Photos by Leah Runyon
GLORIOUS PROFESSION: Actress
AGE: FU_AGE!
GLORIOUS PERSONA: A No Bullshit Glorious Broad
GLORIOUS QUALITIES: Brutally Frank, Hilarious, Poetic, Profound
GLORIOUS PHILOSOPHY:
“Getting older – it’s the freedom to say that I own myself – I am who I am and this is IT. I am not sure if I had it in my 40s but I definitely got it in my 50s. 50s are great.”
GB: I was at a reading for a friend’s play when I spotted this glorious lioness across the crowded room — pepper and salt mane, all rough glamor — WHO IS THAT WOMAN!!??
A couple of vodkas later at the after-theatre party, I forgot about her — until I jumped the elevator to return home. Who was my sole companion? The lioness. It was the middle of winter but she had a bike and a ‘tude to convince me we were in the middle of a summer heat wave. I’m a biker, I love heat and the deal was sealed.
I call Janis’s face exotic. She calls it “RBF: Resting Bitch Face.” That “look” has got her into a heap of trouble — and won her a lot of demanding roles. Big surprise: she’s an actress.
Way impressed by her brutally frank, hilarious attitude, GB shares an embarrassment of riches over a few martinis — from sex to acting to aging — from our ‘no bullshit’ Glorious BroadJanis Dardaris …
BLINDERS BEGONE
“When I first got into acting — that’s the last thing any parent wants their child to do — and I said: fuck it, I’m doin’ it. And I had blinders on for 45 years.”
“You know that thing that George Bernard Shaw said: youth is wasted on the young? I don’t agree. When you’re young, youth is all you have. The passion of youth. The beauty of youth. I was so uncertain. That’s why I put the blinders on. Now my blinders are off and I’m ... aaaaaaaaaaah ... this is such a better time of life.”
V IS FOR VULNERABLE
“I basically don’t give a shit about what people think of me. I’m not worried about the stuff I used to worry about. I used to have this tough exterior and I wouldn’t let them see my vulnerability. That’s changed.”
“It would be really dangerous — too dangerous — if we were as smart as we are now and as self-accepting and we looked like we did when we were in our 30s. I think the world would blow up. Or, maybe it wouldn’t ...”
BE UNBORED
“I have never been attracted to a normal man, but I don’t think that I'm very attracted to normalcy. It makes me bored. I always say: beat me, do anything but don’t bore me. I am completely helpless in the face of boredom.“
“Sometimes I think about – am I gonna want to have sex in my 90s? Just because – I want to still be a life force”
BROADS ARE BUDDHIST TOO
“There is such a thing as karma. I learned that you do wrong things and it will come back to you. Karma is a real thing. I never believed it. You take from the universe and don’t give back — it is what you will sow.”
FU AGE
“Aging gracefully: mind your own business. Whose saying this: aging gracefully — as opposed to what — getting your face hacked away at? I’ve never been a particularly graceful person. I don’t like the term. It feels like I will have to keep my mouth shut and be quiet — and wise. Fuck that. We have as much passion as we ever did. And I have even more opinions.
Let’s age with a sense of humor, a sense of irony … and generosity.”
GB: Now that sounds like aging GLORIOUSLY, girlfriend!
Janis Dardaris, Actress, Acting Coach, was named a Philadelphia legend in Thomas Nickel’s book “Legendary Locals of Center City Philadelphia.” Nickels spelled her last name wrong on page 57. Janis thinks the misspelling’s kinda funny. That's the Buddhism talking.