Young Lions of Stage & Screen
By: Sarah Lorge
Source: Columbia College Today

Webmistress's Note:  This article is actually longer, but I only included the part about Cara, click on the Source link to read the full article

Cara Buono ’93 has appeared in several movies, television shows and Broadway productions, including Next Stop, Wonderland and Kicking and Screaming. She also has a lead role in the upcoming release Chutney Popcorn, which won second prize at the Berlin Film Festival.

Buono says she paid her Columbia tuition with her acting jobs, which included roles in two Lincoln Center productions while she was at school. “Every check I made, [Columbia] got all the fruits,” she says. Because she was paying for it herself, she finished her degree in three years by taking 22 credits per semester, and she graduated with a double major in English and political science. “For three years I basically slept two hours a night,” she says.

Looking back, Buono says she was “genuinely energized by the ideas” and the classes she took, including a theater class with Dean Austin Quigley. “It was a great, really disciplined time.”

Although she’s been lucky enough to land acting jobs steadily since she was 18, her career hasn’t been without its disappointments. Buono worked on a pilot for ABC last spring, produced by Ron Howard, but it wasn’t picked up. Like Kelly, she is philosophical about such turns of events. “You get so used to disappointment; it’s just part of the business,” she says. “You just don’t get your hopes up too high.”

When she’s not acting, Buono is writing screenplays. She began writing short plays while she was at Columbia, and Brad Anderson, the director of Next Stop Wonderland, asked Buono to partner with him in writing When the Cat’s Away. It’s the story of a girl who loses her cat, and “in the process of looking for it, she finds herself,” Buono says. Heather Graham is expected to star in it. Buono also is in the midst of another project for Miramax, an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise.

“People always ask me what I like better, acting or writing,” Buono says. “I find this a limiting question. I’m an actress and a writer and a future director. I love them each equally.”