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‘What balls!' ‘Apollo 13' star Kathleen Quinlan on firing off notes to Ron Howard, secret dinner with Tom Hanks, and why her Oscar-nominated role was more than just ‘the wife'
First things first: yes, the ring thing really happened. Early on in Apollo 13 — Ron Howard's 1995 dramatization of the famous 1970 NASA space odyssey that very nearly became a space tragedy — there's a scene that plays more like fiction than fact. On the morning of the launch that rockets Jim Lovell (played by Tom Hanks) into the wild blue yonder, the celebrated astronaut's wife, Marilyn (Kathleen Quinlan), steps into a motel shower… and watches in horror as her wedding ring is washed down the drain mid-rinse. More from Gold Derby Could 'Sinners' campaign as a musical at the Golden Globes? The surprising answer 'Awards Magnet' mailbag: A 'Bear' Emmy nominations tank? A cap on acting nominees? It's the culmination of a series of premonitions she's had warning her that Jim's mission isn't going to go smoothly. And, sure enough, a few days into Apollo 13's moon-bound trajectory Lovell radios Houston to alert them to a very serious problem aboard the unluckily numbered spacecraft. 'All that was real,' Quinlan confirms to Gold Derby ahead of Apollo 13's 30th anniversary on June 30. (NASA marked the 55th anniversary of the actual mission in April.) 'She dropped the ring down the drain and realized it was not a good omen. She felt that something ominous was coming — and it did.' (For the record, Jim Lovell later revealed that the movie did take one creative liberty: in real life, Marilyn recovered her wedding band from the shower drain trap.) Quinlan — who earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her performance — learned about the veracity of the ring incident direct from the source. Prior to production, she spent some time with the Lovells at their lakeside home in Texas. The trip included peeks through photo albums, plenty of stories and a private Cessna flight to the NASA museum in Houston piloted by Jim himself. 'Marilyn didn't like flying,' Quinlan recalls. 'She sat in the back of the plane with a thermos and served us coffee.' Meeting Marilyn — who died in 2023 — alleviated one of the chief concerns that Quinlan had when she accepted the role. 'I was worried a little bit about playing 'the wife,'' the actress admits candidly, acknowledging the limited roles for women in so many Hollywood studio productions in the '90s. 'You were either the wife or the girlfriend and that's pretty much what you did. I felt the danger of being 'the wife.'' Her time with the Lovells, though, provided her with a fresh perspective on the part. 'Once I met Marilyn, I understood the gravity of what astronauts' wives did,' she says. 'They had to stay home and take care of the kids by themselves all while acting like everything is fine. I remember thinking, 'There's something to this.'' With that thought top of mind, Quinlan returned to Los Angeles and typed up a series of notes intended to correct some of the inaccuracies she now saw in Marilyn's portrayal in the script based on her trip to Texas. She then faxed those notes directly to Howard. 'What balls!' Quinlan says with a hearty laugh while thinking back on her younger self's chutzpah. 'But Ron was very gracious about it and even took some of my notes.' While those typed notes have long since been lost to history, Quinlan does remember that one of her chief recommendations was centering Marilyn as a crucial part of the extended NASA team. 'NASA always told the wives that they would be the ones sending their husbands off to space,' she explains. 'What they said was very important — they needed to keep the astronauts' psychology strong. They were the crew's ground mission control so to speak.' In the end, Howard recognized the dramatic value of Quinlan's approach. 'He said that my work grounded the other actors' work,' she says. 'That was very flattering.' Released in the midst of a crowded summer movie season, Apollo 13 enjoyed a five-week run at the top of the box-office charts and raked in cash well into the fall. It finished the year as the second highest-grossing film of 2025, right behind Batman Forever — proof that scientists could go toe-to-toe with superheroes at the multiplex. Apollo 13 was a hit on the awards circuit as well, earning nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Besides Quinlan, Ed Harris also scored a Best Supporting Actor nod for his breakout performance as flight director Gene Kranz.'I got to be in a great film that's become a classic,' Quinlan says of her part in the movie's three-decade legacy. 'That's a great thing to have in my kit.' To celebrate 30 years of Apollo 13, Quinlan dug into her kit to share memories from the movie's production, from a pre-filming dinner date with Hanks to why we don't see Jim and Marilyn reunite at the final scene. Quinlan was already a Hollywood veteran by the time Apollo 13 came her way, having gotten her start in the early '70s with roles in movies like American Graffiti and Airport '77 as well as regular guest spots on such vintage shows as Police Woman and Ironside. In all that time, though, she had never crossed paths with Hanks in a casting session until she showed up to read for Marilyn — a meeting she squeezed in before undergoing surgery on her left shoulder. 'I did my reading with Tom and Ron, and then went to surgery,' she says, laughing. 'When I woke up, my then-husband Bruce Abbott told me, 'You got it!' And I said, 'Got what?'' Once the post-surgery haze passed, Quinlan threw herself into preparing for the shoot. Having enjoyed a small window into Jim and Marilyn's relationship, she wanted to ensure that she and Hanks had the same level of intimacy and familiarity as the real-life Lovells — especially as the actors would only be occupying the same frame for a limited amount of screentime. 'Tom was very friendly, but he was also Tom Hanks and that was intimidating in and of itself,' she says of her costar, who was coming off back-to-back Best Actor wins for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. Determined to conquer any sense of intimidation before showing up on set, Quinlan had her agent call Hanks' office to arrange a private dinner date — a request that she's only made of two actors during her career. 'Both of them were surprised, too, which I found a little strange,' she says. (The other actor? Chris Cooper, who played her husband in the 2007 spy thriller Breach.) Joined by Abbott, Quinlan met Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, at a secluded restaurant in the SoCal mountains that she doesn't name but confirms is still open. ('You'd have to know about it,' she teases.) The out-of-the-way location afforded the duo the atmosphere and the time to really get to know each other. 'I felt like I could relax around him,' Quinlan says about their actorly connection coming away from the table. Hanks didn't forget the dinner either… but for slightly different reasons. Quinlan remembers getting a call from his office days later with a follow-up request. 'They said, 'Tom would like to know the name of that place you took him so he can take his son there!' Apollo 13 went into production during that in-between period when old-school movie magic like wire work seemed dated, but the new wave of computer-generated tricks were still booting up. So in order to realistically depict weightlessness in space, Howard famously put Hanks and his costars — the late Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon — aboard the so-called 'Vomit Comet,' a training aircraft that NASA employed to get its own astronauts accustomed to being human flotation devices. The name wasn't an exaggeration: nausea was a regular co-pilot for anyone who rode in the Boeing-made vessel. That's one of the reasons why Quinlan says she never asked Howard for her own chance to experience weightlessness. 'I wanted to at first, but then I heard that James Cameron and another big director had called to ask if he could ride in the Vomit Comet, and got turned down,' she says. 'I thought, 'If Ron is turning them down, I'm not even asking.' Besides her sightings of Hanks, Paxton, and Bacon after they exited the aircraft told her all she needed to know. 'I watched all those boys come out, and they were just green,' she remembers with a big grin. 'I just said, 'Nah, I'll pass.'' When it came to the film's recreation of Apollo 13's launch, Howard obviously didn't have the budget to send a real rocket into the final frontier. Instead, the skillfully-edited sequence — Mike Hill and Daniel Hanley shared a Best Film Editing nomination — relies largely on models and limited CGI. But that's not Quinlan saw when she's seen reacting to the rocket taking flight. Instead, she was staring at something much more… low-fi. 'They rigged a basketball to the end of a C-stand,' she says when asked where Howard directed her gaze for her part of the launch sequence. After Jim leaves Earth's atmosphere, Marilyn's only connection to him is through news footage and private NASA radio. Quinlan says that much of that material was played live on set so she had something to react to in the moment. 'Having those playbacks really helped,' she emphasizes, recalling an earlier instance in her career when those kinds of assists wasn't made available. 'I'll never forget being in The Twilight Zone movie when greenscreen had just been invented,' Quinlan says. 'I was shown this little round thing on the end of a popsicle stick and was told to react to it! It took me awhile to learn how to react to things that aren't really there. I've learned that you just have to believe in it for that moment.' It's notable that the last scene Hanks and Quinlan share together in the film also conspires to keep them apart. To avoid any infections, the departing astronauts have to say goodbye to their families from across a strip of highway. "I really liked that because the audience gets to feel their separation," Quinlan says of the staging. "I thought that was a very good choice by Ron." Even after Jim returns to Earth at the end of the movie, Howard chooses to avoid depicting the couple's joyful reunion. Instead, the final sequence stays with the astronauts as they're recovered from their capsule while Hanks narrates what happened to the principal figures in the years after. Quinlan confirms that she didn't shoot any additional material and believes seeing the Lovells together again isn't necessary to those final moments anyway. "I think what's there is resolution enough," she says matter-of-factly. "Showing him landing and her seeing that he landed on the news allows everybody gets to feel that moment along with Marilyn." While critics largely loved Apollo 13, the only review that mattered to Quinlan was Marilyn's — and it turned out to be a rave. "It's always scary when you play a real person what their reaction is going to be," she notes. "Marilyn saw the movie at the premiere in Houston, and I had seen it already so I waited outside. When it was over, she come up to me and said: 'Kathleen — you did a great job.' That was such a relief." Meanwhile, Jim Lovell — who recently celebrated his 97th birthday — had his own gift for Quinlan. "At one point, I asked him, 'How did you keep going in the face of everything going wrong?'" she recalls. "He said, 'I never felt like I didn't have an ace to play.' I've carried that with me forever." Best of Gold Derby Everything to know about 'The Batman 2': Returning cast, script finalized Tom Cruise movies: 17 greatest films ranked worst to best 'It was wonderful to be on that ride': Christian Slater talks his beloved roles, from cult classics ('Heathers,' 'True Romance') to TV hits ('Mr. Robot,' 'Dexter: Original Sin') Click here to read the full article.
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‘Apollo 13' star Kathleen Quinlan relives the 1996 Oscars, from a Whoopi wink to a Sorvino hug
The winners of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar belong to an exclusive club. But Apollo 13 star Kathleen Quinlan can boast to membership in an equally select society — call it the Whoopi Goldberg Wink Squad. Quinlan was inaugurated into that group three decades ago at the 68th Academy Awards, held on March 25, 1996. The then-41-year-old actress walked the red carpet outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion as a Supporting Actress nominee for her role as Marilyn Lovett in Ron Howard's space acclaimed space drama. Inside, meanwhile, Goldberg was preparing for her second appearance Oscar host, replacing the previous year's controversial emcee, David Letterman. More from Gold Derby Could 'Sinners' campaign as a musical at the Golden Globes? The surprising answer 'Awards Magnet' mailbag: A 'Bear' Emmy nominations tank? A cap on acting nominees? And the comedian couldn't resist tweaking the late night host right out of the gate. 'So… didja miss me?' Goldberg asked the crowd with a smile. She then proceeded to launch into her stage patter, which riffed on the proliferation of colorful ribbons at that year's ceremony, the race between Bob Dole and Pat Buchanan to be President Bill Clinton's Republican opponent and the surprising number of big-name actresses that played hookers that year, from Elisabeth Shue to Sharon Stone. Oh yeah, and Goldberg poked fun at Apollo 13 — several times, in fact. Sitting towards the front of the room, Quinlan laughed at each joke that Goldberg made at her movie's expense. And that's when she was admitted to the Wink Squad. 'Whoopi gave me a little wink,' Quinlan, now 70, tells Gold Derby about the moment she made eye contact with the night's emcee. And the wink wasn't just out of appreciation for her good humor — she and Goldberg had some personal history, having acted alongside each other in the 1988 drama Clara's Heart, also starring a young Neil Patrick Harris. 'I really liked Whoopi a lot,' Quinlan says. 'She gave me that little wink and it felt very special.' While Quinlan took home a Whoopi Wink, she ultimately didn't take home an Oscar. That year's Supporting Actress statue instead went to Mira Sorvino for her breakout Mighty Aphrodite role as — wait for it — a hooker. But Quinlan had no hard feelings in the moment or now, nearly three decades later. 'I was so happy for her,' she says. 'It was a great performance.' As part of our celebration of Apollo 13's 30th anniversary, Quinlan provided Gold Derby with a personal walkthrough of her Oscar night experience. Two days before she turned up at the Oscars, Quinlan was swimming in the Bahamas — not for fun, but for work. The actress was in the midst of shooting the PG-rated family film Zeus and Roxanne opposite Steve Guttenberg, but was given the equivalent of a weekend pass to attend the ceremony. 'I got out of the water, peeled off my wetsuit, packed my bag and headed to L.A.,' she remembers. 'Then when I got to the hotel, I put on my dress, did my hair and makeup and headed out to the show. It was otherworldly!' Prior to jetting off to the Bahamas for Zeus and Roxanne, Quinlan had spent months making the rounds campaigning for a Best Supporting Actress nomination with the help of her publicist, Kelly Bush. 'She did an amazing job, but I was worn out by the end,' the actress says now. 'You have to go everywhere and talk, talk, talk, talk.' All that talking paid off, though. When nominations were announced on Feb. 13, 1996, Quinlan and Ed Harris were the only two members of Apollo 13's star-powered cast to score acting nominations. To this day, Quinlan is shocked and surprised that her onscreen husband, Tom Hanks, missed the cut for his performance as the doomed spacecraft's commander, Jim Lovell. (Howard also notably missed out on a Best Director nomination.) 'The problem is that kind of mastery is seamless,' she says of Hanks, who at that point in his career had just won back-to-back Best Actor statues for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. 'Inside the Apollo 13, Tom was always calm and didn't touch one button where he didn't know what it did. That kind of masterful work is maybe not so showy, but good luck mimicking it.' After making the quick change from her travel clothes to her Oscar finery, Quinlan and her then-husband Bruce Abbott hopped into a limo bound for the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion. 'It was a long ride,' she recalls. But what waited on the other end of that ride made the trip worth it. 'Stepping out of the limousine and onto the red carpet was a moment,' Quinlan says happily. 'It felt like I had finally arrived in Hollywood.' That enthusiasm started to mingle with nervous energy as she took her seat inside the theater. The run of show had the Supporting Actress statue being handed out midway through the night, a wait that Quinlan calls 'nerve-wracking.' Asked whether she had a speech prepared should her name be called, the actress says that she came armed with a list of names and a general idea of what she intended to say. 'I made sure to have that list, because I could tell that everyone went blank as soon as they got up there,' she laughs. But that list ended up going unused. Presenter Martin Landau introduced the roll call of nominees — which included Nixon's Joan Allen, Georgia's Mare Winningham and Sense and Sensibility's Kate Winslet in addition to Quinlan and Sorvino — and then called the Mighty Aphrodite star's name. Sitting next to then-boyfriend Quentin Tarantino, Sorvino took a moment to compose herself and then headed to the stage. As the newly minted Oscar winner left her row, she passed her proud father, actor Paul Sorvino, and the two shared a big father-daughter hug. Moments later, she addressed him from the stage, saying: 'When you give me this award, you honor my father who has taught me everything I know about acting.' The cameras promptly cut back to her dad and caught him mid-cry — an only-at-the-Oscars moment that warmed the heart of everyone in the room. 'I saw her father well up and start crying when she looked at him and I thought, 'Oh, that's a great moment,'' Quinlan says with a warm smile. (Reflecting on that moment years later, Mira Sorvino called her tribute to her father 'a celebration of our love for each other.') Quinlan watched and enjoyed the rest of the show after Sorvino's win and hit the party afterwards. The next morning, she was once again Bahamas bound. 'I flew back to set, put my wetsuit back on and got back in the water,' she recalls. To date, Apollo 13 remains Quinlan's only brush with Oscar and the 68th Academy Awards remains the only ceremony she's attended — though not because she hasn't been invited back. 'I could go almost every year if I wanted to,' she says. 'But at that time, I most wanted to go to enjoy the moment and the people.' As an Academy member, Quinlan does still follow the Oscar race from afar and singles out this past year's ceremony as a particularly good show. 'Those movies were, for the most part, not big money makers,' she says of a Best Picture roster that included The Brutalist, Emilia Pérez, and the eventual winner Anora.'They put more money into the campaigns for the movie than they do into making the movie,' she marvels. 'I don't know how they make their money back, but they were all well-made films.' Asked about the impact of her Apollo 13 nomination on her career, Quinlan says that it 'helped somewhat' as she continued to navigate the industry. While she describes herself as 'not aggressively ambitious,' she has worked steadily in the thirty years since that Oscar night, with a diverse slate of roles across television and film. 'Winning an Oscar is definitely the Amex Gold card,' she jokes. Looking back on her Oscar experience, though, Quinlan feels like she won simply by showing up. 'It was fun just to be there and have my little wink with Whoopi,' she says. "I also got to be in a great film that's become a classic. That's a great thing to have in my kit." Best of Gold Derby Everything to know about 'The Batman 2': Returning cast, script finalized Tom Cruise movies: 17 greatest films ranked worst to best 'It was wonderful to be on that ride': Christian Slater talks his beloved roles, from cult classics ('Heathers,' 'True Romance') to TV hits ('Mr. Robot,' 'Dexter: Original Sin') Click here to read the full article.
