddle at age 55 and embark on learning Spanish.

With all that, last year came a lifetime achievement award from the Suzi Bass Awards, which highlights achievements in Atlanta theater.

But at 64, she’s not resting on any of those laurels. She’ll teach two theater classes this fall. Come springtime there are plans to migrate “Carry Your Heart” to a Savannah venue and then perhaps back to Atlanta. There’s also a play in the works at Actor’s Express.

Her gratitude shines through.

“I feel like I have had a very full and very wonderful life,” she said. “And getting to do a great play is just icing on the cake.”