Wreford, Goldblum part ways

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/11/2005 (7497 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG stage actor Catherine Wreford’s two-year engagement to Hollywood movie star Jeff Goldblum is over.

“Yeah, we’re not together anymore,” Wreford confirmed in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. “It was pretty sudden and not very pleasant.”

Wreford, who headlined Danny Schur’s Strike! The Musical last May, refused to go into details about her recent breakup with the prominent American actor who has appeared in such big-screen blockbusters as Jurassic Park, Independence Day and The Fly, as well as most recently in the Broadway production of The Pillowman.

Sources say the split turned nasty after the couple had agreed to go their separate ways over his reluctance to have children.

“It was a surprise in the way it happened, not that it happened,” Wreford says between arriving home from an all-night film shoot and running out to audition for a TV commercial.

A Jeff Goldblum fan website reported he was spotted last month having brunch in a West Hollywood eatery by himself on his 53rd birthday. Wreford, 25, has rented an apartment with her cat, Billy, in West Hollywood.

“I’ve got the cat; it’s pretty much all I took,” says the slim, blue-eyed blond, who bought a 1998 black Neon Sunday at an auction.

The two met in the summer of 2003 in a Seattle airport, which she was passing through as a lead actor in a national tour of the Broadway musical 42nd Street. By the end of September of that year, after a whirlwind romance she quit the tour, where she was receiving good reviews, and moved into Goldblum’s West Hollywood home.

That he was more than twice her age raised some eyebrows, as Goldblum boasts a reputation as a serial fiancé.

He was married to actresses Patricia Gaul and Geena Davis, was also engaged to Laura Dern for two years and was linked to other starlets such as Kristen Davis, formerly of Sex and the City.

Goldblum, in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, once said, “I’m wildly romantic. I’m really thunderstruck by the pink ideal of love. I think it’s our job to be smitten all the time. What else is there?”

Goldblum made the trek to Winnipeg to see Wreford in the second-last performance of Strike! last June and visited for Christmas in 2003.

Wreford will remain in Los Angeles and continue her bid to break into film. After coming home for Christmas next month, the Kelvin High graduate will return to California and hopes to land a part in a television pilot.

“With this breakup, it’s made me realize how awesome my friends here are,” she says. “They’ve all kind of rallied around me. I’m going out a lot more.

“I’ve been on a few dates. I’m actually going on one tonight.”

With an actor?

“No, I think I’m done actors for a while. I think I’ll try another category.”

What she isn’t finished with is Strike!, for which she played Rebecca Almazoff. While here in Winnipeg she will appear in the movie trailer Schur plans to shoot.

“I feel really attached to this project,” she says. “I want to do everything that happens with it.”

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Those who like to play spot-the-Winnipeg-actor while watching locally shot movies will want to tune into the conclusion of Category 7 — The End of the World on CBS/Citytv Sunday at 8 p.m.

The disastrous, uh, disaster film, which was filmed here in the summer, is loaded with hometowners who were cast in secondary roles, many of whom don’t even rate a name. If you can catch the credits, you will notice Sarah Constible played the Trailer Park Lady, Winnipeg Jewish Theatre artistic director Mariam Bernstein is Woman at Ministry and Gord Tanner is Black Mask Guard #2. Michal Grajewski landed a character with only a first name, Dan, a graduate student who helps the professor unravel the mysteries of deadly hurricanes.

“I do have a scene with Robert Wagner in Part II,” says Grajewski, who, the week after moving to Toronto to pursue his acting career, returned to Winnipeg to work in Category 7. “It was an amazing experience to meet and work with him. His voice was so velvety and rich, even if he flubbed a line, it sounded right. Without giving too much of Part II away, for a brief period of time, the fate of the world rests on my shoulders!”

* * *

The North Kildonan Community Players will be holding their first social at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Isaac Brock Community Club on Telfer Street.

“Attending this social supports community theatre in Winnipeg,” says co-founder Laurie Fischer. “Community theatre is the lifeblood for future performers. Three members, Kimberley Rampersad, Heather Longstaffe and Tim Gledhill, of the cast of Smokey Joe’s Cafe, worked with North Kildonan Community Players.”

Tickets are $10 and can be reserved by calling 791-6373.

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca