When Paula Plum attended grammar school in Lynnfield in the 1960s, her teachers allowed her to write and act out scenes from the assigned reading instead of completing book reports. She has been in love with acting ever since.
President of the drama club and voted most likely to succeed, Plum graduated from St. Mary’s High School in Lynn in 1971 and was later inducted into its Hall of Fame. She majored in acting and earned a degree from Boston University, but remains a lifelong student. Plum has studied and participated in acting programs around the world including in London, Paris, and San Francisco.
For the last five decades Plum, now 68, has managed a career as an actress, writer, director, teacher, and — most recently — interim artistic director at Gloucester Stage Company. Although Plum refers to theater as her first love, she says she was born to act in general. Plum first began booking roles in movies in her 30s. She is known for her performances in the 1990 film “Mermaids,” the 1993 film “Malice,” and Woody Allen’s 2015 film “Irrational Man.” This year, Plum starred in Louis C.K.’s film “Fourth of July.”
“I’ve done a lot of studying throughout my life because I feel like it’s important for artists to continually renew themselves,” Plum said. “But I’ve been very blessed. I’ve also constantly been working.”
Plum said she tried to be a “New York actor” for about five years in the ‘90s but was only able to land a commercial agent. Aspiring to do more than star in advertisements, Plum and her husband, Richard Snee, created an adult animated series called “The Dick & Paula Celebrity Special” that ran on FX for two seasons. Its premise was a talk show with famous, but usually deceased, guests including Charles Darwin and Lewis and Clark.
While in New York, Plum was making the drive back to New England two or three times a week and ultimately decided to move back to the North Shore to be close to her aging mother. Plum said the opportunities did not stop when she returned to the area.
“Film companies love to come here because it’s beautiful and historic,” Plum said. “When they need someone with an authentic Boston accent, it’s a really tough accent to master if you don’t have it.”
Plum added that the digital age has also created many opportunities in the entertainment industry. She said between cheap video cameras and the popularity of iPhones, almost anyone can create a film that will need actors. Plum said for the last three years — in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic — she has mostly auditioned in her kitchen on video calls.
She also used her pandemic downtime to take a virtual class through the Movement Theater Studio in New York led by an esteemed teacher in Paris.
“That wasn’t even dreamed of when I was young,” Plum said.
Plum joked that her own insanity is the reason she remains in the entertainment industry, which she calls a “really, really rough business.” Although it can be heartbreaking a lot of the time, she’s learned dogged persistence is the only thing that leads to success.
During times when she couldn’t find other work, Plum subsidized her career by teaching. She said she has taught at almost every college in Boston as an adjunct professor.
“I’ve managed to figure out how to continue working even if I wasn’t being cast in anything,” Plum said. “When I haven’t liked where my life is going, I’ve written my own shows.”
Plum’s favorite piece she has written is a play called “Wigged Out,” a comedy about her mother’s death. When her mother died, Plum was left to sort through her belongings. The play is about the memories that resurfaced during that process. She has performed “Wigged Out” in Boston and Vermont.
Plum has also been working on a play for the last 10 years about the life of Edmund St. Vincent Millay, a lyrical poet and playwright. The play is called “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed” after a biography of Millay with the same title written by Daniel Mark Epstein. Plum originally wrote the play starting in 2010 as an eight-person cast production. She is currently rewriting it to be a one-person narrative so that she can travel and perform it herself.
Plum said Lady Macbeth was one of her most memorable roles. She performed the classic “Macbeth” with the Lady Shakespeare Project alongside an all-female cast in 1987. She said she cried when she walked off the stage for the last time because she knew she wouldn’t get the chance to play the role again.
“The thing about Shakespeare’s language is that the audience has to become active participants in working to understand what’s going on and the acting is what illuminates the language,” Plum said. “You can transform the character into something that is a unique creation of yours.”
She said the first show she directed her husband in, “Lone Star and Laundry and Bourbon,” was also a career highlight. Plum remembers it as the time Snee first felt the joy of performing, as well as the time in her life when she would stay up all night drinking Scotch with the cast.
Today, Plum and Snee are acting together in a Gloucester Stage Company production called “Grand Horizons.” The play is a comedy about a couple who has been married for 50 years when the wife asks for a divorce. In their 42nd year of marriage and 14th show together, Plum and Snee play the couple.
“He describes me as a stress-seeking missile and he is just very easygoing,” Plum said. “We don’t have fights. There’s no competition on stage. I couldn’t get through this crazy life without him.”
Plum said she and Snee, who recently turned 70, are looking to start a new chapter in their lives. She said they want to travel in their 70s, but she plans to keep working.
“I don’t see a point in retiring because I love what I do,” Plum said. “Actors are constantly going into the unknown. Most people keep their jobs for a certain amount of years. Actors don’t. I have no idea what the future holds because that’s just the way my life has always been. I’ve learned to like it.”
Rachel Barber can be reached at [email protected].